Podcast: Play in new window | Download
[This is a direct transcription from the video please excuse any typing errors.]
Hi I’m Nicky Coffin and welcome back to our Recruitment Business Owner Training Tips.
Today I’d like to share with you two of the most important things Recruitment Managers should do yet 95% of Managers don’t…
Have you ever experienced this? You sit down with your team, set their weekly targets, agree what needs to be done and at the end of the week when you ask them what they have achieved, there are loads of things they have not completed?
10X YOUR TEAM’S OUTPUT
“Your team does a lot of work – but they could do better. “
Well if you haven’t experienced this, then you are one in a minority. The truth is most managers I work with either totally forget to follow up, or never schedule a follow up in the first place. And when it comes to reviewing and monitoring what’s working and what’s not working, they may do this a bit, yet its’ never consistent.
These 2 habits – Reviewing and Monitoring are for me so important, when you do this consistently, you will help your team to achieve consistent results.
Most recruiters have the right objective but sometimes the wrong direction
Think of a coast guard rescue station. When a mayday call comes in they prepare to launch, but they gather a whole lot of additional information before they actually head out. They try to establish where the boat was last seen, what the weather conditions are, how many people are on board and what their situation is.
All of these things will influence their decision on what resources to use and what needs to be done to save the people involved. They don’t blindly head out just because they know they have to go to the rescue. If they launch before establishing what, where or how, they could waste precious hours and completely miss the people that need help.
The same applies to managing a team. You can’t work out how to get somewhere unless you know where you are heading and what specifically needs your focus.
It’s also important to know what’s working and what’s not
When you sit down with your team to work on their 90 day and then weekly plan you first need to assess what they have been doing that’s working and what’s not working. One of the best ways to do this is through Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and ratios which shows them the quality of their process to see what is yielding results and what isn’t.
Now I know that for some managers tracking and analysing activities may seem like you’re micromanaging your team. But in recruitment one of the only things you can manage is activity – you can’t manage results. By getting them to increase their activity and quality of their process will help to manage better results.
Remember too that individuals in your team may need different KPI’s but they should always be linked to critical activities. Choose simple KPI’s for tracking activities such as number of CV’s sent, list interviews, jobs won. Sit down with each person in your team individually and look at their activity for the past 3 months. Assess that in terms of the results they are getting now and it may highlight some important areas to tweak.
10X YOUR TEAM’S OUTPUT
“Your team does a lot of work – but they could do better. “
When people go off track – it’s normally only a couple of things they have stopped doing. Don’t let small changes go unnoticed.
I worked with one recruiter that was consistently a top biller, she never failed to reach £30k every month. But when she hired 2 new consultants suddenly her billings dropped to £10k per month.
When I asked her what she was doing differently she couldn’t identify anything specific. However, as we dug deeper we discovered that her candidate registered to placement ratio had gone from having to see 2 candidates to make a placement up to 10 candidates to make a placement. She was doing something different with her candidates.
When we looked at what it was, she used to always have face to face meetings with candidates, but now having to manage 2 consultants she’d stopped doing that because she felt she didn’t have the time anymore. Just having the ratios and being able to drill down to what the problem might be allowed her to make small changes.
She prioritised face to face meetings once again and within 4 weeks her billings were back up to previous levels. This is just one example of how important monitoring activities and ratios are for managing performance. It shows you very quickly where the problem is so that you can change it.
With reviewing and monitoring it’s important to be systematic
The key to monitoring and reviewing is to have a system and start to automate processes. Get your consultants to capture data so that when you need to pull a report all the information you need is already in the system. Have weekly and monthly reviews and prioritise time for your team to focus on key activities.
Block time in your diary to get away from the busyness of the office and be able to review the activity and results so that you know where you team is winning and where they need to improve. It is only when you have a clear view of what is going on that you can helicopter up and see what small changes can be made that could make a big difference.
If you want to learn how to set up your business, so that it stops under-performance once and for all, then join my free webinar: The 5 Secrets Our Clients Use to Build 7 & 8 Figure Recruitment Businesses
I look forward to seeing you next time!
