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Improve your results without spending a cent
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Improve your results without spending a cent
There are five things most recruiters could change about the way they operate to radically improve their results, says recruitment trainer Ross Clennett.
Clennett recalls being told in his early recruiting days that "recruitment is simple but that doesn`t mean it`s easy".
"Over the years I have had reason to reflect on the truth of that statement many times and it`s hard to fault it," he says in a recent blog post.
"It still amazes me when I see so many recruiters doing things, or not doing simple things that, if changed, would make an immediate difference to their results. It seems that `best practice` isn`t that well known in the recruitment agency world."
He says recruiters should:
1. Search your candidate database before placing an ad on a job board. "It is much easier and quicker to refer a candidate that you already have immediate access to, rather than spending time writing an ad, screening ad response and interviewing new candidates," he says.
But recruiters generally don`t do this because their databases are poorly maintained and candidates` details are entered in an `ad hoc` manner.
"Fundamentally a culture of `post-and-pray` over-rides a culture of `building talent pools` in most recruitment agencies," he says.
2. Know, in order, your candidate `sources of hire` from the past 12 months. This knowledge allows you to direct your candidate sourcing time and money towards the most effective methods, and redirect your time and money away from the least effective methods, he says.
The main barrier to recruiters doing this is that they don`t accurately capture or record this data.
3. Apply the Pareto Principle (or 80/20 rule) to servicing your client list. "Direct 80 per cent of your time and attention to those 20 per cent of organisations/people who are putting the most profit in your pocket (i.e. the total time spent with clients ranked one-to-five should equate to the total time you spend with your next 20 ranked clients)."
It`s far easier and more profitable to keep an existing client happy rather than go and find a new one, Clennett says, but recruiters tend to spend more time with clients they `like`, "rather than those that are contributing towards a fair whack of their income".
Also, he says, "many recruiters don`t receive (or ask for) a year-to-date list of their clients in billing or income order, consequently they are simply guessing which clients are worth most of their time."
4. Decline at least 10 per cent of the jobs you take in. Clennett guarantees that if you consider all the jobs you have lost in the past 12 months, along with the ones that ended up as credit, you will wish you hadn`t touched at least 20 per cent of them, "because the time you invested simply wasn`t worth it".
But, he says, "recruiters are too desperate for fees or to `get their stats up` to objectively review whether they should work on a job or when they should gracefully withdraw from an assignment listed by a client who turns out to be unresponsive or uncooperative".
5. Use a summary page for each candidate`s resume that you refer to a client. "This summary page should list each of the agreed key selection criteria and the matching evidence that you have gathered to prove that the candidate meets the minimum requirement for that competency."
A summary page, Clennett says, "assists the client to understand why the candidate is an appropriate match for the position before any of their inbuilt biases and generalisations kick in as they read through the resume. This summary page should immediately increase your shortlist-to-interview ratio."
Summary pages are under-utilised in recruitment because recruiters often fail to gain agreement with the client as to the key selection criteria; they fail to get evidence of the candidate`s capability; or they are just "too lazy to demonstrate their value-add to the recruitment process and just want to get the resume over to the client as quickly as possible".
Clennett says you might need to spend some time investigating, changing or initiating internal processes to ensure that each of these five things happens automatically as part of your modus operandi, but in 99 per cent of cases they won`t cost any money to implement.
"I promise you, that three months after implementation, you will notice the difference these five simple things have made to your results, without having spent a cent," he says.
Source:
http://www.recruiterdaily.com.au/nl06_news_selected.php?act=2&stream=All&selkey=
Clennett recalls being told in his early recruiting days that "recruitment is simple but that doesn`t mean it`s easy".
"Over the years I have had reason to reflect on the truth of that statement many times and it`s hard to fault it," he says in a recent blog post.
"It still amazes me when I see so many recruiters doing things, or not doing simple things that, if changed, would make an immediate difference to their results. It seems that `best practice` isn`t that well known in the recruitment agency world."
He says recruiters should:
1. Search your candidate database before placing an ad on a job board. "It is much easier and quicker to refer a candidate that you already have immediate access to, rather than spending time writing an ad, screening ad response and interviewing new candidates," he says.
But recruiters generally don`t do this because their databases are poorly maintained and candidates` details are entered in an `ad hoc` manner.
"Fundamentally a culture of `post-and-pray` over-rides a culture of `building talent pools` in most recruitment agencies," he says.
2. Know, in order, your candidate `sources of hire` from the past 12 months. This knowledge allows you to direct your candidate sourcing time and money towards the most effective methods, and redirect your time and money away from the least effective methods, he says.
The main barrier to recruiters doing this is that they don`t accurately capture or record this data.
3. Apply the Pareto Principle (or 80/20 rule) to servicing your client list. "Direct 80 per cent of your time and attention to those 20 per cent of organisations/people who are putting the most profit in your pocket (i.e. the total time spent with clients ranked one-to-five should equate to the total time you spend with your next 20 ranked clients)."
It`s far easier and more profitable to keep an existing client happy rather than go and find a new one, Clennett says, but recruiters tend to spend more time with clients they `like`, "rather than those that are contributing towards a fair whack of their income".
Also, he says, "many recruiters don`t receive (or ask for) a year-to-date list of their clients in billing or income order, consequently they are simply guessing which clients are worth most of their time."
4. Decline at least 10 per cent of the jobs you take in. Clennett guarantees that if you consider all the jobs you have lost in the past 12 months, along with the ones that ended up as credit, you will wish you hadn`t touched at least 20 per cent of them, "because the time you invested simply wasn`t worth it".
But, he says, "recruiters are too desperate for fees or to `get their stats up` to objectively review whether they should work on a job or when they should gracefully withdraw from an assignment listed by a client who turns out to be unresponsive or uncooperative".
5. Use a summary page for each candidate`s resume that you refer to a client. "This summary page should list each of the agreed key selection criteria and the matching evidence that you have gathered to prove that the candidate meets the minimum requirement for that competency."
A summary page, Clennett says, "assists the client to understand why the candidate is an appropriate match for the position before any of their inbuilt biases and generalisations kick in as they read through the resume. This summary page should immediately increase your shortlist-to-interview ratio."
Summary pages are under-utilised in recruitment because recruiters often fail to gain agreement with the client as to the key selection criteria; they fail to get evidence of the candidate`s capability; or they are just "too lazy to demonstrate their value-add to the recruitment process and just want to get the resume over to the client as quickly as possible".
Clennett says you might need to spend some time investigating, changing or initiating internal processes to ensure that each of these five things happens automatically as part of your modus operandi, but in 99 per cent of cases they won`t cost any money to implement.
"I promise you, that three months after implementation, you will notice the difference these five simple things have made to your results, without having spent a cent," he says.
Source:
http://www.recruiterdaily.com.au/nl06_news_selected.php?act=2&stream=All&selkey=
