Gareth Hayden from Oxford Knight discusses the importance of customization, customer care, and cutting edge AI technology for his recruitment agency.
Oxford Knight is an international recruitment agency specialising in the technology sector. The majority of the team is in London, with additional offices in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. They pride themselves on finding the most talented developers in the country for their clients. Gareth explains: "we like the challenge of trying to find the best talent, and that's what we built the business on. It means that when we approach clients, we can provide unique candidates no one else has".
Because Oxford Knight operate in such a competitive market across multiple regions, a fast, powerful and tailored CRM that streamlines a recruiter's process is crucial. However, Gareth describes their old CRM as being "a slow, very rigid system that was difficult to customise. The customer service we got was really bad as well – if we asked for a change there would be extra (at times excessive) charges".
In 2016, the team at Oxford Knight switched over to Octavia. Gareth described the data migration process as "seamless", adding "I was actually really excited about it!". A visible difference in customer care was quickly apparent — "we've had a much more personal and high quality service with Octavia. The quality of the product has continued to impress us, with frequent new releases ensuring the business is using cutting edge recruitment technology". After switching to Octavia, Oxford Knight were able to make adjustments to their CRM, tailoring it so that the "technology compliments the way that we work". This has added significant value to the business overall, the teams are "more efficient because of it and ultimately that means more money for the business, more placements, and happier consultants!".
Using Octavia also provided an immediate change in the user experience — "it felt like we had come out of the dark ages". In particular, the adjustments that could be made to make the CRM suit Oxford Knight's workflow process was a massive improvement from the old CRM. "With our old CRM, it felt like we were trying to follow processes that didn't work for us. It was painful. It felt like we were forcing our consultants to go through processes that weren't natural in terms of recruitment workflow".
Gareth has lots of personal favourite features, but thinks workflows have made the biggest impact.
As a director, Octavia provides me with a lot of transparency around workflow, interactions and the all round output of our consultants, and particularly where our revenue is coming from. It makes us more efficient and responsive, we can find and respond to candidates more quickly, and service our clients faster than ever.
Octavia's workflows help recruiters keep track of all of their work-in-progress without the need for separate tracking on whiteboards or individual spreadsheets. A simple but detailed overview screen with drag and drop, colour coding and inline editing make it the perfect way to tailor and manage your pipeline.
Oxford Knight share Octavia's excitement about the potential that AI and machine learning have for the recruitment industry.
I think much of recruitment has been stuck in the 1980s for a long time. Compared to the 'brute force' approach – using fax machines, making innumerable phone calls – the AI approach that Octavia takes is just a smarter way of working. It significantly improves the experience we provide to our candidates and makes our consultants work more enjoyable. If you have to make countless phone calls just to get one placement, it’s not a very rewarding experience. If you can use AI and machine learning, you're more successful and inevitably feel more fulfilled. Having access to these technologies has the potential to makes us better as an industry – having them in our CRM is reflected in the reputation we have as a company.
Octavia has provided Oxford Knight with a valuable advantage in a very competitive market. Click below to find out how AI could do the same for your business.
