The Glue to being a successful recruiter!!

The Glue to being a successful recruiter!!

Organization and Planning are the glue!!- You must know how to organize and plan your time effectively. As an example one of the biggest problem recruiters have is finding time to source. This is most true of corporate recruiters who get sucked into all sorts of things. Well simply put sourcing time on your calendar for everyday. This guarantees you time to source. However, do not just stop there. Go in with a plan. Know your openings and have them prioritized. Set a number of candidates you want to find for a given opening on a weekly basis. Do your sourcing at the time you set forth, but follow your plan. If you have 50 openings, and you have decided 5 for each a week is good, then use your sourcing time to find your 5 great candidates for the first opening and then move on to the next. This ensures you will find candidates for all your openings, and usually will leave you some time left. Most recruiters I know, when they do source get so caught up in one opening, by the time their sourcing time is done, they have only sourced for one opening and have numerous more they have done nothing with. Remember organization and planning is the glue that helps a recruiter be successful.

Comment by Tom Byrne on February 16, 2011 at 1:04pm: Dean, organization and planning are critical to a recruiters success. The execution of your daily plan in an organized fashion is the - key. Time blocking can be very effective however, if you are not used to doing it it can take some time to get used to. For example, if you block say 2 hours out from 8:30am - 10:30am to do new business development calls "only" you will get into a rythym and should find yourself being more effective. Same day, block out 2 hours to do sourcing/recruiting to fill current job orders. Again, if you do it right you will get into a rythym and should find yourself being more effective. Equally important is to block out time at the end of your day to source and plan for the next day!

Technology today is great however, there are downsides too. For example, email. Don't be a slave to email. Most recruiters are "reactive" meaning they react to what is in front of them at that moment. An email just came in from Joe candidate, I need to read it and respond now. Do you? Can it wait until later to read and respond? Voice mail, you notice that your voice mail light is on so you stop what you are doing to listen to the message. Then you feel the urge to pick up the phone and return their call, next thing you know 10 -15 minutes have gone by (taking you away from your "structured plan - time blocking". Perhaps that call could have waited until later in the day or maybe even tomorrow. Social media, I just got a tweet so I feel the urge to respond. Co-worker, drops by my desk and wants to chat about American Idol or something trivial taking me away from my plan, my mission for the day - to get send outs!

Change is difficult for many of us. Especially for ones like me who have been in the business for a long time - old habits are hard to break.

Comment by Dean Da Costa on February 16, 2011 at 1:53pm: All great points

Comment by Paul Alfred on February 19, 2011 at 10:51am: What about working from closing 3-5 roles a month - build your game plan backwards from that target. Regardless of the amount of roles you have open - You will have a smile on your face when you update your fills Report and close those 3-5 open Requisitions...

Comment by Dean Da Costa on June 3, 2011 at 1:27pm: Well as for time for Bus dev if you read the whole post you would have noticed I said "Most true for corporate recrutiers" there for there is no bus dev. Obviously if you also have bus dev then you probably do not have 50 reqs either. As for time to read blog posts, on how you should us eyour time more efficiently, and such, if you are organized and have a plan then you have time. I can tell you first hand that as long as you are organized and have a plan you can handle 50 reqs successfully, make hires, have time for blogs. I know because I did it. But again, the examples used apply more to corporate recruiters, like I said in the original post.

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