Every independent recruiter or entrepreneur has had one of those days, weeks, or even months where the road to success can be full of bumps and dead ends, and ultimately seem like a lonely game. Especially here, where the end of the year is coming close, and holiday gatherings with family and friends will start taking you away from work, and it may seem easy to write off time, thinking that you will regain momentum next year.

I encourage you to keep going. I challenge you to pull out the business goals you set for yourself at the beginning of the year, and if you have not hit them, realize you have over two months left to crank out some results, or set up your business to perform better in the upcoming year. If you have a running list of vendors, marketing programs, or recruitment networks you planned on checking out, invest the time now. If you had plans to hire more staff, or devote more time to certain tasks, invest in that planning now.

It will take many failed attempts to eventually hit the business model that fits in with your vision and goals, as well as lifestyle. When I find myself struggling in business or lacking motivation, I turn to inspirational quotes to regain focus and change my mindset to positive. Here are my some of my favorites:

• “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.” ~ Henry Ford
• “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” ~Warren Buffett
• “You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” ~ Steve Jobs
• “People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves, they have the first secret of success.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale
• “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
• “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.” ~ Swami Vivekananda
• “Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.” ~ Henry Ford
• “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” ~ Thomas A. Edison
• “The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” ~Mark Zuckerberg
• “Progress always involves risks. You can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.” ~ Frederick B Wilcox
• “If you don’t value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents. Value what you know and start charging for it.” ~ Kim Garst
• “Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.” ~ David Rockefeller
• “Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it.” ~ William Durant
• “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” ~Warren Buffett
• “If you’re not stubborn, you’ll give up on experiments too soon. And if you’re not flexible, you’ll pound your head against the wall and you won’t see a different solution to a problem you’re trying to solve.”~Jeff Bezos

Do you have any that I did not include that you turn to personally? Share them in the comments!

For today’s post, I would like to share three recruiting blog posts that are especially relevant:

Let’s Be More Human – Maureen Sharib, owner of TechTrak (and a past paid speaker for NPAworldwide) blogged on ERE.net about the importance of human interaction and communication and [gulp] using the PHONE. Everyone is overwhelmed with email. Candidates are ‘signing out’ of LinkedIn to avoid the constant barrage of InMail from random, unknown recruiters. She suggests that a change in attitude, from an inwardly-focused one to an outwardly-focused one of “What can I do for someone else” would go a long way to helping overcome the telephone reluctance that has become so pervasive. Recruiting is still about making connections, and electronic ‘communication’ just doesn’t build rapport in quite the same way as voice or in-person activities.

11 Fascinating LinkedIn Usage Stats for Recruiters [INFOGRAPHIC] – The good people at Social Talent (Johnny Campbell has also been a paid speaker for NPAworldwide) have released their 2014 Global Sourcing Survey, and have created this infographic about how recruiters are using LinkedIn to accompany the survey results. You’ve probably heard that 96% of all recruiters have a LinkedIn account, but did you know that almost half of them are using a free, basic account? Only 6% of recruiters are reporting using the phone to reach out to candidates, but phone-users are getting higher response rates than those who are using LinkedIn (InMail or Connection requests). Maybe it’s time to dust off that old relic?

Why Mobile is a Must for Your Recruitment Arsenal – By 2016, we are expected to have more mobile devices in the world than people. More than 90% of adults report having a smartphone within reach at all times. There is simply no getting around the fact that mobile behavior has changed candidates’ expectations for how the hiring process works. Unfortunately, a shockingly small number of businesses offer mobile-friendly websites and application processes. Read this blog for five common mobile mistakes that recruiters make, and how to avoid them.

What’s YOUR favorite recruiting blog? Share in the comments below!

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

At the NAPS conference in Houston, TX, one of my favorite speakers was Jon Bartos of The Global Performance Group, who spoke on the multi-million dollar producer’s guide to time management. As independent recruiters, each day, we go into work with a clear mind, a set plan of things to accomplish, of calls to make, and business development plans. Two hours later after reading and handling three unpredicted emails and reading on the latest sports scandal, we realize our plans are not quite panning out. Here are some tips from Jon Bartos as to how to manage that time more closely.

Planning is the foundation of your success or failure, and by structuring your day, you can avoid the latter. Reserve the morning for marketing and get the important tough stuff done first. Set daily goals based off of yearly goals, break down that $5,000,000 revenue into smaller targets to stay on point. 80% of sales people waste time selling to the wrong targets, so make sure you know who is taking up your time and market to those that will help you reach your goals.

Understand the four quadrants of efficiency to keep your day on task. Schedule your email and handle the important ones first. Here is a chart showing the four quadrants and how to prioritize:

By handling emails and daily tasks according to these quadrants, you are taking care of what needs to be immediately handled and not letting the random email ADHD take over your day and time management.

Track your results with a performance management system to see what activities are powering your business and which activities are unproductive or taking away from building revenue. Do not allow yourself to close a day without sticking to your activities, even the typical, “I’ll do it tomorrow” should be crossed from your vocabulary.

Finally, always remember that selling time should be valued and scheduled the most, because this is your $1000 dollar activity versus your $10 dollar activity, make it a priority and hit those goals, 2014 is not over yet!

If you’ve had a website for your recruitment firm for any length of time, you probably have at least some rudimentary knowledge of SEO (search engine optimization). As aggregators become more and more dominant as the main way jobs are distributed online, it’s easy to lose sight of how important SEO still is for your website. I have a sneaking suspicion that “everyone” thinks job seekers head straight to sites like Indeed when they are searching for a new job. I’d like to suggest that a lot of job seekers, maybe even a majority of them, may *actually* start their job searches via Google, Bing, or another “regular” search engine. Did you know, for example, that Google reports more than 124 MILLION job-related searches each MONTH? And that Google Search is the #3 mobile app for smartphones? Or that Google also boasts 87.1% of the US mobile search market? (Thanks to our friends at Monster for gathering some of this data!) That adds up to a LOT of people doing a lot of job searching in places that are NOT aggregator sites. So, here are a few SEO tips for recruitment firms to help you reach some of these job seekers:

1. Make your jobs easy to find. Don’t bury them multiple pages deep into your site. Having a feed of your newest jobs on your home page is smart because, (a) your home page is *probably* your most-visited page and (b) continuously-refreshing content will keep the Google bots coming back to your site to index the new content.

2. Use “plain speak” URLs for your jobs – for example, www.abcrecruiting.com/engineering-jobs/senior-software-engineer as opposed to something like www.abcrecruiting.com/careers/223850928945?. Using keywords in real language makes it MUCH easier for search engines to find your content and return it in the search engine results pages.

3. Ideally, make sure each job is contained on its OWN page. Sites with deep content are consistently rated as more authoritative than sites with less content. Combining a well-optimized job description page with a word-based URL is still a great way to improve organic search results for your recruitment firm.

4. Pay attention to the meta description field. The meta description is the short snippet you see under the page title and URL in search engine results. It should be written in plain language, “match” the subject matter in the page title and URL, and be compelling enough that the searcher will click on the link.

5. Don’t forget mobile! If your website offers a poor mobile experience, Google is probably demoting your site in search results (or worse, removing it altogether).

Do you have any SEO tips for recruitment firms you can share?