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Planning Your Time – Perfect Week/Perfect Day

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Recently we hosted a poll to see when some of you plan for the next day of work. The results were interesting in that 76% of you do plan ahead either when you’re wrapping up your day or the next day with your cup of coffee.  However 27% of you either don’t have time to plan or only plan a couple of times a week.

When do you plan your day?

I plan for the next day before I leave each day — stress reliever!                    51%
I am a morning planner — with my cup of coffee                                                  22%
Plan? I barely have time to go to the restroom!                                                    20% 
I sometimes plan my day — maybe 2 to 3 days a week                                         7% 

If you’re like me it’s difficult to manage your schedule and complete your “To-do’s” while operating in an environment of constant change, fire drills, etc. One of the techniques we teach to overcome this obstacle and become more productive and efficient is to adopt what we call “A Perfect Week, The Perfect Day” routine. This routine can help you and your team improve time management, planning, and organizational skills, manage multiple projects and tasks, and get more accomplished!

“A Perfect Week, The Perfect Day” routine helps set a strategic course for the week and allows for changes.  The best time to develop “A Perfect Week” is in advance of your week (maybe Friday afternoon or early Monday morning). 

Begin by listing all the activities you want to accomplish into two categories:

  1. Billable. Billable activities directly relate to hiring new employees. Obviously this activity contributes to making money for your organization. Examples of billable recruiting time might include prospecting for candidates, making offers, attending job fairs, setting up interviews with hiring managers, qualifying a requisition, etc.
  2. Non-billable. Non-billable activities are things that you must accomplish and typically support your billable activities. Examples include entering candidates into your ATS, developing postings for the Internet, activity reporting, department meetings, training, paperwork, etc.

If you’d like to see an example of the template we use to document our “Perfect Week” please contact me.  At a high level it would look something like this:

  • Source six hours for BM position. Get three submittals to Kendall – Billable
  • Get requisition from Szary for the SVP of IT – Billable
  • Source four hours for SVP position – submit two candidates – Billable
  • Spend 2 hours in staff meetings – Non-Billable

The next step is to plan your days differently, something we call “Time Based Planning.”  Most people manage their schedule using outlook or some other online scheduling system with a “To-do” list.   Most of these “To-do” action items are not sequenced in order of priority and most people don’t embed their “To-do’s” into their daily schedule.  Time-based planning allocates a specific time during your day to accomplish your “To-do’s” based on their priority.

In the example below I’ve taken the perfect week list above and mapped out one of my days through time based planning:

7:30 – 8:30           Planning, return emails, call Bob about Sue
8:30 – 11:00        Sourcing for SVP position
11:00 – 12:00      Interview with Joe Edwards for SVP of IT
12:00 – 1:00        Lunch – call Mom for birthday!
1:00 – 2:00           Interview Bill Wallace
2:00 – 3:00           Schedule Lisa & Catherine interviews
3:00 – 4:00           Phone screen BM candidate
3:00 – 5:00           Return all emails from net postings

Rather than having my day scheduled and then trying to map my “To-do” list to it, the two are embedded together! 

Of course each week and every day won’t go perfectly!  If activities you’ve documented in your perfect week change during the week then readjust and develop a new plan of action. Plans were meant to be changed!   

Try this routine as a pilot.  We think you’ll find it improves your planning, time management, and organizational skills.   

Posted in Bradley Savoy, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Perfect Day/Perfect Week, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Training, Time Management, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Managing Your Hiring Managers, Part Three

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

We recently posted the first of three parts in our series about Managing Your Hiring Managers. (Part One, Part Two)   We discussed how to understand what your hiring manager’s want through Voice of the Customer (VOC) and how to build credibility with your hiring managers.

Our final post of the series will focus on how to effectively manage the hiring manager relationship.

