5 Time Management Tips for Recruiters

by Liz Carey

photo-1441323263989-281bc2f5b68cOne of the biggest challenges a recruiter faces is trying to manage a schedule and predict the events of the day in an industry of constant change. What happens when you face an unexpected fall-off, a position goes on hold, or your client changes their requirements? You won’t get far in this business if you just give up – you have to adjust your strategy and plan your time to accommodate everything that’s on your plate.

Here are 5 time management tips for recruiters:

1) Be selective with your search assignments – It’s easy to try and take on as many assignments as you can, but you don’t want to overload yourself and not be able to deliver for a client. Working on the wrong assignment will cost you time and money, as well as potential future assignments with clients.

2) Be selective with your candidates – When you post a job, you’ll be inundated with a plethora of resumes and phone calls from candidates. Only a small percentage will actually be relevant to the role and your client, so screen much more selectively or you’ll be wasting more time and money with unplaceable candidates.

3) Create a plan and stick to it as best you can – Before you leave for the day, make a list of the names of candidates or clients you will call the next day. It’s easy to get distracted by a phone call or check your emails more often than needed, so it’s important to have a plan of attack for each day, rather than winging it and realizing at the end of your day all you’ve done is ‘busy work’ which doesn’t generate revenue.

4) Limit work hours to work – If you work from home or are a solo recruiter, the line of work life and home life might start to blend. It’s best to have set hours and during those set hours, close your door, screen out personal calls, and limit internet use to your sourcing activities and work emails only. You may think you’re only spending 5 minutes checking your personal email, but it can interrupt your train-of-thought and flow relating to your search assignments.

5) Prioritize goals – It’s easy to feel busy and have a lot on your ‘to do’ list, but if you’re not producing placements, it’s just wasted time and energy. You may be hitting your goal on how many calls to make, but if you’re not qualifying the right candidates and making placements, the number of phone calls is irrelevant. Replying to every email and application will keep you busy, but won’t necessarily generate revenue. Not everything is urgent — prioritize your tasks and condense your to-do list to the most essential and important goals.

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Help Companies Navigate International Hiring Challenges

by Veronica Blatt

compass-300Today’s guest blogger is Narissa Johnson, the global brand and content manager of SafeGuard World International. For nearly a decade, organizations around the world have relied on SafeGuard World for their global HR needs, specifically around payroll and employee compliance. SafeGuard World is an Alliance Partner of NPAworldwide.

To succeed, companies will come to recruiters like you to find and hire the best talent, no matter where they live. Successful recruitment of global talent means finding the right talent and ensuring your client is able to get them working quickly. You are in a unique position to inform your clients of the risks involved with international hiring. Read the rest of this entry »


Avoiding the Renters and “Hiring” the Owners

by Veronica Blatt

C3C728A494-300pxToday’s post is courtesy of guest blogger Elsa Duty. Elsa owns executive search firm Recruiting Services International (founded in 1970)  that specializes in technical search globally (R&D/engineering, manufacturing, science). Elsa has been an active member of NPAworldwide for more than 10 years and is currently serving on the Board of Directors.

A lot of small business owners I know often struggle with the decision, “Should I grow my business (hire more employees) or stay small?” Many owners I know never had ideas of grandeur to grow their businesses to be the next Robert Half or Korn Ferry. They simply wanted the lifestyle that recruiting affords; the ability to be at the helm of their own success, the work-life balance, and of course, big commission checks. The struggle often comes from a too-heavy workload in a strong economy (and the inability to say no to a job order that lands on your desk, if you’re like me!)

Finding good recruiters/employees is becoming harder to do. The Millennial workforce is producing a slew of “renters;” employees who come and go three times as fast as they would have 20 years ago. According to EREMedia.com, over 30% of new hires are quitting their jobs after six months! This is especially detrimental to small businesses that are not prepared for this attrition. Losing a new recruiter can tally up quickly if you consider these potential costs:

  • Hiring/Onboarding – draw/salary of 3-6 mo, averaging $9,000-12,000+, plus healthcare, office/computer expenses
  • Training Costs – 6 months-1 year+, quantifying management time into dollars at roughly $10,000-$15,000+ “lost production hours” of a full-desk recruiting manager
  • Employer Taxes – In the US, FICA match, SS/Medicare: 7.65% of every dollar earned (a $60,000 employee costs an employer ~$4,590/year)
  • Customer Relationships / Business Reputation – This is the biggest one; hardest to quantify but most critical. New clients developed may not have a bond strong enough to survive account manager attrition. This could mean $20,000-80,000+ in “lost” clients/placements.

Should the economy take another dive, these new hires will bail faster than you can say “cold-call.” You could be $30,000 invested into a new recruiter who is gone in less than 6 months (with minimal production dollars). Hiring “renters” is detrimental to our business. We know recruiting success comes with longevity, dedication, and deep passion for the business. We are “owners” in every sense of the word. We hold ourselves accountable and will do everything it takes to succeed. So when we need extra bandwidth, how do we get help without getting sucked into this cyclical model?

I was thinking of this as I looked around a large ballroom of smiling, welcoming faces at the annual NPAworldwide Global Conference in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago. Who has better ownership of their work, than OWNERS themselves? We eat, sleep, and breathe recruiting. We are warriors who have survived the battles of job-short, candidate-short, or money-short markets. My fellow NPAworldwide partners were all there to help, support, and partner together for the better good of our businesses succeeding. Utilizing a great split-placement partner can be an excellent solution to the urge to hire.

