High volume recruiters have one of the most high-pressure, fast-paced jobs in the industry. You need to have a steady stream of quality candidates permanently on-tap.. And you need to be highly attuned to our intuition in order to identify the people who make the best hires – your future high performers.
In this article, we wanted to share some time-saving productivity hacks for high volume recruiters who need to remain on top of their game. We’ll start with five general tips for the workplace, and then close off with a couple of recruiter-specific tips.
If you have any tips to share, please leave us a comment on our LinkedIn page – we’d love to engage with you.
General productivity hacks
1. Tune in to your natural productivity rhythm
As technology develops and remote and flexible working become more acceptable, you might find that you have the ability to choose when (and where) to tackle various projects. For example, if your natural productivity rhythm is that you like to handle candidate communications first thing in the morning, then consider starting work earlier than your colleagues, working remotely in the mornings, or turning off emails until noon. You could then schedule interviews, calls, and meetings for the afternoons when you feel more creative and relational.
2. Don’t be available all the time
It may be a difficult idea to get used to, but you actually don’t need to answer every call, respond to every email, or attend every meeting you are invited to. It takes a bit of training, but once your colleagues understand that you are not hyper-available, they’ll leave you alone and only bother you with communications that are relevant.
This is probably one of the biggest productivity boosts you can give yourself at work!
3. Use project management tools
Consider using a basic project management tool like Trello or Basecamp to manage and track your workload. What’s nice about online tools is that you can invite team members to work in them, too.
4. Track your time to identify your biggest time wasters
Using time tracking software like Toggl is a great way to find out how you spend your time. This could help you optimize some processes, reduce unnecessary time spent on non-urgent projects, or make the case to your manager that you need help managing your workload.
5. Touch it once
Adopting the ‘touch it once’ approach will help you be more proactive and efficient when it comes to taking care of smaller tasks. The idea is that, if the task will take five minutes or less, then you’re better off completing it immediately because it’ll take much longer than 5 minutes to write it down, schedule it and pick it up later. Rather touch it once and get it done as soon as you see it.
Recruiter-specific productivity hacks
6. Spend more time upfront – getting job descriptions right
When it comes to planning, this one is key. It’s better to spend more time creating a highly focused, clear and detailed job description that narrows the number of applicants, than spending hours sifting through hundreds or thousands of applications to find the ten that are relevant.
7. Automate the process with an applicant tracking system
Applicant tracking systems (ATS) can speed up your entire process by filtering resumes and automating the next steps, such as communicating with candidates and scheduling interviews with hiring managers.
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