Stop Spinning your Wheels. Time Management for Recruiters.

Stop Spinning your Wheels. Time Management for Recruiters.Stop Spinning your Wheels. Time Management for Recruiters.Stop Spinning your Wheels. Time Management for Recruiters. FisherFor the past fifteen years I have worked in the staffing industry for large, global Fortune 500 organizations, start-ups and everything in between. The common challenge that I repeatedly see staffing professionals struggle with, regardless of company size, is time management.I have coached and mentored countless schlussverkauf and recruiting professionals on this topic. Nowhere is this truer than for staffing professionals, who tell me everyday how they feel paralyzed and overwhelmed with too much to do and frustrated with having to wear many hats.What I have learned in the process is that its really easy to discuss time management principles and tactics but the challenge lies in holding yourself accountable to actually managing yourself to do the things you know youre supposed to do.In essence, the key to effective time management boils down to self discipline and how well you manage yourself.Here are some steps to help get you started.Utilize Systems That Work For YouThis could be something as simple as a to-do list or using sticky notes. After you create a list with your daily tasks, determine what tasks are going to have the quickest impact for generating revenue. Those should be the firsttasks you complete.Chances are you haveone or moracalendaring ordnungsprinzips and other applications for productivity. Take advantage of them. Productivity tools are there to help you.For example, use your customer-relationship-management system to document notes from all sales and recruiting calls, meetings and interviews. Be sure to use the built-in calendaring system to schedule your follow-up tasks. Every client and candidate interaction should have an action item associated with it. Scheduling the follow-up task (action item) is critical. By doing this your CRM system will create a list of tasks such as phone calls or emails that you have to complete every day.Are You a Morning Person or a Night Owl?Figure out what time of day you produce your best work product.Schedule your most challenging tasks during this time. For example, if you have a big presentation coming up for a prospect and you do your best work in the early morning, schedule it in the morning.Dont schedule it for late afternoon when youre tired.Furthermora, prepare for that presentation in the early morning.For recruiters, you should build time into your weekly schedule to call candidates at night between 600 p.m. and 800 p.m. The best candidates are not able to talk at work. Contact them after hours. For sales professionals, decision makers often can often only be reached between 700 a.m. and 830 am and between 500 pm and 700 p.m, Theyre in meetings the rest of the day.Do your pre-call planning and research around these times.Plan to start your day early and work late.Measure Results, Not ActivityIts r eally easy to fall into the trap of keeping and feeling busy but producing nothing. I see this happen all the time. Dont confuse activity with results. Measure your results or outcomes, not your activity. For example, the most common measurement in our industry is number of phone calls for both sales and recruiting. At the end of the day its really about how many new hiring managers (or candidates) you qualify and add to your CRM system or job orders you uncover. So measure that, not the number of phone calls.Create a Stop Doing ListIn his book, Good To Great.Jim Collinssuggests that those who build good-to-great companies made as much use of stop doing lists as they did to do lists. Most people live busy but undisciplined lives. We have ever-expanding to-do lists where we try to do more and more but it rarely works.If it doesnt help grow your business, stop doing it.Try to adopt the self discipline of unplugging yourself from your busy work.Staffing professionals often place a high er priority on completing their to-dos (candidate applications and other related paperwork, entering candidate and client data into their database and responding to email) over revenue generating tasks, such as making sales calls, cold calling or visiting clients. All of these tasks need to be completed but if the revenue generating tasks never take priority your book of business will never grow. Reacting to every client request and email on the spot is often the biggest reason why staffing professionals fail to achieve their daily goals. The next time you have a client emergency, take five minutes and really think through how quickly you need to respond and resolve the issue.Death By MeetingPut an end to on the fly meetings. Im talking about the ones where someone stops by your office or cube and asks if you have a minute. You dont want to be rude so you go along with it. From now on, when people come to your office or cube,askthem,What do you think is the best solution to the issu e? People typically know the answerand simply need validation from their peer or manager. This is an easy way to prevent a two-minute conversation from turning into a thirty-minute discussion.Do a weekly meeting where you can discuss all of the issues. Just make sure that all of the decision makers are in the room and there is a clear purpose to the meeting with actionable items.Email ManagementLets face it we are dependent on email for communication. Unfortunately that means email is a killer when it comes to time management. When you are doing important tasks.i.e., those on your to-do list, turn off your email. Set up an auto responder to let people know you will call them back later. If you dont do this, I guarantee your email will always interrupt you. The big question is, do you have the self discipline to turn off your email? Try itTo-Do Lists and your 2010 GoalsMost people use lists as a way to manage themselves and the tasks they need to complete. Its easy to let the list g et to 10+ items. When that happens we end up focusing on the wrong tasks. Keep the list to five items. The items on your daily to-do list should tie back into your annual goals for 2010. Whatever your personal goals are for the year, yourlist should be linked to those goals. Be consistent with the tasks you need to do top accomplish your tactical sales plan.Plan for the UnexpectedOne thing we know for sure about working in the staffing industry circumstances can change on a moments notice.Always build time into your daily plan for the unexpected. By planning for this each day you will avoid feeling reactive. There are always times of the year (or quarter) when the unexpected is more likely to fill your time than others. Plan accordingly.Take an End of Day AssessmentAt the end of the day, take a tally of how the day went and how your time was allocated. Consider tracking this in your calendar. At months end, look for the themes that happen time and again and consider how you can make improvements. Ask yourself How much of myday was spent on proactive items versus. reactive tasks? When did Iwork on the most challenging tasks of the day, morning, afternoon or evening? Did I complete it? What time of day did I do myreactive tasks? How much of my day was centered aroundproactive tasks?Author BioDan Fisher is a fourteen year sales veteran and thought leader in the IT staffing and consulting industry. Dan provides one-on-one sales coaching and mentoring and training workshops. In September 2008, he authored the IT Staffing Sales Plan, the only proprietary methodology dedicated exclusively to selling IT staffing services. That same year Dan founded the Menemsha Group, which is dedicated to helping IT staffing and recruiting industry professionals sell more effectively, differentiate from the competition and increase gross profit margins. Dan can be reached at danmenemshagroup.com.

