Question:  What are some ways I can restructure my recruiters so that everyone is not working on the same thing all the time? Linda H.

Coach Mike:  I had six people working on my recruiting assignments when I was recruiting. When I gave someone an assignment in my office, I developed other team leaders that also had search associates working on their desk. The only way to go deep is to say, “Matt, this is your assignment, ABC assignment is yours I want five submittals on this inside two weeks”–whatever the number you feel appropriate is. “If I do not get five submittals on this, I am going to give it over to Susan” in whatever timeframe you are comfortable with but very defined expectations of candidates that I feel where of the quality we are going to submit.

Also, other recruiters in your office may have candidates that are appropriate for your search assignment. In our office, it was a 75/25 split. If you were the search associate giving the split and another search associate or another recruiter in the office had the candidate, the one managing the process got 75%, the other one got 25%.

You can do whatever percentage you want, but it was not me that actually determined that this percentage was fair. It was my office on three separate occasions over ten years that led to that policy and it worked really well. People did it toward candidates but if every recruiter works everything, then you have multiple in your office calling the same candidate. When doing an ATS search, I see that there is a résumé and it is under Susan’s name, I might say, “Susan, can you reach out to this candidate?” The candidate might be good for the search but she owns it. And we would just have one person go deep on the search. That way, we didn’t create any competition so, other recruiters would submit it on that assignment also.  However, they worked it through the “assigned” recruiting search associate.