There are very few platforms that help candidates to find information about the recruitment process. Often some companies share an attractive job description but after enrollment, it can turn out to be a totally different scenario. Candidates should have access to know the value behind the company and the reason why others are quitting.
Meet Pippa Evans and Stephen Martin (Steve), Co-founders of RecruiterRater. This innovative platform has helped raise the bar in Recruitment and has supported numerous individuals going through their recruitment journey. Pippa and Steve are committed to improving the candidates’ experience and aim to provide a voice to global applicants.
Both Pippa and Steve have had long and successful careers within the HR world. As an HRD and Occupational Psychologist, Pippa has specialised in helping organisations through change, she is passionate about employee engagement and always has an eye on helping employees achieve their ‘best selves’ within their roles. As a tax and finance specialist, Steve has focused predominantly on the world of compensation and benefits, specialising in executive compensation and incentive planning as well as helping companies to ensure they are rewarding their employees effectively. In 2017 they combined forces and set up their own consultancy practice Reward and HR Foundations, and have helped many organisations over the last few years achieve their people goals.
Hello Pippa and Steve, we’re thrilled to have you on our media. Please tell us about your business.
Throughout our careers, we have been actively involved in recruitment, as recruiting managers ourselves, and also through helping our managers recruit and onboard effectively. However, it was our own experiences as candidates that led us to create RecruiterRater. After our own difficult and challenging experiences, one especially poor for Pippa in late 2019, we felt that candidates needed somewhere to go to voice their experiences, gain support from others, and share so that others could make more informed decisions about recruiters; With the ultimate aim of raising standards within the recruitment world. Throughout 2021 we designed and built RecruiterRater, which we hope will help candidates navigate the often challenging recruitment experience.
What made you take the leap into entrepreneurship
We are so passionate about raising the bar in recruitment and helping people to improve how candidates are treated around the world, we felt the only way to properly help was to commit to this adventure! So more of a calling than a business venture. We have worked tirelessly through 2021 to build the site, often at the same time as consulting, suffering many setbacks and delays along the way. We entered a world of tech that we had no knowledge and experience of so it’s been a huge learning curve, but although scary, the experience we have gained has been incredibly rewarding, as has the support we have received from recruiters as well as candidates. Changing a very opaque world and making it better for people is what fuels us and moves us forward.
We have developed a robust portal for candidates to share experiences and for employers and recruiters to see on a customisable dashboard how their future employees and potential talent pool are being treated.
Net Promoter Scores, levels of support, follow up, communication and feedback are all examined and reportable for partners of RecruiterRater.
What advice would you give to someone thinking of becoming an entrepreneur
Do it! It’s scary, exciting, hard but hugely addictive.
Don’t be afraid to talk to people – we encountered and were given an incredible level of support, coaching, advice, and direction from people who just wanted to help! These ranged from successful entrepreneurs turned investors, commercial businessmen, and women, recruitment experts, sales and marketing experts all of whom offered an hour or two sometimes a lot more for free.
Stay focused – it is very easy to go ‘scattergun’ and try to make or build whatever it is to suit all people everywhere. Build something for a market-tested specific niche and establish a presence or ‘beachhead’ there. From that beginning, you can scale up and out carefully.
It will take twice as long as you think to go to market – building an online presence, social media presence and a loyal company of supporters takes much longer than you might think. Be prepared for that and make sure your finances can cope.
Be adaptable – when you are 6 months into the project, you may find that the external market has adapted or that your idea fills a need you hadn’t anticipated. Be prepared to change direction very quickly and adapt your idea or the market you want to penetrate.
