Managing a recruiting team can be tough.  From attracting talent and bringing them through an interview process and convincing talent to take your job – to onboarding and training them so rookies can get up to speed the fastest and tenured folks keep performing.  Then there’s managing and keeping everyone happy by being their teacher, their psychologist, their marriage counselor, their leader and many times helping them off a ledge every now and then.  If you are using Analytics or Metrics – even trying to get everyone just to input their numbers correctly seems to be an impossible task.  Yes – Recruiting Management is a tough job.

But it doesn’t have to be.  Here are 7 best practices of the top coaches in the industry when it comes to managing performers with Recruiting Analytics.  

Have the Individual player – Set Their Personal Performance Goals

It’s almost magic.  When an individual is focused on achieving their personal goals and personal achievements, they tend to work twice as hard at them compared to hitting company goals or targets.  By using analytics, there is no better way to help direct their Activity and training and development path then when they are focused on what they want to achieve.  If there is a discrepancy in Personal Goals and Company goals – where the company has higher standards – that simply becomes a coaching moment.   Encourage individuals to set their own goals, dream big, help them understand the sky is the limit and you are the super bowl coach to help them get there.   Get the “10 Steps to Achieve your Life Dreams” eBook to help start the process.

Have the player – give their review of their performance before you do

To help the education process and understanding of the power of Analytics, have the player give their recommendations to you weekly as to what needs to be improved on.   We want to continue to educate each individual often.   Once they really buy in to the process and truly understands what changes need to be made -  a transfer of performance accountability starts to happen.   Another magic trick analytics brings – if the players start to really understand the analytics – is accountability is transferred from the Manager/Coach to the Player. Also, when the player gives their analysis of how they are doing and what needs to be done – they tend to be much harder on themselves then the Coach would be.   It’s a terrific way to jump start the Analytics learning process as well the player to get ownership of their own performance.   If done right – within six months the player will be on continual improvement process that they own – where they keep getting better and better.

(CRC)Commend, Recommend, Commend - Coaching Technique

To have the best end result in individual coaching sessions -  there is technics that work better than others to give information without coming across as slave driving.  Once you need to give feedback on the players performance there is technique that the top coaches use in one for or another.   Some call it CRC – but the bottom line process is to 

Step 1 – Commend them on an achievement or achievements that they had the previous week.   Make them FEEL good about it and the path they are on.

Step 2 – Recommend something to work on that week and add some coaching instruction

Step 3 -  Commend them on the achievements, their focus on their success and encourage them on their path to achieve their goals.

Have weekly meetings to help solidify understanding and the path forward 

Weekly one on one meetings or weekly team meetings to discuss the Analytics are recommended.   For years, I have had a Tuesday Morning with the Recruiting Teams – and each individual goes over their particular analytics – what needs to be worked on and what the weekly plan was to improve that specific thing.   As you will experience – each individual will typically be harder on themselves than anyone else.

Focus on One Specific Analytic/Metric improvement at a time

To make sure your coaching and analytics net impressive results – its best to focus on only one area of improvement at a time.  I think Confucius said – “A man who chases two rabbits catches neither.”  When new to Recruiting Analytics – it best to focus on top down.  Start with hitting activity (Critical Mass) targets first.  Start with number of Calls, then Conversations, the Presentations, etc...   Once someone has hit enough volume to be successful (Critical Mass), then focus on one Ratio at a time.   By focusing on only one at a time – it gets the attention it needs to be achieved. 

Manage Rookies and Tenured Players Differently

Everyone can see some improvement if they simply increase activity levels (Principle of Incremental Increase).  However, simply by managing people by increasing activities is like being a ship where they are bull whipping you to row harder and faster.  It does not come across well for Tenured performers on the team who have already achieved Critical Mass.   So how you manage Rookies will be different than how you managed Tenured Recruiters.

Rookies need to be trained and conditioned to do the business at hand.  Yes conditioned.  Like Pavlov’s dog who salivated when the bell rang, Rookies need to be on the phone more than they are off the phone.  They need to have their recruiting business open most of the day – not being closed most of the day by being off the phone.  When managing rookies – start with getting them to hit critical mass with activity.  Once they are achieving their Activity targets consistently – then move to the Ratios.  

With Tenured Recruiters that are hitting enough volume to be successful, focus on one ratio at a time.  I would focus first on the Job Order to Placement ratio and work on better searches.  Then once they got that down, focus on the Marketing Presentation to Job Order Ratio and Recruiting Presentation to Quality Candidate ratio.  By then billings should be more than doubling.   If Tenured Recruiters are not hitting enough activity to hit critical mass and placement have dwindled – they need to focus the activity levels to hit Critical Mass again.  

Celebrate Successes above all else

Success drives more passion which drives more success.   The more success each individual experience – the more fired up they will be about continuing the process and achievements.   Go overboard on celebrating the littles success.  Even if you don’t have placements but some of the right activity levels are being performed – CELEBRATE THEM.   IF you celebrate behavior, it will continue.   If you do not celebrate the small successes – it may not.  Celebrate at every activity and result success to create a culture of performance.  

Where do you go from here?   Get everyone on a plat form where its fun and simple to track, analyze and get improvement from Analytics.  For more information,  check out the industries leading Recruiting Analytics package – www.rpm-usa.com.   Being an EMINFO reader, nets you big discounts.  Listen on June 21st to Jon's Webinar on moving from contingent to retained....  click here to sign up today!

For information – contact jon.bartos@gmail.com or 513-515-1267.

Join Jon at his industry disruptive workshop “Making it Rain: How to Increase your Billings from 2-10x without Working Harder!  coming January 2019