Time management is the bane of all recruiters’ existence. You have all of these plans for reaching goals, making money, and satisfying clients and candidates, then unexpected responsibilities and busy work rear their ugly head.
Sorry about the cliche metaphors.
The dread of wasted time is best described in these dramatic terms.
Thankfully, you can tackle the time management beast, and this post will help you do it.
First, we are going to go over the top 21 time management tips for recruiters:
- Take stock
- End busy
- Measure results
- Devote more time to less
- Create a target candidate profile
- Enhance job postings
- Be selective with interviews
- Deal with email
- Utilize smarter phone screening
- Use recruiter apps
- Score candidates
- Make time for the unexpected
- Do what works for you
- Implement creative recruitment strategies to weed out candidates for you
- Be mindful of social media
- Evaluate your time management techniques.
- Plan your day and stick to it
- Set goals
- Limit internet usage
- Limit work to work
- Prioritize
Then we will go over the top 3 time management techniques for recruiters:
- Inbox-Zero
- The Eisenhower technique
- Eat the Frog technique.
In the end, we will spare some time to mention some of the most effective time management apps for recruiters! Let’s get started!
Our Top 14 Time Management Tips For Recruiters
#1. Take Stock
Start your battle with time management by examining what you are already doing.
What works? What doesn’t? What are you not sure about whether it works or not? What activities, processes, and mindsets are you chained to?
Make a list of these things, and let it sit while you read the rest of this post.
#2. End Busy
We have a tendency to feel like we’re accomplishing a lot just because we’re busy, but unfortunately, it can often be just the opposite.
We get so overloaded sending emails and making phone calls and doing so much stuff that we don’t notice until we settle down and the smoke clears that we accomplished very little. Then we get in a panic to accomplish more and throw ourselves with even more determination into that busy work, thinking it’ll eventually pan out. Contrary to our natural inclination, this is the time to slow down, possibly even stop, and evaluate what we’re doing.
#3. Measure Results
Most recruiters measure their success by phone calls, but what if those phone calls aren’t fruitful?
What have you accomplished? Largely a waste of time, that’s what.
At the end of the day, week, month, or year, look back on:
- How many candidates were hired?
- How many candidates are satisfied with their new position after a few months?
- How much money you made?
- Whether your clients’ goals were met?
- How many candidates did you move on to another step (for short-term evaluation)?
- How many quality relationships with candidates for future jobs you’ve built.
#4. Devote More Time To Less
You probably audibly asked, “What?!” to that suggestion.
You think doing less work will cost you money and success, but doing a better job on a smaller number of tasks is a great way to become a highly competitive and, therefore, richer recruiter.
Consider which are your best clients, the ones with the most need for work, the ones whose need is most compatible with your skills, and the ones you can collaborate with best. Keep them and weed out the rest. Start small if you want to by getting rid of one at a time. Then, focus on delivering your best results for these clients with the help of our other time management tips.
#5. Create A Target Candidate Profile
If you haven’t already, create a target candidate profile that includes things like:
- Important experience,
- Personality traits,
- Preferred management styles,
- Motivational factors,
- Location, etc.
This will help you develop a clear, definable, and fair tactic for considering candidates.
You will end up spending less time deciding on and less time justifying your candidate selection with this profile.
Make sure when you create this profile to further save yourself time by prioritizing the most important things to look for in a candidate. You don’t want to be too rigid about it because you might overlook qualified candidates and end up spending unnecessary time looking for someone else, but you do want to have a targeted idea of who to pursue in the first place.
Don’t look into everyone who meets one or two criteria and waste time on a huge number of candidates. Do use a targeted candidate profile to home in on and give these people thorough consideration to make sure you don’t dismiss or accept someone too lightly.
#6. Enhance Job Postings
It’s easy to post on social media and job boards that your company is hiring for an open position.
Anybody can do that.
Unfortunately, posting a generic ad will result in hundreds of unqualified, overqualified or unfit candidates applying for a job that isn’t right for you or them. Work on enhancing job postings so that you’re able to cut down on applicants that aren’t right for the position.
You can save time and money by doing this. You can also spend more time focusing on calling quality candidates and searching for new talent in other places as well.
#7. Be Selective with Interviews
You could spend countless hours sifting through resumes and online inquiries about open positions within your company.
That’s why it’s important to make sure job postings are specific and target talent that will become an asset.
When interviewing, be selective with who you call. Make sure they’re fully qualified and have skills relevant to the position available. Screen resumes and ensure that you aren’t wasting your time interviewing someone who isn’t right for the job.
