Mind mapping

Challenge & selection  I am in charge of the business administration of a small human resources agency dedicated

to the recruitment and selection process. Last year we had an increase in the number of

customers [companies interested in us to look for the best candidates for their available

positions], but in the middle of this year we started to lose some of them. We did not know

why since we were just implementing our sales department and our operation team

[psychologists in charge of the recruitment and evaluation] were too overwhelmed with the

workload to ask the clients why they were leaving.     So, with that escenario, we decided that the first task that we would have with our emerging

sales team would be to get to know our clients in order to offer services according to their

needs. For this exercise we would be working with meetings, interviews and surveys to

collect information from our clients. Then, with the help of our sales and operations

departments, we would work on a mind mapping to look for patterns and insight of our

clients.     Application  After collecting information about our clients - information such as size of the organization,

kind of industry, internal organization, problemas that currently have in the recruitment and

selection processes, reasons to buy services like ours, reasons not to buy services like ours,

pain points and so much more - we took a day from our daily activities to work on the mind

mapping. We worked in a big saloon and put all the gathered information in a big board.

Then, we called all the people from the sales and operational departments [we are a small

group, so we were 10 people in total] to observe the information, pick the good stuff and then

cluster it. We also discussed the information in small groups in order to understand it.     Insight & approach  After this exercise we were able to determine the profiles of the clients that we had and what

they needed to buy services like ours. Also it helped us to design better services to offer to

them and to new clients. Finally, we got to recover some of the clients that we lost due to all

the changes that we made to our services.      We decided to do the exercise with the people of all the departments because, since we are

still a small agency, we wanted all to be aligned with and to understand the profile of our

clients and to know very detailed how the design of our services fulfill their needs. Therefore,

given the good results of this exercise, we will definitely be using this tool in the future with

our team.

