So I've started the first week of my prac placement at 11 Recruitment, within their client relations team. The focus for the department is on gaining and retaining clients - gaining prospective clients through communication and organising business development meetings, plus the retention of these clients through means of regular email contact, phone calls, and satisfaction responses - lots of PR!

The project I am working on for my prac placement is strengthening the relationship with clients whom we have already worked in the past, and has been created as a recession strategy, to ensure that we retain the relationships we have with our 'existing' clients. Despite the recession, this is a good strategy to be using all the time for client retention - it is the PR that the agency needs for repeat business rather than one off sales.

I've discovered that this role contains a lot of internal relations as well. Because I am in constant contact with the clients and what they are looking for, the message and information I get then needs to be passed on to the consultants. Also, any change in procedure that we adopt within this department then needs to communicated to all the other staff so they know what we are doing, what we are saying, etc. Its all very fast paced and a communications mecca! Each client has a different style of communication, so this is great experience in having to work around this and adapt your style to theirs.

The agency has a CRM database to enter every tiny action made with regards to a client or candidate so that then everyone else in the agency can see what's going on when they look up that record. A brilliant method of indirect internal communications! Everyone makes sure their entries are up to date because they know other people rely on those entries for information.

So the coming weeks will involve me talking about all the different experiences of working on the project - both regarding communication with clients and employees of the agency. I've got a few ideas that I want to investigate for the agency, like finding some free networking events for the consultants (networking is not a priority at the moment because its seen as a cost) - wish me luck!

Watch this space!

Sarah
Curtin Bentley Campus