With the New Year just a couple of weeks old the world’s best talent are looking for new roles within their chosen market; that includes your recruitment consultants.
As recruitment managers you will be well versed with January and how crazy it can be with candidates and clients all contacting you. According to a new Career Builder survey the latest data suggests that this trend might even continue throughout the year with a reported 21% of full time employees looking for a new role this year.
Happy days; unless of course its members of your own team, especially those high billers who deliver month on month. It’s a fact of life I am afraid, especially when the economy starts to move-unless you have some plans in place for your staff engagement. The facts are recruiters move for many reasons including; development opportunities, work life balance and recognition.
Popular culture would have us all believe that it’s all about an attitude that starts with; “show us the money!” Not so. A Gallup poll of over one million employees in the US uncovered the number one reason why people move on is due to the working environment their immediate supervisor creates.
This figure is over 68% by the way so we are not basing this on disgruntled employees that don’t like being managed or are scared of some hard work.
The truth is that it does not have to be that way in your recruitment organisation. Some simple strategies implemented consistently can totally change your relationship with your team and the results they deliver.
1. Find out what they need
This is an easy place to start and will give you a great grounding on exactly what you need to put in place to motivate your consultants. All you have to do is ask them. In training and development speak this is known as, values elicitation; which means finding out what is important to your recruitment consultants and team members and then using this as a platform to motivate them. Why does this work? Well our behaviours are driven by what is important to us. Discover what this is for people and recognise that and you will be astounded at what a difference it can make.
2. Be a recruitment leader and recruitment manager
People like to be lead. They like to know what they need to do by when; you must engage with your recruitment team if you ever want to stand a chance of improving results. By communicating clear direction and priorities your team know what is expected. Here is the thing don’t stop there. Let them know how they are doing against expectations. If they are not quite there; help them by giving the blueprint that works and coaching them through it. If they are at the other end of the spectrum and results are ramping; let them know how much you appreciate them.
Top tip: remember the development to feedback ratio needs to be a minimum of 4 to 1. To be clear that is four bits or pieces of positive feedback to one piece of developmental.
3. Make growing your team a key priority
Any decent recruitment manager training programme will highlight this key point. For organisations to grow and develop it takes people. In the case of recruitment; a team of focused recruitment consultants and resourcers that know exactly what they need to do to deliver results.
This team needs regular feedback and coaching on how to develop their skills. I know that many recruitment managers are also billers; it’s a fact of life in recruitment. Don’t let that stop you having team development and coaching as a key priority. Remember not everyone either wants to be a recruitment manager or has the skills to develop into a leader, so please don’t expect your team to be like you; with your level of drive and determination. That is why you are their manager and not the other way around!
These are three actions you can start to implement straight away. This is a key topic we cover on our billing manager training programme. Due to increased demand this is now running three times a year and you can find out more by clicking the link below.
Click here to join our billing manager programme.
I hope you found this article useful. If you would like some more tips like these – join my FREE Webinar ‘The 6 Step System to Convert Your Under Performers to High Billers in 14 days or Less’
Click on this link to sign up: 6 Steps to Convert your Under Performers to High Billers
Til next time,
