A common error made by most firm owners and managers in their attempts to hire a new recruiter is to focus almost entirely on identifying individuals who have the talent to do the job. Although this is important, ask yourself this question:
How many people have I hired who had the talent to do this job but were not successful because they wouldn’t do it or they quit without giving it a full effort?
Manager style issues
From our research, most managers stated that the majority of the people they hired “could” do the job, they just “didn’t.” Most of these individuals were intelligent; presented themselves in a professional manner; and possessed better than average interpersonal skills. Although several of the nine factors listed above contributed to their lack of success, one of the major compounding factors was they were ill-suited to work for that particular manager. They did not respond in a positive fashion to the recruiting manager’s operating style.
Although most managers possess varying degrees of flexibility, right or wrong, each manager has a preferred operating/management style and hiring individuals who do not respond properly to that style creates problems from day one. This has very little to do with whether or not you like each other. It has everything to do with whether or not you can effectively work together, and whether or not they will follow your lead.
Hire a new recruiter by asking these questions
Therefore, one of the first keys to eliminating turnover is to only hire people who will work well within your primary operating/management style. In order to do this you must carefully determine the parameters of that style. You can do this by asking yourself the following 10 questions:
- Are your primary operating characteristics predominantly internal or external?
- How do you prefer to process information?
- Physically, how close do you need to be to your people?
- How effective are you at managing your time? How do you handle interruptions?
- What determines your expectations for others? For yourself?
- How do you express yourself emotionally? Is it consistent?
- What actions or mannerisms of your employees irritate or frustrate you and how do you handle this?
- How would you define the pace at which you work?
- What process do you use when solving problems?
- What determines your level of patience or lack of patience?
Assess yourself
After answering these questions, seek objective, third party input from present and past employees, peers, managers, and other who know you from a professional perspective. Then conduct an audit of your daily activities, in 15 minute increments, for a period of at least one month. In comparing the answers to your questions with the third party input and your activity audit, a fairly clear picture of your preferred operating/management style should emerge,
Typically, you will be most effective when you are functioning within your preferred operating/management style. Consequently, once you have this identified, make certain that everyone you hire is aware of your style and is capable of effectively functioning within it. If they possess the basic abilities to do the job, and they can appropriately interface with you on a daily basis, you have a good start on a mutually profitable, long-term relationship.
This is step one in decreasing turnover and increasing profits. However, it is one of the most important steps and one that serves as a foundation for everything that follows.
Top Echelon’s Training Library
Top Echelon offers a free monthly webinar as part of its Recruiter Coaching Series. After the webinars are over, we post the recorded version of the webinars in our Recruiter Training Library. These webinars touch upon a variety of recruiter-related topics. These topics deal with both candidates and clients. As always, our goal with these webinars (and corresponding videos) is to help recruiters make more placements.
In addition to training and webinars, Top Echelon offers other recruitment solutions. These solutions include the following:
- Big Biller recruiting software
- Top Echelon split network
For more information about Top Echelon and the products and services that it offers, visit the Top Echelon website by clicking here.