1.  Figure out your workflow  

You need to quickly figure out your workflow and break it down into small pieces of various activities you do to get better results. One of the best ways to achieve this is to follow an activity-based recruiting framework. If you are an agency recruiter, your day can get overwhelming. There are loads of calls to be made to potential candidates, following up with your candidates and hiring manager, and a boatload of sales calls to be made on top of a growing pile of hiring manager concerns and candidate “special” requests! You get the point. IT IS EXHAUSTING. If you don’t divide your workflow into small chunks of actions to be taken, it can get bewildering and haywire.      

Also, check 6 Point Strategy to Improve the Recruitment Process  

2. Invest in technology and tools – it is worth it

  There are a gazillion productivity tools out there that can have a tangible impact on how fast you can get shit done. Here are a few tools to boost your productivity that you will find really helpful. 

Also, check Bringing Productivity to Your Recruiting Operation: A Study on MBR Partners

Task manager

If you are using a modern recruitment CRM like Recruiterflow, it will come equipped with a task management system internally. However, if your recruiting agency software doesn’t you can use a task management tool like Todoist. Or if you’re specifically looking for a tool for payroll data and client billing, you could use Trackingtime.

Inbox Productivity

As Recruiters, you are going to be spending a bucket load of time in your inbox. You need a tool that works with you inside your inbox. If you are a Recruiterflow user, our Chrome extension Robin will contextually surface all your candidate information right inside your inbox. In addition to that, you can use a tool like SalesHandy to track email opens and schedule your emails.   Right Inbox is another great email productivity tool that allows you to schedule emails and sends email reminders so you never lose track of important emails. 

3.    Automate what you can

  I talk to people every day who look at automation with a skeptical eye. Plenty of reasons to do so! It will ruin the candidate’s experience. It will make mistakes and I will lose out on a client!   Well, making mistakes is human, not something that machines do. Some of the Recruiterflow users have automated large parts of their transactional emails and have saved hours every week. On average, email automation can save you 4-5 hours every week. To give you an example, every month, Recruiterflow users automate more than 80,000 emails and saved more than 1000 hours every month!  This is a side benefit of following activity based recruiting. Once you break down your process into smaller pieces, you can delegate some of that work to machines and automate it. 

4    Keep track of your activities

  You can’t improve what you can’t measure. One of the simplest (and admittedly flawed ) measures of productivity is the number of actions you are taking every day. Measure the number of calls, emails, text messages, and tasks you finish every day. Once you start measuring, you can start improving and get more done every day. This measure is obviously flawed when considered in isolation. The number of activities does not correlate to the quality of those activities. However, when this data is seen with other data, it can be quite useful. Activity reports are a peek into what you did, how you did it, and how to get better at it!

5   Stay away from toxicity

Every recruiter has a nightmare candidate and a nightmare client story. Stay the hell away from them. They are time blackholes without much return at the end. If you face a candidate or a hiring manager with impossible expectations and unwillingness to listen to reason, it is better to just pass. Finally, keep a hawk’s eye on your recruiting productivity. See what are the biggest roadblocks for you to spread your wings and aggressively cut them out.