The 7 Secrets To Managing A Full Desk Recruitment Team

[StevenHWicker]

Managing a full desk recruitment team starts with getting the right people on your team. If you get that right, the rest will follow. If you don’t, it may be impossible to deliver on your objectives.

Each of these seven items need to be part of your strategy in developing strong full desk recruiting teams.

1. The Right People

Recruiting and hiring your own team has to take priority. Just as you would tell your clients, you can’t wait for an opening to occur to have candidates in the pipeline. You should always be in recruitment mode whether you have an opening or not.

Recruiting the best people doesn’t happen by accident. It’s more science than art. Recruitment training for managers can teach the science and help perfect the art.

2. The Right Tools

Even the best employees will be frustrated if they don’t have the right tools. Connect your team with a database, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software, or tracking tool to manage candidates. Automate anything you can, including flags for aging of accounts and candidates if possible.

Providing omnichannel communication tools are critical in today’s connected world. Candidates will use phone, email, text, chat, video, and social media. You need to be able to communicate with them in the way they want. This means providing strong high-speed internet to facilitate communications.

3. The Right Training

With unemployment at record lows and high-calibre candidates in short supply, the right tools also include recruitment training for managers.

Tools and training are critical. One of the most cited reasons by employees leaving jobs is frustration over the lack of proper tools and training in the workplace.

4. The Right Priorities

There is no shortage of work. Every day can easily be filled with administrative tasks and working through to-do lists. It’s easy for priorities to get pushed aside to attend to other jobs.

It’s important that your team has a firm grasp on what you see as priorities and is constantly focused on what it takes to get the job done.

5. The Right Goals

In addition to priorities, teams and individuals need goals. Team goals should be public and present. That means communicating with the entire team and providing regular reinforcement of team goals, including progress reports on meeting goals.

Individual goals should be private. Every team member is at a slightly different place with experience and ability. Your most experienced people will have higher individual goals and expectations than your newbies.

Goals should always be realistic. Nothing is more demoralising for an individual or a team than seeing goals they don’t think they can reach. At the same time, there should be stretch goals to push people to perform. Many companies take the approach that goals are what’s expected. Attaining stretch goals results in incentives.

No matter how you structure it, reaching goals deserves recognition and celebration.

It’s also important to recognise that goals will change over time. As goals are reached, new goals are established.

6. The Right Attitude

Your greatest asset is the people on your team. No matter how good your team is, there will be frustrations. Difficult clients or stakeholders, difficult candidates, the pressure to perform, and a tough job market can take a toll on even the best people. Having empathy for the job they have to do and treating them well will help you get them through the tough spots.

Even the best recruiters don't have a perfect track record. When you get it wrong, the best thing you can do is recognise it quickly. Take action to remedy the situation. Create a performance improvement plan with measurable benchmarks, provide additional training, or cut your losses. While this may seem like a hard stance, your responsibility is to your team. Poor performance hurts everyone. Conversely, when you have star performers, do everything you can (within reason) to reward them and keep them happy.

7. The Right Accountability

You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Beyond the goals you set, you need to develop a set of metrics in place to track performance for your team. By monitoring outreach efforts and touches over time, you might learn – for example - that it takes a certain call volume and subsequent touches to reach your goal. Monitoring not just goal attainment, but also measuring the call volume and follow-up contacts are important measurements to provide in-funnel training.

Accountability isn't just about catching people when they are doing something wrong and disciplining them. It's just as much about catching them when they are doing something right and recognising the effort. If they are falling short of meeting your expectations, it's evaluating the reason why they aren't meeting goals and figuring out what needs to change.

The Real Secret To Managing A Full Desk Recruitment Team

All seven of these items may not seem like great revelations. In fact, they’re not. The real secret to success is actually doing them consistently. Where most managers fail isn't in strategy, but in consistent attention to strategy. It takes commitment and strong systems to optimise the management of full desk recruitment teams. It takes recruitment training and attention to detail.

Getting it right can lead to a happier and more efficient workforce. This also cuts down on turnover and hurts team performance.

It takes the right people and tools. It takes the right recruitment training for managers. It takes pro-active goal setting and measurement. It means setting the right priorities and managing with the right attitude. It means systems for accountability. Elevate Recruitment Contact

When everything is dialled in, it’s time to dive deeper into systems, increase operational goals, and grow efficiency. It is a never-ending cycle that provides for continuous improvement.

Recruitment training for managers and teams can help create a framework for each of these steps and build strong teams that will sustain high performance levels over time.