Playbook, recruitment agency
Three addresses, and the one that must not be published
Directions are the most harmless question a website gets. On a recruitment site the answer depends on which journey is meant, and one of the three is a client's premises whose identity is often confidential until an interview is actually confirmed. An assistant that helpfully supplies a site address has disclosed a client relationship to whoever happened to be typing.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for location and parking holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The client's address is commercially sensitive and sometimes confidential until an interview is arranged, so the most helpful sounding answer in this pair is a disclosure.
- Candidates for shift work are often getting there without a car at an hour when public transport barely runs, which makes the first bus and the walk from the stop more useful than anything about parking.
- A branch that registers people in person receives visitors who have never been before, arriving for a fixed slot, carrying original documents they cannot afford to mislay on the way.
- Parking at a place of work is the client's arrangement, including whether there is any, whether a permit is needed and how a first day arrival is handled at a gate, and none of it is the agency's to describe from memory.
How it arrives
- where is your branch
- where is the interview being held
- is there parking at the site
- how do i get to the warehouse without a car
- which entrance do i use at your office
- is the address on the advert the actual work location
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Directions to the branch, written from the station and the car park | Which entrance, how long the walk takes, what the door looks like, where to buzz. A pin on a map is not directions for somebody arriving at a fixed time with documents in a folder under their arm. |
|---|---|
| Your parking position at the branch | Whether there is any, what the nearest option costs and how long registration takes. A candidate on a one hour meter watches the clock through the entire appointment and answers half of it badly. |
| What may be said about a work location, and when | The point at which a site address becomes shareable and what may be said before that. This is a confidentiality rule, and where it is not written down the assistant improvises one of its own. |
| Public transport detail for the sites you staff regularly | Whether there is a service at shift start times, the nearest stop, the walk. For a lot of temporary work this decides whether somebody can take the assignment at all, and it is the question they are least willing to ask. |
The reply
Our branch address and the route from the station are on the contact page, and registration takes about an hour, which is worth knowing if you are parking on a meter [1]. If you mean an interview or a place of work, I cannot give you an address from here: those are the client's premises and your consultant confirms them when the interview is arranged [2]. If you are trying to work out whether you could reach a site without a car, tell me the kind of work and leave your name and an email and somebody will go through the journey with you.
It answers the agency's own address completely, including the meter, because that detail is what ruins a registration appointment. It refuses the client address on confidentiality grounds rather than on grounds of access, since that is the real reason. And it offers the transport conversation, which is the unasked question underneath many of these.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor asks where an interview, an assignment or a client site is, or whether they could reach one at shift start times.
I cannot give out a client's address, and whether you can get to a site at that hour is worth going through with somebody. Leave your name, an email and the kind of work and a consultant will confirm the location and the journey.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never give the address of a client site or an interview location, because a client's identity is theirs to disclose and not the agency's.
- Never confirm that a particular company hires through the agency, including by naming where one of its sites is.
- Never describe parking, gate access or site rules at a client's premises from memory.
- Never say a site is reachable by public transport at a shift start time unless your own material says so.
Questions
- Candidates only want to know where they are going. Is the caution overdone?
- The caution is about who is typing, not about the candidate. A competitor or a client's own recruiter can ask the same question in the same words, and the answer tells them which agency staffs which site.
- Can it give directions to the branch?
- Yes, and it should give them properly: the entrance, the walk from the station, where to buzz, how long to allow. That is the one address on this site it can be completely open about.
- Should we publish transport detail for the sites we staff?
- Publish it generically where you staff the same locations repeatedly, without naming the client. First bus, nearest stop, walking time. It decides whether somebody can take shift work at all and almost nobody writes it down.
Keep reading
- Everything for a recruitment agencyTwo audiences on one website. Process, payroll and compliance questions are answerable, application outcomes never are.
- Handling location and parking in generalWhich entrance, where to park, the step free route, the nearest stop. Genuinely useful information that is almost never written down well.
- The questions candidates will not ring a branch to askWhat to wear, how long it takes, whether there is a test. The registration nerves nobody will phone a branch to ask a consultant about.
- A refund here is a clause, and usually not moneyRebate scales taper, a replacement usually comes first and conditions void both. What may be quoted when a hire leaves in week three.
- Two things called an appointment, one of them not yoursWalk in or by appointment, which branch, and why an interview is never the agency's to arrange. Booking answers without any diary.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.