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Four-year-old boutique agency Frazer Tremble says complete transparency with clients and candidates is the cornerstone of its award-winning approach to customer experience in recruitment, and has driven its growth since launching at the start of the pandemic.
In March 2020, experienced recruiter Laura Frazer and partner and customer experience and process improvement specialist Brendan Tremble launched the agency from a standing start just as lockdowns began. Since then, however, it has racked up steady growth and now has 10 staff in its Melbourne office.
The agency won last year’s Seek award (SARA) for ‘best new agency’ and this was largely based on its approach to customer service and satisfaction, Frazer tells Shortlist.
“When we launched we were able to map all of our processes, all of our customer journey, all of our marketing material and look for ways to finesse it and improve it,” she says.
“We also did a lot of research – Brendan runs a [customer experience] consulting company called CX Loop and they went out to the market and did a whole lot of research on recruitment.”
The research revealed that one of the key things both candidates and clients wanted was better communication.
Both groups cited a lack of transparency and follow-up as their leading complaints about their dealings with the industry.
Frazer says overcoming this has been a focus for the agency since its launch.
“One of the things that candidates particularly didn’t like about the recruitment industry was the lack of transparency about who the client is, what the salary is, what the expectations of the role are, what’s the culture of the company like and what’s the hiring manager like.
“In a lot of cases, candidates said recruiters didn’t have that information to hand – it was just ‘sit and flick and hope for the best’.
“As a result, Brendan and I made a really conscious decision to only work on an exclusive or retained basis where possible.
“Now more than 80% of roles we work on are exclusive or retained. What that means for us is that we can be really honest with the candidate because we’ve got nothing to hide.”
Frazer Tremble recruits in three main practice areas: project services and infrastructure; data analytics and software; and customer experience and design.
And almost uniquely for a small agency, it employs a dedicated candidate experience coordinator.
“Her sole role is to engage with candidates all day, every day, and to value-add content, and to make sure candidates are talked to at every point in the process for live jobs and to communicate with the passive community as well,” says Frazer.
Frazer Tremble also runs monthly webinars and networking groups for its key communities.
“We’re trying to make the process as inclusive as possible, and as transparent as possible – when candidates do speak to us, we know the business, we know the hiring manager and we know exactly what the culture is like.
“So, in a way it gives control and ownership of the process back to the candidate so they can really opt in to the role.
“In the long term, it’s the right thing for our clients and the right thing for us as well.”
