Five MORE Work Hacks for Successful Full Desk Recruiters

Are you new to recruitment or looking to develop your work ethic?  Here are  five more invaluable work hacks to help you make the most of your time; and offers heartfelt advice to those considering a career in recruitment… 

Miss the first five work hacks for full desk recruiters? Check out the first post on our blog to catch-up.

1. Start early, leave late

When I was new to the industry, I was always interested in how full desk recruiters who started early and left late tended to be the most successful.  It’s not about being seen in the office at those times, it’s about maintaining a busy day.  There’s a lot to do on a recruitment desk and 9 to 5 simply isn’t enough time to cover it.  Always be conscious that arriving early to learn, make contacts and post and fill jobs is what makes one recruiter stand out from another.  You don’t need to be ‘always on’, but you do need to put yourself in your clients and candidate’s shoes.  Your clients don’t want to speak with you outside of office hours but your candidates might!  So, if you want to speak with them, you must be available.

2. Take a lunch hour

Calling candidates on their lunch hour may seem like a good idea but, in my experience, it’s rarely successful.  Lunch hours vary from company to company, so you’ll need to know when your candidate takes lunch and have their mobile number…it soon becomes tricky.  If you’ve made previous contact with them and you’re building a good rapport, they’re more likely to take your call during lunch.  So, my advice is – take a lunch hour and give yourself a break.

3. Have an ‘open phone’ policy

Depending on the market you staff for, most jobs are 9 to 5 so you’ll probably be speaking with candidates outside of these hours.  Have an ‘open phone’ policy where you’re willing to take calls before and after your working hours (including starting early and staying late).  Say, anytime between 8am and 11pm.  Give your candidate time to get home, put their kids to bed, have dinner and then have time to speak with you.  If 10:30pm is their only free time, call them at 10:30pm – especially if they’re a good candidate – it’s worth your time.  That half hour outside of office hours will pay off.  Sometimes, it’s the most important half hour of your day, and sometimes it’s the most important half hour of the day you never had.

4. Don’t be ruled by email

If someone wants to speak with you, especially if it’s urgent, they will call you.  If they email mentioning they would like to speak with you at some point, it’s probably not that urgent.  When you finish for the day, have a family life, have a social life, put your phone down and forget about it.  If you’re constantly checking emails, you’ll feel like you’re working all the time and risk burning out.  If you need to make a call at 10:30pm, make that call and put your phone down again.  Build some boundaries into your busy day.  Move from ‘I’m working all the time, I’m checking my emails.’ to ‘I don’t check my emails between 5pm and 8am.’  Consider an out of office email response with words to the effect of: ‘If you’re a client or a candidate with an urgent issue, please call me on my cell phone now.  Otherwise I will respond to your email tomorrow.’  It’s not going to benefit you, your client or your candidate to reply to emails in the late evening, it might make you look like you’re working hard, but I would prefer seeing someone working smart.

5. Remember, recruitment is not an easy option to make money

Recruitment is a long game.  Once you’ve developed your pipelines, you may be able to take more work home with you (and I recommend doing some aspects of your work outside of office hours, such as client research), but the important thing is your mindset.  Get into the same mindset as other full desk recruiters and let your Manager see it.  Prove to your Manager that you’re a recruiter for the right reasons and you’re not expecting an easy money-making option.  You can earn a lot as a recruiter, but it’s not a quick and easy 9 to 5 job.  If you treat it that way, you’ll see your colleagues performing better than you and get frustrated – or you simply won’t deliver what’s required to sustain your desk, or your job.

Is recruitment right for you?

If you’re questioning whether recruitment is right for you, if you will like it, if you can do it…you may need to take a step back and evaluate what you really want from a career.

Full desk recruiters can’t make everyone happy all the time.  Colleagues, clients, candidates – you’ll do everything you can, but due to the nature of the job you might not make them happy.  When you put five candidates forward, only one is going to get the job.  When you put five candidates forward and none get the job, you’ll upset six people – five candidates and your client…

Recruitment is a lifestyle in how you get out there, meet people, engage them, learn their needs, aspirations, and genuinely help them.  Whether it’s helping an organization to succeed or helping someone find their dream job, working as a recruiter can be extremely rewarding – if it’s right for you. If you’d like to learn more about how your recruitment software can help streamline your workflow for maximum efficiency, contact us today!