Using a recruiting software can also help with this process.
#8. Deal With Email
Email beats down every recruiter if they aren’t aggressive at controlling it.
There is simply way too much email coming in, and you have to check it because it is crucial to your job. This inspires devious slavery to email that can really impact your productivity. A situation like this requires the organization of both your time and your inbox.
Begin by setting aside a certain time to devote to email. Rather than answering every notification or checking your email every spare moment, designate once a day or twice a day to email time.
This is one of the productivity killers, and here is our suggestion on how to deal with it.
Skim through emails first thing in the morning for half an hour and use flags to highlight which things need attention. Everything else can wait. Do the same thing mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and at the end of the day, flagging for tomorrow.
Recruiter apps are also excellent tools for managing emails. Followupthen will resend emails to you when needed to delete the originals and have an inbox with only pressing matters waiting for you.
Our recruiter app, Recruiteze, will parse resume emails for you directly into your candidate database. All you have to do is send Recruiteze the email. It also automatically combines candidate information from the same email address into a profile for that candidate. Instant organization!
Our online applicant tracking system also comes with free email templates? These email templates are designed to save you time. Click here for your free trial!
#9. Utilize Smarter Phone Screening
Don’t just pick up the phone and give a phone call because it’s the thing to do, or you simply want to get the ball rolling. Make full use of the phone call and your time by having a distinct purpose for this task.
Ask different questions on the phone than the ones in email or interviews.
Use the phone call as an opportunity to narrow down candidate choices and/or prepare the candidate for the interview. Bottom line, don’t just do it because you have to or to set up an interview, do something with it that will save you time from another step.
#10. Use Recruiter Apps
We’ve touched on recruiter apps for emails, but they do so much more that can save you time. They can help you organize and optimize candidate resumes, maintain reporting metrics to help you reach your goals, stay connected to recruiting news, and more.
Here is how Recruiteze can help you overcome your time management problems:
- Job Publishing – Once you have all the details of a job order, the next step is to post and publish a job advertisement on job boards and social media channels. We will allow you to do this in one click. One-click publish saves a lot of time since you do not have to maintain different accounts on the various job boards and post and publish on each of them.
- Customizable Application Forms/Screener Questions – This is an essential feature of modern staffing agency software. By adding a custom application form, you can quickly shortlist qualified candidates and reject non-qualified candidates.
- Customizable Workflows – Once your custom workflow is set up, it becomes effortless to manage numerous applications with ease and allows the recruitment team to work together effectively.
- CRM – Recruitment CRM helps you manage all your clients, hiring manager, and candidate information in one place. With the CRM features, all team members have access to the consolidated data of all notes, tasks, communications, and history. Hence you won’t waste any time going back and forth, ensuring that everyone is on the same page.
- Resume Database – As you are receiving applications, your resume database will grow. A modern recruitment agency software will allow you to organize your candidate data through workflows and tags easily. A good candidate database makes it easier to place qualified candidates quickly, saving you plenty of time.
- Communications – Communication is a vital aspect of recruitment. You need to maintain proper communication with clients, hiring managers, and candidates to make more placements. Recruiteze can help immensely by allowing you to create customizable email templates and send them in bulk while still maintaining them personalized.
- Job Portal Management – Recruiteze also acts as a job portal management system. It allows you to quickly create branded career portals and manage the active jobs on your career page through a job widget.
- Resume Formating with iReformat – No more manually formatting resumes. iReformat can help you save hours and hours of your time since it only takes around 15 seconds for resume formatting software to reformat your resumes however you want it.
#11. Score Candidates
Do nothing with a candidate’s profile without giving them a score on a ready-made, the universal score you have made or making notes about the candidate from this individual viewing.
Either of these tactics will help you save time reviewing candidate information and make it much easier for you to compare similarly qualified candidates. So, if you’re first skimming their resume, reading their social media profile, or talking to them on the phone, jot down a score or a note based on this interaction.
#12. Make Time For The Unexpected
The unexpected will happen anywhere, in any profession, but it is particularly prevalent in recruiting jobs. Rather than avoiding it or trying to manage it out of your schedule, make room for it, make plans for handling it.
If someone comes to you unexpectedly, see if they can speak to you at a more convenient time, like an hour of the day you set just for things like this. If not, work on a strategy to address their needs as quickly as possible. Aggressively, but not rudely, manage your time, so you are in control rather than letting tasks control you.
#13. Do What Works For You
The best time management plan won’t work if you can’t or won’t do it. Play around with ideas and see what works for you.
