Recruiter productivity is largely a result of two key factors. First, innate talent – having a ‘knack’ for intuitively knowing what to do or say each second of the day to maximize outcomes. The second is the amount of time spent working. Everything else being equal the recruiter who puts in 12-14 hour days and is also effective will outperform the 8 hour recruiter.
Multiply talent by time and you’ll get a rough idea of recruiting productivity. This equation assumes it’s only a single recruiter doing all of the work manually, and that the results are entirely due to talent times manual effort.
I’d like to present a different view – a ‘productivity matrix’ for recruiters.
Imagine your productivity each day as a 24 hour swim lane in a pool. If you work a standard 8 hour day (2 hours less than many recruiters) you will only have ‘swam’ 1/3 of the 24 hour ‘lane’. Work the entire 24 hours and you would have swam the whole lane.
Let’s add some other ‘swimmers’ into the productivity pool, but with a twist. They are allowed to jump into the pool 1/3 and/or 2/3 of the way ahead of you. In addition, they are all swimming the race for you. Let’s assume there are 3 other swimmers in addition to you for a total of 4.
The net result in a 24 hour period is 4 swimmers finishing the race. In essence, the productivity matrix is completely filled. If each lane has 3 ‘units’ of 8 hours of productivity (for a total of 24 hours) then the entire pool would contain 4 lanes X 3 units or 12 net units of productivity.
Had you swam the race yourself you would have completed 1/12 units in the ‘race’. By adding other swimmers you could potentially increase your productivity by 12X – assuming that each ‘lane’ is ‘working’ for the full 24 hour period. Of course this would require 3 different people to work a full day.
Of course this is a theoretical exercise. To make it more concrete I’ll tie it to a realistic work day and work week.
To win the race you need people working for you both while you sleep and while you’re awake. These people need to be properly trained and managed to ensure that the work gets done quickly and correctly. They also need to be affordable enough to plug into your existing business system without breaking the bank. Hiring and training people locally in Europe or North America would be cost-prohibitive, so you would probably look overseas. To find, interview, train and manage people offshore and deal with the associated time zone an cultural issues would be a nightmare.
We started RecruitersTeam to due to our own need for help with specific repeatable tasks and activities that took up 80% of our time (e.g. finding candidate phone numbers), but only generated 20% of results. It ‘feels’ really unproductive to be doing tasks that should really be sent offshore to a keen group of trained virtual assistants. If you value your time at $50/hour then by definition you should ONLY do tasks that are worth $50/hour that could NOT be done by anyone else - anywhere in the world. You really have to do 80/20 analysis and focus on your areas of strength that generate results. You have to ask hard questions and really distill down the things you’re best at that generate the results.
Virtual assistants cannot close deals. They cannot call clients to generate new business. They cannot form a connection with a candidate. They cannot be an effective negotiator between both sides. These are the things you’re good at – your ‘core competencies’ as a recruiter. Neither technology nor overseas workers will replace your intangibles for the foreseeable future. You’ll never be out of a job if you can architect a business system to support you that magnifies your strengths.
If you love talking with clients and candidates then focus on that. If you love discovering what people’s hot buttons are, and then reflecting those back to them in creative ways then do that. If you like being a super-smooth diplomat then you should leverage that strength. Workers overseas cannot do these things.
This new view of recruitment productivity requires rethinking your daily to-do list. You will need to start adding which tasks you wish to delegate to your to-do list. You’ll also need someone to delegate to.
Of couse I’m biased, but I suggest you delegate to RecruitersTeam. Our core expertise is helping recruiters like you. You can start delegating to us right away – we’re ready, trained and eager to help. You won’t need to go through the hassle of finding, hiring, training, and managing people overseas. You won’t have to get them set up with computers, email accounts, telephones, and other business infrastructure. You won’t have to worry about payroll, taxes and other issues. Simply start delegating immediately – we’re the highly specialized broker/intermediary that abstracts away all the hassles and provides you with a turnkey solution.
