A huge challenge for recruitment managers is that they not only have to lead a team but continue to bill as before. Here are our 5 recommendations for billing managers. What you can be doing, on a day to day basis, to succeed in this demanding role:
- Manage your teams expectations – they will expect you to have all the answers no matter how new you are to the role. Try not to give them all the answers, tempting though it may be. Get them thinking too and create an environment that allows them to ‘have a go’ and coach them to help them learn from their failures, as well as their successes.
- Encourage them to take responsibility – as well as training your team in the right skills and knowledge, encourage them to be accountable and gradually take responsibility for their own actions. If you don’t, they will be too reliant on you and this can cause bottle necks and stunt their [professional] growth.
- Manage your boss's expectations - talk to your boss, offer regular progress updates and don’t hesitate to ask for their help as and when you need it – it's their job to support you. Try to work their way but willingly contribute your ideas.
- Organise yourself - contrary to popular belief, great leaders are not available 24/7. Make sure you protect some time in the morning and afternoon each day, when your priority is client and candidate tasks on your own desk. Interruptions shoudl only be for an emergency – and don’t forget to agree what constitutes an emergency up front, as what's business critical to them may be different to what's business critical to you!
- Lead by example - don’t forget your team will begin to emulate your best practices [and your worst] so make sure that you are setting the right example.
By Lander Associates
Find out more about the ONLY international, recruitment specific leadership qualification at our dedicated website: www.landerleadership.com or read our one page snapshot
Open courses now running in London and Singapore
Recently re tweeted, Greg Savage's views on his blog ‘Kill off the bikers. Fire unprofitable clients now!' posted earlier this year on The Savage Truth, put me in mind of my own experiences working with customers that made me no money and worse still actually harmed my business.
Leap of faith
Building a business of choice is the name given to one of my business development programmes. But this was more a statement of intent than a snappy course title. Many years ago, when I first took that leap of faith to start my own business along with my small team of trainers, I was excited, full of enthusiasm and believed that what we had to offer was the best thing since sliced bread - if only I could get people to see that too! As a young (er!) entrepreneur I had every confidence that we would be successful – but paradoxically lacked confidence in the very same! When our first few customers took their leap of faith in us and put their managers on our (then, as we believed,) cutting edge leadership programme and sent their recruitment consultants to develop their key skills with us, I was thrilled but more than that grateful! Appreciative of the belief these early customers showed in our abilities, thankful that they were actually giving us money to do what we loved to do anyway! To be truthful, our first few clients were people we knew really well and those who were already advocates of our work, so it was the second wave of customers we were actively seeking, in other words the nirvana that is new business!
Ignorance seemed like bliss
I was really interested to read a piece courtesy of Recruitment Dad this week on the results of his study into recruiters. It created a lot of buzz on Twitter so I'm sure some of you have already seen it but in case you haven't, have a read here - it is definitely some food for thought.
The study basically illustrated what may have come as a shock to some, but was to be expected for others: recruiters weren't very good at their jobs. Here are a few particularly shocking statistics:
- Only 7 out of 20 asked Recruitment Dad (the fake candidate) his name
- Only 3 took a phone number
- Only 1 made him feel confident that they could help
- 0 asked about personal circumstances
- 0 asked if he had applied for any other jobs
And that is just a small selection!
Unfortunately this study just reinforces what many people already think about our industry - that recruiters don't really care about candidates. And that is very frustrating. Not only are these individual companies creating a bad name for themselves, they're stopping the rest of the sector getting the respect it deserves. Knowing the right questions to ask really is in the basics of recruitment that every consultant should have perfected.
These results really highlight the importance of investing in your staff. We don't only say this because it's our business - it's because it's true! Yes, giving your recruiters a ‘recruiters for dummies' guidebook is one way of doing it but the chances are that what they read won't stay with them for long, and they'll be repeating all the mistakes that those surveyed above did. Only by learning interactively, providing feedback / analysis and putting new skills into action at desk level is that learning going to work.
