As a recruiter, you quite often blame your hiring managers, competitors, time constraint or even lack of good candidates for your inability to close a hiring position. But have your ever wondered if the problem lies with you only, or more specifically your inefficient work habits? Your work habits determine your productivity and the amount of success that you can get while finding and acquiring candidates. They also shape different types of strategies that you use every time at work.

But, there are times when these habits become old and obsolete in this ever changing world of recruitment. It is during such times that you become your own worst enemy by staying stuck in the confined world of tried and tested hiring mechanisms. The problem is, as professionals you believe that what has worked in the past will work even in the future.

As human beings, we are creature of habits. Every individual has some or the other habit that helps them in their life. According to a research conducted by Duke University, 40% of what you do in your daily life is not a conscious decision that you take, it is a habit. And it is very easy to fall prey to bad habits. Let us look at some recruitment bad habits that can cause your downfall as a recruiter.

1. You have stopped using the phone for communicating with candidates

Sourcing candidates through job boards is fine, but you cannot always rely on merely posting an ad or sending a message in the hope that the candidates will respond to your job descriptions. The problem starts when the recruiters give up the habit of using a landline to proactively reach out to the candidates and spread their network.

The landline is the most underutilized medium of communication amongst recruiters as they have tossed aside real conversations in favor of emails, InMails and LinkedIn conversation requests. It is true that you have found new mediums to communicate with candidates, but the habit of ignoring the use of landline to source candidates will hurt your hiring efforts. While mobile phones have become a norm nowadays it is being used for anything and everything apart from the primary function of communicating with people.

According to a survey conducted by SocialTalent, It was discovered that the best response rates from passive candidates were reported by recruiters who use the telephone to reach out to candidates on a regular basis. In fact, 50% of recruiters who said they used the phone to engage with passive candidates on a regular basis, reported response rates of 40% or more. And none of the recruiters who used the phone to contact potential candidates, reported response rates any lower than 10%.

In contrast, of the recruiters who use LinkedIn connection requests as their primary method of communication with passive candidates, just 22% reported response rates of 40% or more. That means that using the phone is over twice as successful as using a connection request when it comes to engaging with passive candidates, meaning that recruiters who use the phone, are twice as productive as those who don’t. This goes to show that as a recruiter if you use the phone as your number one tool it will help you to close more jobs.

Read More: What Is Talent Community And How To Build One Effectively

2. Concentrating on the same hiring metrics that you have been using since long

It is extremely critical for you as a recruiter to select the right metrics when it comes to demonstrating and quantifying the impact that high-performing new hires have on corporate revenue. This makes it crucial for recruiters to use the right recruitment metrics while creating and analysing report in an applicant tracking system.

The problem starts when the recruiters keep on concentrating on a select few metrics that they have been using for the past decade without adding any new metrics depending on the changing nature of business and industry. This can be a real deal breaker which can hurt your recruiting efforts in the long run.

One of the examples is when when you concentrate only on a single metric like where the candidates are applying from and not on other related metrics like how many of those applying are actually hired from different sources, there is a possibility that you may see only half the picture (in this case only popular application sources and not the most effective source).

Read More: 5 Ways Technology and Automation Can Improve Your Recruitment Process

3. Making false promises

We all know that recruitment is a high pressure job and as a recruiter you need to do everything to ensure that there is no loss of business due to client backout. For example a situation where you are falling behind the recruitment target, but take on more business and make commitments you know you will not be able to fulfill.

Such habits can earn you a very bad reputation, especially when you don’t fulfill your commitments. Never make false promises in the hope that you will be able to make successful placements for the client. This habit is not limited to only overcommitting. It can even include: overstating salaries, wrongly put job descriptions and falsely improving the quality of the candidates in the database. In this candidate driven market, these fake promises can break your career as a recruiter by harming your reputation.

The best way to overcome this habit is by being truthful to your clients. You can then provide alternatives to them in terms of the candidates that are available to you. But, inform them that they need to train the candidates for requisite on-the-job skills. This way you can save yourself from damaging your career as a recruiter.

Read more: Tips to Cut Down Cancellations And No Shows During Interviews

4. Not taking enough risk by sticking to a status quo

There are certain recruiters who follow the same dull routine everyday following the same lines for enquiry, utilizing the same tools, sending similar sounding messages with the same opening and closing lines thereby not taking enough risks to progress. This becomes a habit that reflects in the way job descriptions are posted on job boards. Recruiters use the same style or tone in the job ad which becomes a routine thing that does not yield results. The key is to be imaginative while writing job descriptions.

Try these things to give freshness to your job descriptions:

• Set the tone right straight away with a perfect job title
• Catch the attention of the candidates through a brief, engaging summary of the job
• Be specific while outlining the job responsibilities
• Clearly state the desired experience
• Provide an overview of the organization
• Give useful insight about the package being offered

Read More: Creating Perfect Job Descriptions For a Candidate Driven Market

Conclusion

Forming a bad habit is easy. but it requires a strong willpower to break the habit by making adequate changes. The best way to deal with the situation is to reduce the frequency of the habit and not the habit itself. For example; if you have the habit of checking Facebook Feed or Twitter twice every 60 seconds, curb the habit to only twice in 60 minutes. This self-control will help you to decrease the bad habits with time subconsciously.

Make conscious changes in your daily habits to overcome those that hamper your recruiting efforts. Although the list of unproductive and repetitive bad habits can be long, there is always a chance to break them. There will always be a risk of falling behind. But by working on the bad habits and willing to correct them you are giving yourself a great chance to boost your potential to recruit the best talent for your client.

Note:-This article was originally published on Recruitment Bad Habits Every Recruiter Should Avoid