I like to challenge my recruiting firm owner clients to move out of their comfort zone, to push the envelope on everyday “recruiter” and “owner” thinking. My Platinum Clients and I recently met for a 2 day recruiting business development retreat in San Antonio, TX that immediately followed an outstanding NAPS Recruiting Conference.
In this vein, we all had an assignment, read the book Drive, by Daniel Pink and be prepared to discuss the key concepts and how they apply to running a recruiting business
Pink discusses how after we achieve a certain base level of compensation (different for each one of us), the single greatest motivator at work is one seeing progress in one’s work. Based on this, we brainstormed a few ideas to implement… keep in mind the below are significantly edited, as we discussed these concepts for hours…
To enhance progress in recruiters and MAKE it recognizable to them:
- Give SPECIFIC targets, whether activity, training, etc to your recruiters with defined benchmarks for success. The key here is not to put out huge reach goals that will actually inhibit success, but goals that with normal defined effort will allow for success.
- Let your experienced recruiters pick the recruiter training they perceive they need and invest in it for them. If you are already a member of one of the many online sites, let them choose which modules to watch. Make sure you agree on a deadline and outcome goals for the program they enroll in! Also, INVEST in them, send them to recruiting seminars and/or recruiting conferences.
- Put in place a process for experienced recruiters to mentor new hires. Based on the concepts in Pink’s book and from our own observation, the reward of mentoring should suffice in most instances where formal management by the mentor is NOT required. As a matter of fact, you risk LOWERING the effectiveness of the mentoring by compensating for it!
- Instead of managing recruiters to defined call count targets (i.e. 100 calls per day), coach them to define their own income goals, and by using good recruiting metrics, reverse engineer EXACTLY and PRECISELY what needs to occur on that recruiters desk, each day, each week, each month to insure they hit the goal they set for themselves.
In summary, money is not always the primary motivator for success in our career, ESPECIALLY after we make enough to cover our base expenses. Allow more autonomy in your recruiting firm and see paths to INCREASED revenue, retention and job satisfaction.
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