Effectively Managing the Hiring Manager relationship   

So, you’ve spent a great deal of time assessing your hiring manager’s needs through Voice of the Customer, and you’ve worked hard to establish credibility.  Now, if you don’t effectively manage the relationship with them then all of your efforts will be wasted!!

One important step in the management of any consultative relationship is the ability to establish a strong foundation to the partnership (yes, you’re the recruiting consultant to your hiring manager!).  This starts when consultants engage with clients in the initial intake session.  

Intake Session = Foundation:  If you have a good intake session then you have a strong foundation to build a relationship! A good intake session is not only about uncovering the basic wants and needs of your hiring manager but it will allow you to explore the position in great detail as well, including: 

  • Why is the position open?
  • What are the top 3-5 key objectives for someone in this position?
  • What are the challenges a person will face in this position?
  • How is performance measured?
  • What is your hiring managers style/personality/culutre
  • Sourcing Strategy questions
    • Who are some of your top performers that I could network with?
    • Who are some of the top performers externally that you’re aware of?
    • Are you aware of any companies that might be struggling that I could tap into?
  • What are the selling points of the position?
  • What “knock out” questions do you suggest I use?
  • What is our Service Level Agreement?

Establishing a Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a key step in effectively managing the hiring manager relationship.  It sets expectations in advance, for both you and your hiring manager about who is going to do what during the hiring process and how long it’s going to take.

For example, a well crafted SLA will outline how quickly you will be expected to provide qualified and interested candidates as well as how quickly your hiring manager will respond once you have submitted an initial slate of candidates.

If you’d like to see an example of our intake and SLA documents please contact me.

Finally, best in class organizations use detailed analytics, trend tracking, and ongoing voice of the customer sessions/surveys to consistently check on hiring manager satisfaction and correct areas of concern proactively. 

If you’re effectively managing the relationship, you’re not only talking with your hiring managers often about the day to day aspects of candidate flow, but you’re also meeting with them at least quarterly to look at your high level results as a team to mitigate any areas of risk.

Have a fantastic week!

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Managing Your Hiring Manager, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Training, Strategic Business Partner, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Managing Your Hiring Managers, Part Two

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

Last week we posted the first part in this series on Managing Your Hiring Managers.  We discussed how to understand what your hiring manager’s want (or just as important – need) through voice of the customer (VOC).

A key to building a consultative partnership with your hiring manager is by getting to know them personally and building credibility with strong functional knowledge of their organization, business unit and staff.  

How do you accomplish this? The following questions will help guide you so that you can become recognized as a true staffing partner with your hiring managers.

Knowing Your Hiring Managers & Building Credibility – Self Assessment!

  • Do you have strong, personal relationships with your hiring managers? Do you know where they are from, their hobbies and interests?  You don’t need to be best friends.  But, you should have some basic knowledge of your customer and who they are. 
  • Do you know their administrative assistants or other support staff well? Often the most important contact you’ll have is the Administrative Assistants and other support professionals aligned to your hiring manager.  They can be your best ally to ensure you’re given access to the hiring manager’s schedule and they always have an ear to the inner workings of the hiring manager’s department.
  • Who are their top performers?  Do you have a relationship with them?  If you’re trying to build a business for your hiring manager, you should always look at their leadership team.  From the successor of the department to the top performers, the traits from these team members are what the hiring manager is seeking to build in his/her department and what you should look for when courting talent.  Also building relationships with these leaders will ensure your opinion is vetted throughout the key influencers in your hiring manager’s world.
  • Do you have a strong functional knowledge of what they do?  What does the hiring manager actually do every day?  You should have a basic understanding of how they spend their time.  They should also know how you spend yours. :)
  • Do you keep up with the industry?   Sure, you should be reading Workforce & HR magazines, but you should also be reading up on the latest trends in your industry. Whatever the industry (i.e. healthcare, banking, home building), you should stay abreast of trends there.
  • Have you visited the department or met their staff?  If you have the ability to make a visit in person do so.  One of my clients within the insurance industry conducts site visits once a month to make sure they have a face tied to the name.  
  • Do you understand the career progression for each department?  How do people move up, or transfer out of their department.  This can be a key selling point if this particular manager has a track record of creating star performers for your organization or system.
  • Do you meet with your managers quarterly to quantify your performance/ROI?  As part of a quarterly touch base (or onsite visit), do you present meaningful data to your hiring manager to show what you or your function has done for them in the past 3 months?

