3 Things To Stop Doing Right Now

Recruitment is a constantly changing business. It’s fast paced and if you want to stay in front of your competitors, you have to be ruthless. Not in the way you are perhaps thinking though. Be ruthless with yourself. Sometimes you have to confront some uncomfortable situations and take the leap of faith to change them. Recruiters have to have many facets, and being fearless is one of them. Take a look at our three things that you should stop doing right now. If you do you will see the rewards on the other side.

Stop working on vacancies other agencies are working on

You’ve got to start focusing on what is important, where success lies and what is most profitable. Working on vacancies that other agencies are also working on is ultimately a bad idea. Yes, there may have been times you’ve been successful in securing a candidate for the client in question, but realistically, the odds are against you. When several agencies are involved, all fishing for candidates in the same pond, it’s not real recruiting; it’s more like fastest finger first!

Don’t get drawn into thinking that by stopping work on such vacancies is a sign of weakness versus your competitiveness. Far from it. Spend your time more productively on getting exclusive clients, where the odds are stacked in YOUR favour, whilst your competitors all spend their time fighting over each other’s scraps.

Stop working with low paying clients

This can be a real leap of faith, but one that will be guaranteed to pay dividends. We all know that your lowest paying clients are not only paying you a pretty poor fee for what you are doing for them, but they are demanding, quite often rude and more often than not bad payers; have you ever waited months to get your fee? Thought so.

Calculate how many hours you are spending working on your low paying clients. Work this out with what they pay you and you’ll soon see your hourly rate is pretty poor! Imagine if you could dedicate that time to clients that pay a good fee and aren’t demanding and pay on invoice. You know what you need to do now.

Stop interviewing people ‘just in case’

There’s a habit that some recruiters get into of interviewing candidates ‘just in case’. They may not have a suitable vacancy, or not even one on the horizon, but they’ll interview them ‘just in case’. Think of all the ‘just in case’ interviews you’ve done during the last 12 months. How many did you place? Not very many. This is because recruitment is fast-moving. If you haven’t got a vacancy for someone, they’ll most probably be in another role by the time you do get one, with your interview then being a waste of time. Focus on interviewing people for roles you have and those you have coming up. You’ll find yourself with more time to concentrate on other things that really impact your results; like business development.

Being ruthless and stopping these three things will stop you running around like a headless chicken letting  you work with a better type of client.

Till next time,

Cheryl