Hope for Underemployed Recent College Graduates

Hope for Underemployed Recent College GraduatesHope for Underemployed Recent College GraduatesWith the unemployment rate declining, it looks as if the economy is finally starting to gain some momentum. Job prospects for new college grads seem to be the best since the onset of the recession in 2007. However, recent data shared by After College Inc., indicated that only about 17 percent of new grads had jobs this past May when they left campus.Many grads without jobs who have loans to pay and a desire to live independently will need to work in non-professional jobs in order to earn money in the short-term until they can find a professional position. With the underemployment rate running at 12 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it is also clear that there are hundreds of thousands of recent grads from the past two to three years who are still looking for that first professional job.I run a firm that has placed thousands of new college grads in entry-level positions. A s part of ur service we interview hundreds of new grads every month on behalf of client companies. Acting as the intermediary between hiring companies and entry-level job seekers, we know the challenges facing the entry-level market. The funny thing is our company has seen rapid growth over this time period. We know that companies are hiring and new grads are getting jobs.What, then, are the obstacles preventing recent grads from getting professional employment? We feel that there are three primary reasons.First, according to monthly employment reports by ADP, about 75 percent of the new jobs are created by employers with 500 employees or less. These are small and medium employers. Because of the high cost of implementing a college recruiting program, most of these small and medium employers dont interview on campus. How do they find candidates for their entry-level candidates? Referrals from employees, clients, vendors and other partners are most important, which means that many en try-level jobs arent advertised.Second, given the fact that most new college grads are liberal arts or general business majors, many dont know where their majors can be applied in the workforce. Some students have virtually no knowledge of the small and medium employer market where hiring is active. About 70 percent of job-seekers who interview with us cite not knowing what positions are a fit as a significant obstacle in finding a job.Third, new grad job-seekers tend to be poor at identifying the transferrable skills they possess that have value in the workplace. Transferrable skills include attributes such as effective communications, critical thinking, problem solving, time management, leadership, etc. These are the skills that employers crave and can help determine long-term career success. We feel that one of the keys to an effective job search is to come to interviews armed with real life examples demonstrating these skills.Heres why there is reason for hope. The good news is that companies are hiring, especially small and medium employers. In fact, many of these companies are being impacted by the loss of baby boomers and want to hire MORE at the entry-level. Further, we know what the job-seeker needs to do Know what you bring to the table, focus on the small/medium employer and find a way to get your foot in the door.Here are two critical things that every entry-level job seeker should do.First, identify your transferrable skills. That part-time or barista job you have now might be a great place to discover them. Here are three types of non-professional jobs that are great for developing transferrable skillsRestaurant servingAmong the skills such jobs develop are customer relations, time management and problem-solving. Great examples for interviews are how you successfully resolved an issue with an upset customer, ways you helped improve restaurant operations, recognition received for great customer service, etc.Retail salesPerhaps you have retail expe rience in a department store, boutique or electronics retailer. If so, look for ways you were able to improve sales or manage inventory more efficiently. In addition, awards for top sales performance or customer satisfaction should be used to underscore skills in sales or customer service.Lawn care/landscapingIf you started this type of business and were able to support yourself (and maybe others), this is a significant success. Entrepreneurial success like this is highly valued as it shows initiative, planning, time management and the ability to sell.The bottom line Dont undersell or discount what you are learning in part-time or non-professional jobs. Put that valuable experience to work for you.Second network, network, network. Small and medium employers thrive on referrals to fill open positions. As a result, job seekers should leave no stone unturned when it comes to networking.While parents and other family members are an easy place to start, many other sources are often ignor ed. Be sure to actively use your alumni network. In addition, look to professors, coaches and other mentors, both in college as well as high school. Consider friends of your parents who know you well. Contacts and relationships made in service or volunteer organizations may also be helpful. And, of course, if a friend has a great job, perhaps her or his employer is still hiring. Theres really no limit. Most people are more than willing to offer guidance. Identify a mentor who can help you with icebreaking strategies.There is much reason for hope among jobless new grads and those grads from the last two to three years who are surviving on part-time or non-professional work. Companies are hiring. To have success, develop a job search strategy focused on important transferable skills. Be aggressive in networking to get interviews with the companies that are hiring the small and medium employers.

