The beginning of a new year is the time we vow to transform ourselves into gym bunnies, ditch the coffee in favour of green tea and begin munching on quinoa. No matter what your New Year’s resolutions are this year, you should be thinking of new goals for your work-life too. See 2016 as an opportunity for you to innovate and refine your recruitment methods, take a look at our top 5 ideas to get you started:
1. Bin the old-school application form
Application forms are the epitome of boring. No one likes them – candidates are either overwhelmed by them, or they simply don’t want to spend the time or effort filling them in, so they go elsewhere. For recruiters application forms aren’t even that great, they give us minimal useful information that we spend a matter of minutes reading. Instead, try asking candidates for expressions of interest and calling them to see what their skills are, think about setting up a more creative application process or set a short task that’s relevant to the role you’re advertising.
2. Give something back
Recruitment is tough. In industries like IT and clinical fields there’s a well-publicised skills shortage working against us, and things aren’t getting any easier. This year, give something back. Do your bit to help out newbies in your field and grow future candidates in the process. This could be anything and doesn’t need to cost you anything – add a resources page to your website with a list of places where candidates can go for training, give a careers talk at your local university or college, or sponsor a local event.
3. Try something new
Did you finish 2015 feeling satisfied or were you a bit knackered and looking forward to a few days off with a glass of mulled wine in hand? I suspect for many of us it was the latter. If so, it’s time to change things. Think about what you want to achieve in the next year; do you want to start working in a new market, expand to a different location or simply improve your hiring hit rate? Pledge to try something new; new recruitment software, new training courses, new methods of candidate attraction. Develop your skill set and improve your recruiting in the process – and make sure you end 2016 feeling pleased with yourself.
4. Learn to measure your success
We’re told constantly that we should be measuring our successes, but many of us don’t do this. It’s time to bite the bullet and get to grips with our data. After all, how can you know if you’ve achieved your resolutions if you’re not able to measure your success? Starting to do this is the most difficult part, once you’ve gotten over that hurdle it’s second nature. Put together a great database and be strict with inputting notes of any calls you make, interviews you arrange and CVs you send out. You’ll be able to track candidates throughout the recruitment pipeline with ease, and make it super easy for colleagues to pick up tasks if you need a helping hand.
5. Stop fire-fighting and prioritise
Think back to your busiest days, the times when you’ve spend all your time fire-fighting your inbox; what did you achieve? Those days are often the least productive. Get into the habit of prioritising your tasks by writing a to do list at the beginning of each day. It’s important to make this list realistic – tell yourself you won’t leave the office until you’ve completed your list and that usually does the trick! Close your inbox for an hour whilst you focus on tasks; in recruitment this seems like an age, but an hour is nothing. You’ll be able to work more effectively without emails being fired at you, and when you reopen your inbox you’ll have the time and headspace to focus on your replies – win, win.
As with every New Year’s resolution, habits are hard to make and easy to break – but if you’re serious about improving and developing as a recruiter in 2016 you should really try to stick to these ones! Start gradually by revamping your application process, and then begin to look into ways you can give back to your candidate market. Learn a new skill, learn to measure your own success, write a to do list each day and complete it. Eventually these new habits will become natural to you and you’ll have a much less stressful (and more successful) year!
