Time Management That Keeps You Energized

By Peter Ziggs

Running a full desk, meaning bringing in clients and recruiting for them, is a balancing act of information coming at you from two directions all day. Both aspects of the job are equally important and require about an equal amount of time to keep an even flow of new clients and enough candidates to fill the jobs you have.

So how do you keep a handle on both jobs without losing control of your day, week, or month? Stick to a schedule that keeps variety in your day, and a consistent flow of candidates and clients. Here is an example of schedule that has worked very well for many firms.

First hour of the day - Lead gather for clients. Use the companies who advertise on job boards, decision makers on LinkedIn, companies where your candidates have worked, etc. If you were a more aggressive recruiter, I would do this work at home, at night, instead of during business hours. After you master getting leads, you should be able to get 5 - 10 an hour.

If you do this everyday you will have 25 - 50 new leads every week or 100 - 200 a month. At this point you have all the leads you will ever need to keep a great flow of clients.

Next Hour- Market your face off. Call all of your leads, don't put the phone down, don't take off your headset, and just keep calling your leads. Don't even take phone calls, unless it's urgent (follow-up, closings, clients, etc.). If the incoming call will have no effect on your income, return the call after you're done marketing. For every two hours of calling for clients, you should yield 1 -2 new job orders. After a week of client marketing calls you should on average get 2 -4 job orders, netting you 8-12 new job orders a month!

Next Hour - Interview a candidate. A good interview should take 30-60 minutes depending on the depth of the candidate's background and type of market you serve. Spend the time necessary to do a good job for your candidate. Extract all of the information you can, create rapport and build trust.

Next Hour - Organize all that you did in the morning. Present your recently interviewed candidate to your existing clients. Write up your job orders, put finishing touches on your interview and input them into your ATS. Get your agreements to your new clients, return phone calls and post new jobs on your website, job boards and your social networking sites. Prepare your desk for recruiting.

Lunch (one hour) - People have mixed reviews on whether to eat at your desk and work through lunch, or take a break, clear your mind and leave for lunch. I have found that recruiters who go to lunch, get out of their workspace, eat, breath and relax are far more productive over time and less likely to get burnt out, call in sick, and generally just feel better about their job.

Next Hour - Prepare for your afternoon of recruiting. Get your recruiting leads together and create a recruiting plan. You should have a very specific recruiting plan before you pick up the phone. Create and use a scripted recruiting presentation. Return any calls that came in over lunch.

Next Hour - Interview another candidate. Make it your goal to interview 2 candidates per day, every day. That's 10 new candidates a week, or 40 per month. You probably noticed that the interviews were scheduled before and after lunch. Scheduling interviews close to lunch or the beginning or end of the day helps keep you on track for the rest of the day. Avoid scheduling interviews in the middle of the morning or middle of the afternoon to avoid disruption of your client and recruiting calls.

Next Hour - Recruit your face off! Call your recruiting leads, and only email prospective candidates if you can't reach them by phone. Many recruiters prefer to email prospective candidates to recruit them. The reality is that many of candidates who respond to email are generally not the ones you want. The candidates who do not respond to your email are clearly telling you that they don't need you, and those are probably the best candidates. Recruiters who predominately use the phone for recruiting make far more money than those who use email.

Next Hour - Return phone calls, input data into your ATS, send out emails, lead gather, etc. The last hour of the day is your catch-all to tie up all lose ends and prepare the next day.

Summary

While your days will never layout this perfect, it is a general schedule that has proven to work very well and keep you focused on the target, while only working 40 per week. The schedule is designed to keep your day interesting and balanced between what you prefer to do and what you prefer not to do, in 1-hour increments. Anybody can do anything for an hour.

The important part of this schedule is to stick to it. You will be interrupted several times throughout the day (client calls, candidate calls, reference checks, follow-up calls, closings, etc) that will take you away from your schedule. Once the distraction, or urgent matter is complete, go back to your plan and don't get side tracked on new projects. You only get paid by completing 100% of the deal. You never get paid for doing 80% of 100 deals. Ask yourself "Can what I'm doing right now wait until later?" If the answer is yes, don't do now, do it later.