What it Means to Be Yourself in a Job Interview - The Muse

What it Means to Be Yourself in a Job Interview - The MuseWhat it Means to Be Yourself in a Job Interview Just be yourself. Its an extremely common piece of advice for many different types of situations, including job interviews. The intention is to encourage you to relax and not try to be someone else simply because you think thats what the hiring manager is looking for. Rex Huppke, a columnist at The Chicago Tribune, believes that when you try to fit into the perfect candidate mold, you run the risk of masking what should be your strongest selling point you. Yet, Adam Grant, author of Give and Take Why Helping Others Drives Our Success and prof of psychology and management at the University of Pennsylvania, thinks being yourself is an absolutely horrible recommendation, though. As he says, Nobody wants to see your true self.- ouch- We all have thoughts and feelings that we believe are fundamental to our lives, but that are better left unspoken. What I believe hes trying to say, i s that who you are is defined by what you think. And if youre true to who you are, that means youll go hog wild and voice every single thing that crosses your mind ( la Kanye West). As you can imagine, this could be a pretty chancy move when youre trying to get a new job (or, um, maintain any type of relationship). If youve taught yourself how to write code, for example, and the interviewer mentions that a coding training program is available to all employees, you probably shouldnt say something like, Oh, thats cool, but I learned that on my own in, like, a day. So thats not very useful for me. Humans have thousands of thoughts each day, and, furthermore, not all of them are legitimate. James McCrae, author of Sht Your ich Says Strategies to Overthrow Your Ego and Become the Hero of Your Story, poses that you shouldnt give weight to every word that passes through your brain. When we examine our long patterns of brain activity, says McCrae. its clear that thoughts can be unstable and often arbitrary, shifting depending on context and contradicting our better instincts. Its what you do with all thoughts that comprises your partality and builds your character. You need to consciously decide what you should (and shouldnt) say, as well as the appropriate time for it. Its great that youre a self-taught individual, and you definitely want to showcase that. But you can save that fun tidbit for when youre asked what your biggest strengths are, and you can share it in a much less condescending manner. One of my biggest strengths is that Im really driven and always want to expand upon my skillset. Last month, I spent a weekend teaching myself how to code, and Id love to continue learning more about it.As Grant says (and this part I do agree with), No one wants to hear everything thats in your head. They just want you to live up to what comes out of your mouth. So, yes. You should be yourself. The person vetting you for the job does want to get to know the real you. The t rick is making sure youre showing him your best self.