Randstad sees 115% lift in candidate bookings with a scheduling tool

Randstad is a global leader in the HR services industry and the largest recruitment agency in the world. 

Headquartered in the Netherlands, Randstad operates in 39 countries under well-known brand names such as Tempo-Team, recruiting for temporary and permanent roles at every organizational level, and Yacht, which focuses on senior management recruitment. 

During its more than 60-year history Randstad has combined a passion for people with the power of technology to support clients and organizations in realizing their true potential. So implementing YouCanBookMe to offer an online scheduling option was a logical step to keep up with customer trends. 

Once YouCanBookMe was in place, however, it became obvious that it could solve a very specific problem. 

The problem: a big gap between the number of people who applied and the ones they were able to contact

Joost Gipman is Senior Manager of E-commerce at Tempo-Team. Almost half of Tempo-Team’s clients are large organizations that require logistics and production employees, and there is a near-continuous sourcing process for candidates.

“In our recruitment funnel, people apply for positions on our website. This creates what is called the Longlist. The next step is for our recruiters to contact candidates on the Longlist to interview them. The problem was a big gap between the number of people who applied and the number we were able to contact.”

Joost’s Tempo-Team managers are known for their innovative ways of working and openness to new ideas. They had conducted numerous experiments already, contacting people by phone, emails, and WhatsApp messages, and usually a combination of all three. 

“But in the end, we saw that sometimes almost ⅓ of potential candidates in a week weren’t reachable.”

It was the biggest drop-off in their recruitment funnel and came at a point where they had little information about the candidate. They didn’t know why people weren’t connecting to book a meeting with their team.

“We really wanted to improve on that number,” says Joost. “We did some experiments and there were some successes, but only minor successes. And then YouCanBookMe came along and we realized it could help.”

The solution: an easy scheduling tool increased engagement by 115%

Last year, there were 100,000 candidates on the Longlist. So moving from 70% contact to 85% or even 90% would make a massive impact. 

“We knew we wouldn’t get to 100% contact”, says Joost, “but we needed to improve it because the more people at the top of the funnel, the more placements we can make for our candidates and our clients.”

Joost’s team started with a limited implementation of YouCanBookMe to allow for some experimentation. They used A/B testing across 10-20 accounts, using YouCanBookMe in two ways depending on the region.

In the North, everyone who applied on the website got a WhatsApp message with the YouCanBookMe booking page link. This invited every candidate to sign up for an appointment whenever suited them. 

In the South, they sent the YouCanBookMe booking link only after a first contact attempt. If the recruitment team couldn’t get in touch by phone, they followed up with a WhatsApp message with the YouCanBookMe link.

“We saw that it didn't really help us in the South”, Joost says. “It did help us but not as huge as the numbers in the North.”  

In the test where every candidate was sent a WhatsApp message with the link to schedule time online, they saw a 115% uplift in appointments. “That was the point when we saw that this can work for us!”

And the results filtered through the recruitment funnel from there. The increase in the number of people contacted after they applied eventually led to a 98% increase in the number of candidates hired at the end of the process.  

Despite that success, sending WhatsApp messages is quite manual so Joost’s team continued to look for ways that could automate the entire process. 

“Making the time between when a candidate applies on our website and when they book a call as short as possible is better for our team and it's better for our candidates.

But really we wanted to make sure the right steps were happening for everyone. Once you see such an uplift in the trial, you want to make sure that the same process is happening 100% of the time.”

And so the experimentation continued.

“To really reduce the manual aspect, we added YouCanBookMe to our Thank You page. After applying, you’re redirected to a page that says ‘Thanks for applying. We’ll contact you within 48 hours’. We added a YouCanBookMe booking page in an iframe there so we didn’t have to send a WhatsApp message at all.” 

Tempo Team thank you page

“Not every candidate goes to that Thank You page so it’s not a perfect solution, but it’s still a solution that really works for us. We saw a 50% uplift in bookings.”  

Tempo-Team members were painfully aware of the Longlist drop-off and were delighted to use YouCanBookMe when they saw the impact it had. For other teams, particularly those that didn’t have such specific data about their workflows, the rollout was less about testing and more about helping them see the benefits of online scheduling.

YouCanBookMe’s customization means it can be adapted in multiple ways for large teams

“All the other accounts, which is almost 400 at this moment, are sending their YouCanBookMe links manually to suit their own model”, says Joost. 

One group uses YouCanBookMe to set up candidate interviews. They don’t want every applicant to get a WhatsApp message with the link so they send the booking page link only to qualified candidates who are then able to schedule a meeting online.

Another team works with successful candidates who are now employed by Tempo-Team’s clients. They offer support and regular check-ins to make sure things are going well. 

“These Account groups use it in newsletters that they send monthly to their employees. Or they put it on posters and screens with a QR code. So every employee always knows how to get in touch.”

Employees who have been working for 26 weeks get a check-in call to make sure things are working out, and that can be automated by sending the links using their CRM. “We can use integrations like that everywhere and it’s completely in our control”, says Joost.

Control and customization are the key factors for Randstad and Tempo-Team

“At first people thought they were ‘giving their calendar away’. But in the end, you're saving time and you're not giving your calendar away, because you have complete control. And that's the great thing about YouCanBookMe. You can set up your availability any way you need to. So there's tons of control.

“They also really like the flexibility”, adds Joost. “Not only for availability but also for the booking form. Being able to gather information before the meeting. Now they know who they’re going to meet and what they’ll need.”

Customizing notifications is essential for a company that uses YouCanBookMe across different brands, functions and languages. 

“We set up the pages with a basic template for the emails but they can make huge improvements if they tweak it around their unit or their team and personalize the messages.”

Randstad booking form

Joost has implemented hidden questions on the booking form, which allows them to pass client information into a booking that can later be joined up with each team’s wider reporting on the back end.

He monitors his A/B tests and how his team is adopting YouCanBookMe by integrating closely with Google Data Studio.  Using the Webhooks feature, he automatically sends granular information about online bookings into his existing Data Studio dashboard, which makes it easy to combine with other business insights. 

“We now have more than 300 booking pages, across the three brands. Within those brands, we have different labels for different business units that use YouCanBookMe for different purposes. The webhooks allowed us to create the customized filter options and labels that we needed.”

This streamlined reporting means he always has up-to-the-minute data to demonstrate the value of YouCanBookMe - and his latest experiments - to his stakeholders.