The end of the year is a great time to look back at your processes and see what’s working, what isn’t, what can be improved, etc. It can be hard to reflect and make a change when you’re trapped in a cycle of constant demands – which is especially true for recruiters, who are so busy it’s often hard to “come up for air.”
An article about resolving to do less busywork has been floating around our office. In the article, from Associations Now, it suggests that to grow professionally, you have to stop spending so much time on “busywork” – i.e. logical tasks that don’t require much brainpower and are often done while distracted.
In the recruiting world, what comes to mind is the endless daily “to-dos” and quantitative goals to accomplish (i.e. send X # of InMails or emails, make X # of cold calls to prospective clients, checking social media, entering candidates into your ATS, pulling reports/data entry, etc). But while you’re glued to the phone trying to achieve a certain amount of phone calls, you might “look” busy but actually be achieving nothing.
“Busywork” often does have inherent value and needs to be completed, but tends to not create “new value.” The article stresses you need to carve out time to just think. It’s easy to get caught up in the endless cycle of calls and emails, but it’s important to step back and create time where you can reflect on the bigger picture. Block out an hour say on Thursday morning to work on something that will get no attention unless you break free of the email catch-up game.
This is an opportunity, the article states, to focus on “deep work” opportunities, which create new value, improve skills, and his hard to replicate. For a recruiting firm, a good activity to ponder might be your current marketing processes or business development strategies. If your team each had an hour or two each week where they were free from the phone/email, it would allow them to research, brainstorm new ideas, and possibly create new processes for your business that could save time and/or money, or increase productivity. It also places value on the employee – for their skills and thoughts, and encourages them to think outside the box, rather than thinking they’re just another cog in the wheel.
Do you have a process in place to allow yourself time to just think?
In today’s world, business keeps moving faster and faster. Staying current with technology is a challenge in and of itself. So, who has time to analyze the past?
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