We have added this self-assessment tool to our Good to “Elite” competency/skills self assessment library (see below).

Click here to participate.

If would like a copy of your (or your team’s results) results, please email us.

Join us for our final installment next week when we’ll focus on how to effectively manage the hiring manager relationship.

Have a great week!

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Managing Your Hiring Manager, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Strategic Business Partner, Workforce Planning | No Comments »

Compelling Time to Fill (TTF) data — It can be misleading

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

In a recent blogcast, (Time to Fill – Are You Managing A Key Metric You Are Measured On?), we discuss how time to fill can be misleading and . . . not a good indicator of hiring manager satisfaction and overall “responsiveness” to the truly critical hiring needs of the organization.

While most organizations might be able to track TTF by job category, they only report the overall average to key stakeholders. Unfortunately, this statistic becomes a “blended” rate of all positions regardless of priority, cost of vacancy, criticality to organization, difficulty to fill, etc.

And if an organization is not structured to truly support priority, critical to fill, or difficult to fill positions, there often is a big gap with respect to TTF between what we call Business As Usual Req’s – (AKA – BAU’s – repetitive positions that most often are filled by active, internal or referral candidates) and  priority/critical/difficult to fill ones. 

Some very intriguing data from one of our healthcare clients illustrates this point.

While there overall TTF for Q2 was 33 days (very, very good especially compared to our benchmark median of 41 days.

  • 300 positions were filled in an average of 23 days
  • While 49 positions took on average 89 days to fill!

This provokes the questions:

  • Do you have the right organizational structure to support BAU and priority/critical/difficult to fill positions?
  • Do you have the right process to support these distinctly different types of positions?
  • Do you have the right resources to effectively screen through the active pool of candidates while proactively sourcing top talent not found in those circles?

If you haven’t done so recently, I would slice your TTF data by BAU and priority/critical/difficult to fill categories and analyze how well you are performing. 

If your data is similar to the organization outlined above, then seek to develop strategies, processes, etc. to improve timeliness on the positions most critical to your organization!

I hope you’re having a good week. 

Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Recruiting Buzz, Sourcing, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition, Time to Fill, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Value Stream Mapping — Eye Opening Exercise!

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

Over the last two weeks, I have facilitated Value Stream Mapping exercises (a Lean Principle) with two recruitment organizations.  If you have not participated in one of these before (a Lean Principle), the goal is to analyze a process (in this case, the recruitment/hiring process) and identify:

  • Process Time (AKA – Value Added Time)
  • Delay Time (AKA – Non value added Time)

Examples of processing time would be performing an intake session and/or phone interview, i.e., the time you spend actually processing the “candidate”.  Wait time examples include waiting for candidates to call you back from an interview, waiting for a background check to clear or the most popular – - waiting for a manager to make a decision on interviewing a candidate, making an offer, etc.!

When you go through this tedious process (it is really tedious but . . . well worth the effort), it is amazing how little time we spend processing candidates and how much time we spend WAITING.

For this one particular healthcare organization, their average time to fill is pretty darn good for their hiring volume (38 days). As we analyzed their process using the value stream mapping methodology we found:

  • Total Process time – Low end: 8.5 hours – High end: 3.83 days (most of the difference was associated with sourcing for difficult to fill positions).
  • Total Delay time – Low end: 12.33 days – High end: 195 days!  (this was mostly attributed to difficulty in finding quality candidates, hiring managers not making a decision, relocation issues, etc.)
  • Average Lead time (Process + Delay time) = 38 days (start to acceptance)

Once we identified current state process and delay times for each step, the team started to come up with solutions to eliminate waste. It was amazing to hear some of the easy to implement, no cost solutions they identified! 

