Here at Centredexcellence Katy and I are well known for helping Recruitment Business owners turn around their underperforming billing teams. In fact, you can download our white paper on the subject here. 

Underperformance in a team can be insidious and ruin your chances of scaling your recruitment company at the speed you want. 

So how do you spot those poor performers? Naturally, lack of results is a big clue, isn’t it? Though there are some other traits that if you do not spot them could crop up, seemingly out of nowhere and cause you challenges. 

We talked about the recruiting process in the last article here (Ana, please hyperlink) today we want to talk about those consultants who slipped through the net; how you can spot them and what to do next. 

 

Traits Of Underperformers 

 

In a similar fashion to spotting successful business leaders, cohorts of people exhibit specific characteristics and underperformers are no different. 

Common themes include a tendency to blame others; constantly. Ordinarily other members of the team, your marketing assistant, or you, for not providing enough leads, clients and flaky candidates. Whenever you challenge you to get a reason; “I could not get it done because…”; sound familiar? 

Both Katy and I are students of personal development. One favourite expert of mine is Brian Tracy. One of his famous sayings is, “ always do more than you are paid for”, you will notice that underperformers rarely, if ever, do more than the bare minimum. 

They always leave bang on time or somehow don’t come back after that client or candidate meeting. 

Weirdly they are always hyper-busy or say they are; the classic busy fool syndrome. 

Oh, and they hate change and ALWAYS procrastinate; ringing a few bells? 

 

 

Turning Things Around 

The good news is that underperformance can be turned around in most cases. As human beings, we do not set out to be difficult or to underperform. We are wired for success and growth after all. 

It is just that we occasionally get off track. Our role as managers and leaders is to get our people back on track. 

 

Where can you start? 

Skill Versus Will? 

I wrote about this last year, and you can read the full post here. Fundamentally is this a lack of skill or will issue, when it comes to spotting a consultants underperformance? 

Some consultants really don’t know what to do, especially in the changing market we now all operate in; what with Brexit and new recruitment companies starting up every day there has been a significant shift over the last 18 months. 

 

 

These people need training, coaching and direction. These underperformers are people that WANT the results, but they lack self-confidence, or they get overwhelmed by challenges.  They usually have so much going on in their minds that they don’t know where to start.  

What happens is that they get stuck and don’t take any action. It is like they are lost, and they do not know what to do. 

You can help these people by sitting down and carrying out a full desk review. What are their skill gaps? What are they doing on a daily basis? Are they working the wrong jobs? 

Break down the actions into small chunks and work with them until it becomes a natural process; you will be amazed at the shifts that can happen. 

There are many ways to improve your consultant’s underperformance. In fact, Katy and I have developed a 12 point checklist that can get your underperformers back on track in 7 days or less. You can download it here. 

Warm regards, 

Nicky and Katy