If you’re managing a recruitment team for the first time, you could be faced with some new, unexpected challenges.
You have proven that you are an exceptional recruiter, but now as a Manager, you must put to use your leadership skills, have a good knowledge of budgeting, time management, training and development, general HR and people management.
You will have a well-rounded set of skills and must be willing to put in hard work and the hours to develop your team, particularly in the beginning.
If you’re just starting off managing your own recruitment team, we’ve put together a simple structure of seven key management tasks to follow that, if completed successfully, will help enable your recruitment team to thrive. You should ensure that you (or someone else – see point 4!) is covering off all of these.
1. Planning
In particular, we’re referring to sales planning here: the planning and anticipation of sales results and sales activities required by both your team overall and the individuals in the team, to achieve your overall objectives.
Allocate some time into planning and ensure the plans you set are attainable and accurate. Being able to set the results you want to achieve, and then deliver accurately against those KPIs, will be the primary determinant of your success as a manager.
“Predictable managers are heroes!”
2. Organising
And we don’t mean knowing where your paperclips are! Being organised means that you are aware of the resources at your disposal and that you organise those resources to derive the best possible results. As an example, your database is just one resource, but how do you organise it? Do you have candidate or client ownership? Is it organised by geography, level, sector, size, job title or job level? Should you be thinking about reorganising this resource in some way?
“Order does not guarantee success, but disorder is sure to lead to failure.”
3. Staffing
Making the correct decisions to hire the right people and removing the wrong people in your team is critical, and yet so many recruitment firms get this wrong – what an irony! You have already proven that you have the capability to recruit to a high standard, so make your own hiring an absolute priority.
Once you get it right, it will be invaluable, but get it wrong, and it will cost you.
“You are only as good as your people.”
4. Delegating
Occasionally, people in recruitment can be quite controlling in nature, but as a manager, you have to be able to pass on responsibilities to others, otherwise you will never grow and you will take on more than you can realistically manage.
Make the best possible use of your staff and establish good relationships with your team members, with expectations and levels of service agreed in advance.
“Don’t get a dog and bark yourself.”
5. Supervision
Work alongside your team, shadowing them and vice versa, so that you can train, coach, motivate and develop them. This is one of the most valuable activities that you can do; it builds great, positive relationships, shows that you care and improves their skills – whilst you are all still doing your job as a recruiter.
“Inspect what you expect.”
6. Monitoring
Ask yourself this: what do you measure? How do you measure? Why do you measure? Only when you can answer these three questions can you really be confident that you are monitoring your team effectively.
Supervision is checking how they are doing the job; on the other hand, monitoring is keeping a watchful eye on what they are doing.
“What gets measured, gets done.”
7. Reporting
Report back to your boss on your team’s progress, but more importantly, communicate with your team. The fastest way to demotivate recruiters is to make them feel that they are not being involved or their successes aren’t being recognised. Develop a range of communication channels, both formal and informal, so that you can keep the information flowing.
“People need to know.”
Keep this checklist as a reminder, and if you can ensure that all seven management tasks are being completed, and you have set a clear responsibility to whoever is doing them, you’ll be off to a great start when managing your own recruitment team. Want a bit more guidance and support? Why not book yourself on our 2-day Mentoring & Managing training workshop?
Simply give us a call on 01264 360 234 or email info@enablingchange.co.uk for more information.