You know how the old saying goes . . . when you fail to plan, you plan to fail. This saying holds true in the recruiting and staffing industry just as much as it holds true in every other industry within the employment marketplace. And that’s what makes recruitment preparation so important.
Agency recruiters and search consultants must plan if they want to make more placements and reach their full billing potential. And we’re talking about multiple kinds of planning, as well:
- Daily planning
- Monthly planning
- Quarterly planning
- Yearly planning
The degree to which each recruiters focuses on short-term goals as opposed to long-range ones is up to each recruiter. For example, recruiting industry trainer Scott Love of The Attorney Search Group advocates that search consultants focus more on weekly and monthly goals than on anything else. He believes that kind of focus will bring the best results. You may (or may not) agree with him, and if you don’t, then that’s quite alright.
What’s important is that you do some sort of planning in terms of your recruiting desk. Recruiting is not a profession where you can just “wing it” and experience the kind of success that you want to experience. Many people who have fancied themselves a search consultant have found that out the hard way.
Recruitment preparation: three steps for 2020
So . . . how can you engage in recruitment preparation? Well, to help answer that question, we’re going to draw upon the wisdom of recruiting industry trainer Jon Bartos. According to Bartos, there are three simple steps that agency recruiters and search consultants should take to improve their recruitment preparation efforts in the New Year (and beyond). They include the following:
#1—Take a good, hard look at the processes on your desk.
The effectiveness of those processes will ultimately determine how successful you are this year. Which processes resulted in placements in 2019? Which ones did not? They key to more success in 2020 could be as simple as the answers to these questions.
“Recruiters really have to fine-tune their processes,” said Bartos. “They have to fine-tune their sourcing process, their recruiting process, every process they have. They should evaluate what worked this year and what didn’t work.”
#2—Do everything you can to improve your skills.
The status quo just won’t cut it. Sure, we’re in the midst of a candidate-driven market right now. Job orders are flowing like honey, and hiring managers are pulling their hair out because they can’t find the candidates they want to hire.
However, that doesn’t mean you just cruise through the year. And what if there’s a recession this year? After all, we’re more than overdue for one. There’s one thing for sure. When a recession does eventually start, job orders will no longer be flowing like honey.
“Recruiters should identify and acquire the skill sets they need,” said Bartos. “They should invest in the appropriate training and work toward improving themselves. They need to evaluate themselves and get better at what they’re doing.”
#3—Set realistic goals.
Bartos agrees with Love when it comes to setting goals. Don’t set unattainable goals. That’s only going to set you up for failure, and there are enough feelings of failure within the recruiting and staffing industry. There’s no point adding to those by setting a goal of billing $1 million in 2020 when you only billed $200K last year.
“Recruiters need to determine what they want to achieve and what they’re willing to achieve,” said Bartos.
Recruitment preparation and continuous training
Jon Bartos is a premier writer, speaker, and consultant on all aspects of personal performance, human capital, and the analytics behind them. Bartos has served as a keynote speaker at Top Echelon conferences and is also a regular contributor to the Top Echelon Expert Recruiter Coaching Series of webinars.
Speaking of which, if you’re looking to improve your recruitment preparation, engaging in continuous training and education is an excellent way to do so. And it just so happens that Top Echelon has an extensive training library of free online recruitment training courses. These courses are recorded versions of Top Echelon’s Expert Recruiter Coaching Series of webinars.
These webinars touch upon a variety of recruiter-related topics. These topics deal with both candidates and clients. As always, our goal with these webinars (and corresponding videos) is to help recruiters make more placements.
In addition to training and webinars, Top Echelon offers other recruitment solutions. These solutions include the following:
For out more about the recruitment tools Top Echelon offers to agency recruiters and search consultants!