I recognize there is significant value in hiring good recruiters that produce. But that model is not for everyone. Not every owner wants the financial gamble, especially given the mentality of the workforce these days. Instead, if we are able to build sincere, tight relationships with other owners, entrusting ourselves to them, we can build powerful recruiting teams WITHOUT ever saying, “You’re hired.” Our recruiting partners are ready to go Day 1 of being given a new job order: no training, no financial investment, no overhead. If we change our mentality from “my firm” and “your firm” to “we’re a team,” we can support any influx of jobs in good season and bridge any recession when things are slow. That is what a split-placement network is all about.

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Comparing Your Recruitment Firm to a Puzzle

by Amy Teske

teamwork and partnership  concept. four hands connecting  puzzle

Have you ever compared your recruitment firm to a jigsaw puzzle?  It’s interesting to compare the two.  There are borders, fine details, vast elements, background space, and the box where all the pieces gather together.

When putting a puzzle together- you work through trying to find the right pieces to put in the right places.  Once they are in place, they fit and make a picture that is clear and defined.

According to CreativeGrid, they defined that recruitment firm guidelines can be strategically arranged based on jigsaw puzzles.

The Process Puzzle:  Each firm has strategic questions of how they manage their process.  What recruiting services are you selling?  What niche do you work in?  How do you manage customer satisfaction?  How do you generate referrals?  All of these questions define the process piece of your puzzle.

The People Puzzle:  People are a complicated balance of personalities, strengths, desire and drive.  These pieces can be more challenging to put in place than process.  Focusing on your own strengths and your team’s strengths make it possible to grow and achieve new levels.  This also applies to working with your clients.  Over time, you become quite familiar with their strengths, and know where you can rely on them.  And in return, they also rely on you in the same fashion.

Puzzle Vision: The vision is the end result.  You know what you want your firm to look like.  You know how you organized and guided each piece into place.   You have a clear vision of your process and the people involved that help bring you success.   If you are still looking for this picture- the first step is visualizing what you want the end result to look like.

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Matching ≠ Recruitment

by Veronica Blatt

ULM3B2GH7R-300pxI recently read a blog from Greg Savage, Is Agency recruitment going to be Uber-ised? The answer here. Greg’s premise is that there are a ton of new start-ups in the recruitment space offering the latest and greatest idea to revolutionize recruitment with technology. Many, if not most, of these start-ups are offering new tools that seek to streamline or improve the “matching” part of the process.

But here’s the thing: recruitment is so much MORE than matching. Read the rest of this entry »


Best Jobs in 2016

by Dave Nerz

best-jobs-wordleI read with interest Glassdoor.com’s listing of the Best Jobs in America. Sometimes I think there is a direct relationship between the best jobs and the most highly recruited candidates. According to Glassdoor, what makes a job the best job is the combination of compensation,  demand for the skill, and advancement opportunities. Those in recruiting and HR know that hot job categories and in demand skills are multipliers when it comes to compensation. So the relationship between best jobs is in effect right now.

Here is the list of best jobs in 2016:

  1.  Data Scientist
  2.  Tax Manager
  3.  Solutions Architect
  4.  Engagement Manager
  5.  Mobile Developer
  6.  HR Manager
  7.  Physician Assistant
  8.  Product Manager
  9.  Software Engineer
  10.   Audit Manager
  11.   Analytics Manager
  12.   Software Development Manager
  13.   Product Marketing Manager
  14.   Marketing Manager
  15.   QA Manager
  16.   Finance Manager
  17.   Business Development Manager
  18.   UX Designer
  19.   Strategy Manager
  20.   Technical Account Manager
  21.   Consultant
  22.   Construction Superintendent
  23.   Nurse Practitioner
  24.   Electrical Engineer
  25.   Software Architect

Without exception I can say these are highly sought after candidates by the independent recruitment agencies in our network. Good-performing candidates in any of these professions can be easily placed by independent recruitment agencies into new and better jobs.

This is the list for the best jobs in the US. What are the hottest jobs in your market?

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Boost your time, minimize sourcing waste

by Liz Carey

photo-1427751840561-9852520f8ce8As a recruiter, it is critical to maximize your time and avoid wasting time on unqualified or unresponsive candidates by applying smart search strategies to find the right talent from the get-go.

Across nearly 1,000 respondents in a global recruiting survey, conducted by Social Talent and Alexander Mann Solutions, the survey found that the average recruiting pipeline converts at a rate of 0.4 percent, meaning the average recruiter needs to find 282 candidates in order to make 1 hire. Read the rest of this entry »


Obstacles of Social Media and Recruiting

by Amy Teske

Qualigence-Searching-OnlineRecruitment relies heavily on searching for talent online.  While there are many benefits of this, many studies done through Forbes, The Undercover Recruiter and MediaBistro have reported many obstacles as well.  Many talented candidates cannot be found online at all, or may have out of date profiles that do not accurately highlight their experience. Read the rest of this entry »


Get the Most Out of your Next Recruiter Conference

by Sarah Freiburger

nparecruitersConferences can be one of the most valuable business tools in your various resources if you appropriately plan and attack them. Each event you attend could very well have in attendance one of the most important business contacts you meet, someone who could change your business model by listening to a speaker, add revenue by becoming your new split placement partner, or reduce cost significantly with a new tool from a sponsor. Read the rest of this entry »


How to Create an Excellent Candidate Experience

by Veronica Blatt

Our guest blogger today is Michelle Burke from our friends at Social Talent. Read more about Social Talent at the end of this post.

smiley-1041796_640

By now we should all be well aware that creating a positive candidate experience is an integral part of the role of a recruiter.  Without having an open line of communication with potential candidates, you run the risk of them walking away from the process with a negative opinion of your organisation.  And you know what they say – have a good experience and you’ll tell one person about it; have a bad experience and you’ll tell ten.  But are recruiters actually taking heed of this? Read the rest of this entry »


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