Time Management Tips and Goal Setting

It is a cliché, but in recruitment time really is money. There is no point being able to fill New Year vacancies in March, nor do retail clients want extra staff in January. In order to make a success of your business, not only do you need to understand your sector inside out, but you need to run your business as effectively as possible.

Goal Setting

As a rule, recruitment is a heavily targeted industry. Some highly specialised niche sectors of recruitment may balk at that, but the truth is it is a numbers game – the more calls you make, the more client visits you get, the more client visits you get, the more jobs you have, the most jobs you have the better candidates you will attract. And so on and so on.

Financial Advice

In order to achieve your financial goals, you will need to have a good turnover of available candidates, a steady stream of new clients and clients with vacancies. This is sometimes known as ‘spinning plates’ in recruitment, because these three areas feed off each other. If you focus too much on getting new candidates registered, you may not have enough decent vacancies to keep them interested, if you only spend your time getting new business, you may not have the right candidates to fill the job and your clients will not offer you their vacancies next time.

Time management is the key to keeping your plates spinning. Right at the beginning of setting up your recruitment business; work out a series of goal setting exercises to ensure that you have all three key areas supporting each other. A popular way to do this is to have a number of daily, weekly and monthly targets that, when achieved, will provide you with the ‘numbers game’ results that should point you in the direction of recruitment success.

It is important to keep targets achievable or you and your team can be so demoralised that you are unable to flourish. That is not to say that they should be so easy you do not have to try, just keep your goal setting at the high end of what is possible, so you have something to reach for which can be rewarded.

Daily Targets

Daily targets should be set out at the beginning of each week in response to the requirements of the week before. So if you gained three new vacancies for a certain type of candidate that you do not have on your books, get calling round candidates to update your records. Set goals for how many calls to make in a one hour period, or before lunch. You can either cross them off in a book, or have a wipe board on the wall so you can see your progress.

Weekly Targets

Most agencies need a steady stream of business and candidates, so over time you will work out what results you need to sustain your aims. Factor in at least one new client visit per week, with perhaps one social event, such as a networking breakfast, or lunch with your team.

Monthly Targets

It is important to be able to reward your team when they hit their monthly targets, or if one person has done particularly well. Recruitment consultants tend to be very results driven people, so make the rewards worth while. After all, if they are hitting their targets, you will be making money. You could take your team out for lunch, pay for the first few rounds of drinks or bring champagne in on a Friday afternoon.