Howdy recruiters! You have a tough job. You are going to have less resources in the future to do said job and more is expected of you every year...
That's it, that's the newsletter.
Jokes....can you imagine if that was it? On a day like this?
Right-ho!, pick yourself up, grab a coffee and lets learn!
While your head of TA is off updating the careers page to look great in front of the CEO or some such bullshit,
Why don't you and me learn about some ways we can make our lives easier down in the trenches.
This stuff cost me thousands of hours of L&D and at least 47% of my sanity.
Here are four things you can easily learn that nobody in TA will teach you that will make your lives easier as a recruiter
So these are things I wish I knew when I started that would have made my life a lot easier as my career developed. Some of them are hard truths, all of them came from my own personal career journey.
1. You need to learn how to manage your time better.
You are paid for the outcomes of your role right? Hires? But the only way you can affect those outcomes is with all the little top of the funnel actions you have to take consistently, each week, with high quality.
Stuff like sourcing, screening, follow up emails, app review. One hire is the product of dozens of high quality top of funnel actions.
So the better you manage your time, the more hires you can make.
Additionally, you can't just read a book and go,"well, that's the time management sorted".
As you progress in your career, there will be more and more demands on your time, so you need to be a constant student of time management to keep your head above water.
Time management IS NOT some innate sensibility that you just lack, so cut the negative self talk. You can learn it the same way you learn to drive. Invest the time, learn the theory, create good habits with practice.
Here's what you do :
- Read Deep Work by Cal Newport. Learn calendar blocking Learn a few prioritisation techniques. Read "Eat That Frog!" by Brian Tracy
Lastly, REALLY commit to putting it into practice. If you have a 4 hour sourcing sprint booked in for Friday afternoon, it's because you put it off all week. You know it, I know it. Sometimes you just have to admit that and commit to building the discipline to use your newfound time management skills
2. Get Comfortable with Data
You probably don't have the authority to affect change in your business, and that's probably annoying.
Data is going to be your sword ans shield when advocating for change. It's also going to allow you to spot areas of improvement in your own game that will help you make more hires with less effort.
Keep a close eye on metrics like time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, and source of hire. They tell you which channels work best and where bottlenecks occur in your process.
Dig deeper into your hiring funnel data. Are candidates dropping off at the technical interview stage? Are there patterns in candidate rejection reasons?
Get curious about these conversions and what they could mean.
remember the concept of marginal gains. lots and lots of little improvements equals one big improvement.
If your ATS has reporting functionality, then invest time in building your own reports.
If it doesn't, then track your data yourself using a spreadsheet (here, use mine!)
Use these insights to adjust interview processes or improve candidate experience.
"How to Measure Anything" by Douglas W. Hubbard is a fantastic guide to understanding the value of data and metrics.
3. You need to take charge of your learning.
Recruitment hasn't been a strategic part of a business for a very long time, it's like a wee baby when it comes to the maturity of it's processes compared to finance, or the PMO.
This is an opportunity for you, as there are really useful resources that sit outside of recruitment that you can use to improve your game.
- Buy the Agile Handbook and learn it. Do a 6 Sigma course and apply it to your processes. Buy a business analyst a coffee and have them show you governance models
There is a treasure trove of incredibly useful information sitting just an inch behind the silos that surround you.
These perspectives make you a stronger partner to hiring managers and can even boost your creativity when solving hiring challenges.
4. Rituals
Your work has ups and downs. Things change. Meetings get put in your calendar then taken out. New rules and expectations with every new leader. The CEO wants to set everything on fire because they read the first 4 pages of Top-grading.
And all that happens once a year in scaling businesses.
All the things that are supposed to provide consistency, are changing all the time. It can feel like you are being swept away in a storm.
This is why you need personal rituals.
Rituals are practices that don’t change, providing you with an anchor amidst all the chaos.
Maybe a daily morning walk to clear your head, a 15-minute block to review your recruitment funnel metrics, or a midweek reflection on what’s worked and what hasn’t, rituals create stability.
They allow you to take a breath, regain perspective, and build a rhythm that’s yours.
Rituals are about more than habit, they’re your way to build resilience.
These steady practices help you bring your best self to the job, even when everything feels unpredictable. Pick a few small rituals that ground you, and let them be the constants that keep you afloat when the storm hits.
Here are some I suggest :
Open and Shut rituals. do something every day that gets you going. Could be 20 minutes to review your week and get your shit together. Could be a morning walk. Could be singing in the shower. Whatever switches your focus away from home stuff and toward works stuff. Make that your open ritual
Also shut down rituals. Whatever you need to do to switch off from work.
I used to have 10 minutes a the end of the day to plan for the following days of the week. It gives me the emotional permission to close the laptop and think about other stuff.
Daily Sourcing Sprint : No matter what, one hour of sourcing per day. make a great cup of coffee, bang on an album and try to find 15-20 good people.
Luke Update
I'm still parsing all the cool stuff I learned at the RecOps Conference, I'm also running through Jim Millers awesome talk on Hiring Excellence and how time can be used as a variable to improve hiring outcomes. This stuff will be informing my content for the next few weeks.
Book update. I'll be finishing up the content soon and starting the fun work of creating info-graphics. I have the design sensibility of a drunk rhino so if you know anyone who can help with the design piece do put them in touch.
Well... that's issue twenty five! If you have any questions about it, or any feedback on this issue of The Data Driven Recruiter, grab me on LinkedIn for a chat.
I'll see you next week!