Tweak plans to fit your habits. Think about personality just as much with yourself as with your candidates.
If you are a creative person, use creative means to organize your time, tasks, and paperwork. If you can’t get by without reminders and notes, set aside a time of day to create notes and reminders to get you through the day. Or week!
#14. Be Mindful Of Social Media’s Pull
Recruiters need social media to perform fundamental aspects of their work, but this puts you in a terrible situation when it comes to temptation.
You’re scrolling down Twitter or Facebook trying as hard as you can to get some quality work done, and you get lost in humor or inspiring land. You then realize you’ve spent thirty minutes, if you’re lucky, it’s only thirty minutes, of social media enjoyment. Recruiting? What recruiting? Oh yeah!
In a past post on productivity killers, we pointed out the importance of setting time limits on social media use.
You will have to be aware of what you are spending that time on if it’s limited, and if you spent your allotted time for assessing a candidate laughing at kitten photos, you’ll feel really silly when you have to go back and force yourself to actually look for work-related information on that candidate during a period you should be moving on to someone or something else.
#15. Implement Creative Recruitment Strategies To Weed Out Candidates For You
The best targeted and creative job advertisements can actually weed out poor candidates.
Creative recruitment strategies can help you to rule out unqualified candidates quickly, and at the same time, attract the right ones.
To catch the perfect employee, you can no longer post job applications on various boards and wait for resumes to start coming in. Instead, you should work on crafting the most compelling job advertisement that will make candidates come flying in.
Describe the company culture in advertisements, even if it is only with a few choice words, or create simple problems that only qualified candidates can solve. This will save you time browsing through dozens of applications.
Deliver advertisements to a select group, such as people living in a particular area or the business’ current customers. If you have fewer, better-qualified candidates to choose from, you’ll spend less time ruling out candidates and more time building quality relationships.
Recruiteze also comes fully integrated with your very own custom job board. You’ll be able to create targeted job postings to attract the best talent in your field.
This may look like it will take away even more of your time, but in reality, it is just an investment that pays of in the long run. And the more you practice creative recruitment, the better you will get at it.
#16. Evaluate Your Time Management Strategy
Routinely evaluate your strategy to make sure that it still works or that it couldn’t be improved. It is pretty much a given that it will need improving while you first learn what your best strategy is and later on as industries and the job market changes.
#17. Plan Your Day and Stick to It
It’s easy to make plans for the next day by writing out tasks, appointments and interviews on a calendar or keeping track of them using your smart phone or email calendar. However, it’s not always easy to stick to that plan.
Getting distracted by making calls and sending emails might take up more time than you planned for. Don’t let that happen. Block out a time slot for calls and stick to it. Do the same for email. Don’t get caught up in doing things that aren’t planned out. Use every hour at work for something productive and manageable.
We know how hard it is to eliminate the distractions, but in order to get the job done and not feel overwhelmed or too busy, plan out your day and stick to it.
#18. Set Goals
It’s important to set goals for yourself, in addition to prioritizing work tasks. For example, if you have two major reports due in a week’s time, consider using half the week to complete one report and the rest of the week to complete the other.
If you know it will take at least a week to complete one report alone, consider asking for more time. Knowing your limits and priorities can help you set realistic goals with confidence. It’s doubtful that you’ll be reprimanded for asking for more time when you’re confident and calm about being unable to finish both tasks at the same time.
#19. Limit Internet Usage
It’s easy to get caught up checking emails and surfing social media for new recruits. Losing yourself on the internet is normal.
However, it’s not productive. Limit yourself to checking emails every hour for five minutes at a time. Schedule social media time in the early morning and late afternoon.
Give yourself only thirty minutes to an hour for each session. Limiting your social media time will help you stay on task while there and stop the mindless searching that can often happen.
#20. Limit Work to Work
Working all day, everyday, five days a week can be very difficult to deal with. It’s especially tough when you find yourself having to work at home, after hours, just to keep up.
You might lose your work and home life balance along the way. This isn’t a good strategy for time management. Consider limiting your work hours to just that; work only while you’re at work.
Never bring your tasks home with you to complete. Set hours that offer you a closed door policy. When your door is closed at the office, no one should interrupt you. This is your time to get things done in a quiet, calm place. That way, you can take the time to do those tasks you were taking home to get done.
#21. Prioritize
Working with an overwhelming feeling of always being behind is difficult to manage.
The “hurry, hurry” method of working isn’t a great way to be as productive as possible. In fact, when you’re stressed, overwhelmed and feeling like you’ll never see the light at the end of the tunnel, you’re more than likely less motivated and productive.
