Recruitment Entrepreneurs – I Found you More Hours in the Day. They’re in this BLOG

Have you been running your Recruitment Agency for a while and although things are going well you just seem to be running faster and faster on the treadmill to “get stuff done”. And the “get stuff done” list instead of getting shorter is getting longer?

Well, stop, breath and take a moment to ask yourself these questions.

1) Are you thinking and operating like a recruiter or a business owner?

2) How much of your time is spent doing low-level tasks that are taking you away from your high skill areas? You know… building relationships with top clients and speaking to placeable candidates, the things that will actually lead to candidates being interviewed for jobs.

3) Is a 40 hour week a distant memory?

4) When you went out on your own is this what you signed up for? No, of course not. Don’t worry, you are not alone and its a learning curve for many of us.

If you are on this treadmill, I can promise you unless you change your strategy this will be your life until you run out of puff.

Most recruitment agencies never get bigger than a few people. Failing to automate and systemise processes to create scale and leverage is the number one reason why.

Take the First Steps

Sometimes its hard to see the wood for the trees, but if you do these REALLY simple things you will gain insight as to where your time is leaking and have a starting point to create strategies in your business that will allow you to focus on the big ticket stuff you should be.

1) Get a sheet of paper and draw a line down the centre. On one side write Recruiter and on the other side write World Class Business Owner. Then list everything you do relating to each role.

2) Get a pink highlighter and mark all the things you are doing that someone with a lot less experience could do with a minimal amount of training. A couple of examples…Sending an e-shot or creating a long list of candidates.

3) Get a blue highlighter and mark all the things on that list that you do regularly and don’t have a system for to optimise the process. i.e. basic example accessing your logo quickly or other images you use frequently. Or a more complex example, creating an automated contact cycle for clients.

4) Notice if there is anything unhighlighted! Probably just a few things.

Here’s a sobering fact. If you are doing all those things you have not only bought yourself a job by starting your own agency, you are now doing tasks you probably had support staff doing for you when you were an employed consultant.

GOOD NEWS – Let’s replace you

Take the lesson and learn from it. It doesn’t need to stay as it is and there are a couple of things you can do today to start moving in the right direction.

Now we can get to work on replacing you on the pink tasks and creating processes around the blue ones. You may even be able to get a “Pink” person to create some of the “Blue” processes 🙂

ACTION – Required!

Don’t make this another thing to be overwhelmed by. Sit down somewhere quiet with a cuppa or nice “beverage” depending on what time of day and isolate the areas you can impact quickly so you get some early wins. And just pick ONE to start. Give yourself a goal of one a week, one a day, it doesn’t matter but START.

TIP

Don’t worry about who will do this for you or cost. There are loads of untapped VAs in the Philippines just waiting for your call, interns happy to work for free in exchange for the experience, teenagers looking for some spare cash… Don’t forget about offshore resources such as Upwork or Fivrr. If you want a life and to grow your business you can’t do everything – ever.

If you really want to take automation to a new level watch this recent Q&A I did with Andy Whitehead – RMI – he takes automation to the extreme!

I hope this is valuable for you and if you are happy to do so, I would love to hear your ideas to share with other Recruitment Garage Members.

Thanks for Reading!

Belinda Kerr – Founder

Recruitment Garage