Guaranteed you are not the only recruitment manager faced with the challenge of under performers. . They can also bring down the morale of the team because in general, they have low confidence levels themselves. Most importantly their lack of results really puts pressure on the rest of the team.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. If you as a manager can recognize the types of under performers and identify what the reason behind their poor performance might be, then you can help them turn their results around.
In my experience there are three types of under performers:
10X YOUR TEAM’S OUTPUT
“Your team does a lot of work – but they could do better. “
1. Lots of Action = No Results Under Performers
These are consultants that WORK HARD, are COMMITTED and are taking LOTS OF ACTION, but the results aren’t there. This could be for a number of reasons. Here the problem is not usually motivation. It will be down to what they are focusing their time on. Usually they are very busy with the wrong type of activity or the quality isn’t there.
How to Help:
- Sit down with the recruitment consultant, analyse their desk. Look at the quality of their jobs and candidates.
- Help them to qualify and work only on committed good jobs and committed good candidates.
- Break down the actions into small chunks , a step by step plan.
2. No Action = No Results Under Performers
These under performers are people that WANT the results, but they lack self confidence or simply get overwhelmed by challenges. They usually have so much going on in their minds that they just don’t know where to start. What happens is that they get stumped and just don’t take any action. It’s like they’re lost and they don’t know what to do.
How to Help:
- Follow the same steps as above
- Find one area where they are feeling uncomfortable with – i.e. taking job spec or marketing a candidate. Show them step by step how to do this – role play and support them.
- Help them experience small successes and celebrate them
10X YOUR TEAM’S OUTPUT
“Your team does a lot of work – but they could do better. “
3. Good Talker, No Action = No Results Under Performers
The third category is people that speak a good game but don’t follow through with any action. You’ll know who these people are. You’ll have a meeting with them to discuss targets and actions that need to be taken. I talk about this at length in one of our webinars you can access it here. They may even leave your office really motivated but they get back to their desk and don’t change a thing.
How to Help:
- Have a conversation away from the desk, in an environment outside of the office.
- Find out what’s stopping them from being motivated / enjoying the job
- Help them get clear why they are doing the job – their purpose
- Let them know you are there to support and help them
- Let them know they need to change as this doesn’t help them or the business.
- Agree key actions THEY will do moving forwards and set a time to review
It is really important when working with under performers to remember that everyone in their careers has up’s and down’s. For the under performers it’s a really uncomfortable place to be. Often it affects their confidence and motivation.
Your job as a recruitment manager is to help them overcome this. It really just takes a few tweaks
If you want to learn how to set up your business, so that it stops under-performance once and for all, then join my free webinar
The 5 Secrets Our Clients Use to Build 7 & 8 Figure Recruitment Businesses
