There are many aspects associated with maximizing your productivity (and profitability) as a recruiter and/or an agency owner. One of them is knowing which recruitment ratios and metrics to track. In other words, the tracking of activities. Another aspect is your recruitment schedule. In other words, the time it takes to carry out those activities.
Everybody has the same number of hours in a day. What you do with those hours is ultimately what’s important. And as we’ve explored previously, doing what matters most is the key to maximizing your activities. And doing what matters most is doing what leads most directly to making placements. (Because if you’re not making placements, then you’re really not a recruiter.)
But once again, we’re left with a series of questions. What should my recruitment schedule consist of? What should it NOT include? What are the best practices for creating and executing a recruitment schedule?
Recruitment schedules work!
To help answer these questions (and others), we’re going to draw upon the wisdom of recruiting industry trainer Jon Bartos of Revenue Performance Management. Bartos is a premier writer, speaker, and consultant on all aspects of personal performance, human capital, and the analytics behind them.
According to Bartos, the reason why successful people like schedules is because they work. An efficient schedule is how the world operates efficiently. In recruiting it’s no different. An unplanned and unscheduled day is an unproductive day. An efficient, scheduled day yields gold.
According to Bartos, his office is run by the following basic schedule:
8:00 a.m.—Arrive and check email and plan for the day
8:15 a.m.—Morning meeting – entire office
8:45 a.m.—Team meeting – individual markets
9:00 a.m.—Hot calls – closes, interview debriefs, candidate presentations, search assignments, etc.
9:30 a.m.—Uninterrupted A-Player marketing calls
11:30 a.m.—Return voice mails, read, send emails, get fee agreements sent to office support
Noon—Lunch
1:00 p.m.—Hot calls that have developed from morning
1:30 p.m.—Uninterrupted recruiting calls on job #1
3:00 p.m.—Uninterrupted recruiting calls on job #2
4:00 p.m.—Return phone calls, check email, afternoon debriefs and preps
4:30 p.m.—Plan for next day
Keys to an effective recruiting schedule
Based upon the above schedule, below are four keys to an effective schedule for recruiters:
#1—Uninterrupted call periods.
These are your ticket to efficiency. They are essential to getting more done in less time. Safeguard them by putting your phone on “do not disturb” or having the office manager hold your calls during these periods.
#2—Experiment.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with your schedule, customizing it for maximum results. Whether you use our office’s plan or develop your own, when you stick to a daily schedule, you’ll be amazed at the increase in your productivity.
#3—Hold yourself accountable for every minute.
There are only so many hours in the day, and if you don’t want to live at the office, you need to make the most of every minute. That means you need to make some tough decisions. To get more accomplished in less time, prioritize. Identify that which is worth your time each day and that which is not. Throughout the day, evaluate whether or not you’re staying true to your high-value activities. Hold yourself accountable by asking, “Is this the best use of my time right now?” You may be surprised by how much time you waste on low-value activities and how easy it is to turn that around quickly.
#4—Realize what your time is worth.
Time is money. When you waste an hour of selling time during the day, you are literally cheating yourself out of cash. Would you drive down the street throwing $20 bills out the car window? A recruiter with a yearly income of $50,000 who loses an hour a day to low-value activities might as well climb into his car and start throwing. At $50K a year, your time is worth $24 per hour, at $100K it’s $48 per hour, and at $150K it’s $72 per hour. The next time you find yourself tempted to call a buddy during selling time, picture yourself throwing away your hard-earned cash. It can keep you focused.
An effective schedule for recruiters involves all of these things. Does yours? If you’re a firm owner, how about the schedules of the recruiters in your office?
Schedule time for recruiter training!
Top Echelon offers a free monthly webinar as part of its Recruiter Coaching Series. After the webinars are over, we post the recorded version of the webinars in our Recruiter Training Library. 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.
Jon Bartos has multiple videos in the Top Echelon Recruiter Training Library. In addition, many of these videos deal with recruitment ratios and other metrics. Some of these videos are listed below. Click on the title of each video for access:
- “Creating a Culture of Performance by Using Metrics”
- “Maximizing Performance Using the Pareto Principle”
In addition to training and webinars, Top Echelon offers other recruitment solutions. These solutions include the following:
- Big Biller recruiting software
- Top Echelon split network
For more information about Top Echelon and the products and services that it offers, visit the Top Echelon website by clicking here.