Why?
You subconsciously assume that your efforts are wasted because nothing is getting accomplished by your “hurry up and get it done” attitude.
Instead of constantly running the never ending rat race to the finish line, stop and take a moment to look at the smaller picture. Prioritize your tasks from most important to least.
Make sure that you get your most important items crossed off the list first. Then, work towards the things that are of lesser ranking. As you come in the next morning, add the things that didn’t get done to the top of the list and start again, making a list of things that are of utmost significance, moving downward to those that aren’t as imperative for the day.
Doing so will ensure you get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible, without overwhelming yourself. Looking at the big picture and stressing over all the tasks that should be done can hinder productivity more than anything else. Don’t fret about it, just take things one step at a time and prioritize.
Top 3 Time Management Techniques For Recruiters
Inbox Zero
Since recruiters’ job relies heavily on emails, this technique is here to help keep your inbox as empty as possible.
This time management technique was developed by productivity expert Merlin Mann. According to Mann, there are five possible actions you can take for each message:
- Delete
- Delegate
- Respond
- Defer
- Do
To reach the goal of keeping your inbox empty, you have to:
- Designate a specific part of the day to deal with your inbox.
- Turn off your email notifications and email the client.
- Mark emails according to their priority.
- Delegate all the emails that can be delegated.
- Reply to urgent and most important emails.
- Archive and delete spam emails.
With this technique, you will always reply to important emails and keep your inbox decluttered.
The Eisenhower Technique
US president Dwight. D. Eisenhower developed this technique. Its focus is to help recruiters with task prioritization.
With this technique, you will be able to know:
- Which tasks should be handled immediately.
- Which tasks should be delegated.
- Which tasks can wait.
- And which ones should be eliminated.
Here is a matrix that will help you easily categorize tasks:
The DO quadrant is for tasks that should be done right away. Don’t leave them for the last minute and handle them immediately.
The DECIDE quadrant is for long-term goals. You should designate a specific time on your schedule to deal with them. If you don’t, they will eventually go into the “Do it now” or “Eliminate it” quadrants.
The DELEGATE quadrant is for tasks that can be easily delegated and automated.
The DELETE quadrant is for everything that is a distraction, whether sales and spam emails or unwanted newsletters.
Eat The Frog Technique
This is another task prioritization technique. It helps you identify and select the most important task (the Frog) and then deal with it first. You can move to another task only when you first eat the frog, meaning finish that task.
BONUS – Best Time Management Apps For Recruiters
- Evernote – This app is designed for note-taking, organizing, task management, and archiving. You can use it on your desktop, smartphone, and tablet. It will keep all your tasks in sync. Besides tasks, you can store everything else, like passwords and whatever you want to remember.
- Asana – This web and mobile application is designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work, teams, and projects.
- Todoist – Available on any device, this app will help you organize and prioritize tasks, remember deadlines, track progress and integrate it with Gmail, Slack, Alexa, and many more.
- TickTick – Powerful to-do and task management app with cloud synchronization across all devices. With it, you can schedule a plan, make memos, share lists, collaborate in a team, or even develop a new habit.
- Time Doctor – This is a multi-functional time tracking and employee monitoring application with CRM and white label capabilities.
- Toggl – Time tracking and team and project planning and management tool.
- Rescue Time – Desktop app, browser extension, and mobile app that tracks where you spend your time and rates your productivity.
- Remember the Milk – Another great time and task management tool.
- Basecamp – Project management app. You can access it from the browser and the phone application. It is amazing for managing remote workers.
Conclusion
You have the power to wrangle your recruiting tasks into a manageable workload that will satisfy you, your clients, and your job candidates. It requires a bit of aggression, trial and error, and evaluation, but it is possible.
Free Online Applicant Tracking System
Are you searching for a free online applicant tracking system with many benefits for small business hiring projects? If so, start using Recruiteze today!
Recruiteze allows candidates to apply to be added to your database immediately. End-users can benefit by being able to access candidate resumes online and make changes quickly.
Recruiting based on client needs has never been easier with your very own custom job board as well.
With our recruiting software, candidates and customers have easy access to information anytime they need it. So when you need online applicant tracking software that creates the level of professionalism expected in today’s marketplace, make Recruiteze your number one choice.
So what are you waiting for? Start using Recruiteze today!
Are you considering other applicant tracking systems?
If yes, make sure to check these articles and understand how they compare to Recruiteze before you make a final decision: