Table of Contents
Discover how busy Recruitment Consultant Martin Johnson uses WhatsApp Business to stay in control of his time and grow his business, all while developing a better work-life balance.
- The Challenge: Improve candidate engagement and response times
- The Solution: Set up a virtual mobile number and move team-client comms to WhatsApp Business
- The Outcome: More efficient communication, resulting in more candidates successfully placed
- Industry: Recruitment Consulting
Recruitment Consultant Business Owner
“WhatsApp Business streamlines everything. I look back on my previous years in recruitment and think, why were we not using that before? Now I can tell when my message has been read and quickly evaluate the candidate based on their responses. It’s a gamechanger for the industry.”
-Martin Johnson – Recruitment Consultant
Key Takeaways:
- WhatsApp Business has a 10x higher open rate than emails – no more landing in candidates’ junk inboxes! It’s also much more efficient than phone calls or SMS
- Martin has used WhatsApp Business to help build client relationships and place more candidates than ever
- WhatsApp offers a discreet form of communication, resulting in quicker response times
- Martin uses our Teams solution to stay in control of his team members’ Business accounts
- The whole team use Away Messages, Labels, and the Desktop Version of WhatsApp Business to stay on top of multiple communication threads
- Using WhatsApp Business with a virtual number from YourBusinessNumber is having a positive impact on the recruiters’ work-life balance
- The Recruitment team found WhatsApp Business quick and easy to set up, requiring only 10 minutes of their time.
Q & A
Q: How long have you been a recruiter?
“I started out in recruitment in 2012. After rapidly becoming one of the highest-billing global consultants for an international tech recruitment agency, I founded my own company in 2016.”
Q: How busy are you, and how important has Instant Messaging been to your business?
“Extremely busy. In recruitment, even when you work for someone else, you’re sort of your own company anyway – you look after your own brand management, your own marketing, your client relationships, and much more. I’m always busy keeping my plates spinning.
“Instant messaging has been incredibly valuable because now I’m not always waiting for email responses, or trying to call multiple times to have a quick conversation that could easily be completed in a message.”
Q: What do your day-to-day comms with clients require you to do? How did you handle it before WhatsApp Business?
“When you’re trying to place a candidate, a lot of different touchpoints are required. You have to check in regularly and ensure they are prepared and organised for the interview.
“Candidate engagement is very important, and the quality of a candidate for a particular position very quickly becomes clear.
“When we were using traditional communication methods including phone, email and SMS, there was a lot of unnecessary back-and-forth and waiting for responses. SMS has become increasingly ineffective over the last few years as it has become saturated. Of course, there’s still a time and a place for email and phone calls, but WhatsApp Business gives our team and candidates an incredibly effective, modern way to communicate. It’s all about staying competitive and giving people the choice.
“WhatsApp Business streamlines everything. I look back on my previous years in recruitment and think, why were we not using that before? Now I can tell when my message has been read and quickly evaluate the candidate based on their responses. It’s a gamechanger for the industry.
“One key benefit of WhatsApp Business is that I can tell when my message has been read. I can very easily evaluate the candidate based on their responses, so it cuts out a lot of wasted time trying to chase candidates for replies.”
Q: What comms challenges did you face before using WhatsApp Business?
“Clients tended to respond very slowly or not at all, and we found emails often went into junk inboxes, requiring yet another phone call from us to check that they had been received. This was incredibly frustrating!
“Being able to communicate discreetly is very important in recruitment – and obviously, candidates prefer to be contacted out of work hours so that they wouldn’t be overheard. With messages, they can respond at any time and keep their job search private.”
Q: What constraints did you face before using WhatsApp Business?
“Honestly, I didn’t know that WhatsApp Business existed! I was very reluctant to use my personal WhatsApp Messenger app to send work communications, because when I tried it out, it had a really negative impact on my work-life balance. Clients kept sending messages at midnight, and as I didn’t want to switch off my personal communications, it would eat into my rest time and make me feel resentful. At one point, I even missed some of my Nan’s WhatsApp messages because they were buried in a pile of work messages – and that’s when I decided that enough was enough!
“When I finally did hear about WhatsApp Business, I thought it was going to be an expensive SaaS solution that would take months of hard work to implement. In the end, it only took 10 minutes!”
Q: What has changed since starting to use WhatsApp Business?
“Everything! As a manager, I can now manage all my team members’ WhatsApp Business accounts from one central place, which gives me more control and ownership.
“Before, knowing that my recruiters were using their personal WhatsApp accounts for work was keeping me awake at night. Not only did I know that it would be impacting their personal time in the same negative way that it was for me, the potential for an embarrassing contact mix-up was concerning. Now with YourBusinessNumber and WhatsApp Business I sleep much better, with the knowledge that I’m in control and my team are able to switch off after a hard day of work.”
Q: What is your favourite WhatsApp Business tool?
“The whole team really likes using Away Messages to manage clients’ expectations, as well as Labels to keep messages more organised. We also all love using the desktop version of WhatsApp Business when in the office – it’s much easier to stay focused that way, and the app automatically syncs across devices. These kinds of organisational tools help us to stay on top of multiple chat threads at the same time. It’s made us much more efficient and allowed us to grow the business – without adding extra stress!”
Q: What are the benefits of using dual WhatsApp accounts?
“Having both WhatsApp Messenger for personal use, and WhatsApp Business for professional use, is massively beneficial for the entire team. I can switch between personal and work easily, and switch off notifications for my work app outside of working hours.
“There are loads of benefits for client-recruiter communications as well. Candidates can contact recruiters about new job listings easily and feel secure knowing they are contacting a specific business account, and recruiters can get to know the person on the other side by asking questions about previous work experience and preferences, as well as getting a feel for their communication style.”
Q: How would you sum up your overall experience with WhatsApp Business?
“It’s been a real gamechanger for us. Candidates tell me they feel seen and heard, our client results are better and we have grown our client list significantly while using WhatsApp Business. When you consider that we’ve achieved this while improving our team’s work-life balance and helping them to set boundaries around their personal time, it’s a real win-win.”
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Author:
George Lineker
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