Whenever I facilitate this exercise, I am amazed at:

  • How much wait time “waste” is in our staffing process?
  • How we can, through a simple exercise, identify no/low cost waste to reduce wait time and ultimately . . . Time to Fill.
  • How much we often focus on the processes for “improvement” rather than eliminating waste for improvement.

If you would like more information about how we can assist your team in performing a value stream mapping exercise on your staffing process and share some best practices, let us know.

If you haven’t done this, and/or haven’t done one in a while, it is a worthwhile exercise as we prepare for 2011.

Hope you are having a good day!

Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Training, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition, Uncategorized, Value Stream Mapping | No Comments »

Data Integrity — It is all about Education, Accountability and Visibility

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

As most of you know, we have just concluded a Healthcare Recruitment Metrics Benchmark Study highlighting key metrics relevant to a Lean, Just-in-Time recruitment strategy.  As expected, since many of the key data points relied on humans to enter and validate the data, most of the participants struggled to reconcile and validate that their data was accurate.   Those challenged by data integrity (or lack thereof), spent countless hours auditing the data to ensure it was accurate.

Of course the only way to ‘nip this issue in the bud’ is to ensure that the data is accurate at the transactional level, hence the often used IT cliché – - Garbage in, Garbage out! 

While I know this is not a profound revelation, why do most organizations still struggle to capture accurate recruitment metrics?

From my experience, the root of the issue is three-fold:

  1. Educational – Key staff members must understand the importance of capturing accurate data and what POSITIVE things result from ensuring the data is accurate.  It is only when you answer the question – What is in it for me? – that you typically start to see improvements in data integrity.  Some of the POSITIVE results of capturing clean data:
    • Enables the organization to develop performance improvement initiatives to save their organization time, money, and allow the teams to get more done in LESS TIME.
    • Allows the team to be able to quantify the ROI of their services to the organization.  Makes us look good! :)
    • Quantifies the amount of work they actually perform!   
  1. Accountability – While I like to point out the POSITIVE reasons of capturing clean data, at the end of the day the recruiters need to be held accountable and measured on their ability to perform this task.  I recommend that recruiters do a quarterly ‘self-analysis’ by reviewing their own data/metrics.  Holding them accountable to this activity is a great way to clean up your data at the source!  Some of the best in class organizations we work with instill an “audit” at the requisition close stage – before a req is closed, the recruiter goes back to ensure that all data is entered accurately in the system. 
  2. Visibility – I am a big believer in making your metrics “public”.  All your customers should see your overall team metrics (have trend charts posted in a visible area in your office).  All recruiter metrics should be public to the recruitment team.  Typically the only folks that do not like to make their metrics public are . . . the ones that are not producing or don’t have clean data!

If you are struggling to capture clean data, I would make sure your team understands why it’s important and put a system in place to ensure accuracy. From experience working with our clients, you will see immediate improvements in data during the first 90 days!

I hope you have a good “back to school” week!

Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Training, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition | No Comments »

Who Is Blitzing?

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

In a recent blogcast , we talked about injecting some fun into sourcing for top talent.  Well, our team took it to heart and . . . over the last 4 weeks committed to having some fun while getting in dedicated sourcing time.  

As outlined in the blog, folks could ‘opt’ into 3 daily sourcing sessions (7:30 to 8:30, 11-12 and 4-5).  These times were selected based on thier experience of catching people live during those times.

During the first week, to check out who was going to attend a session, someone would send out an email – Who’s Blitzing!? (as in call blitz).  The folks who were doing to participate would quickly shoot back an email confirming participation. 

Over the course of the month, it was amazing to see these sessions ‘take off’ three times a day.  Most importantly, it was great to see how this ‘fun’ challenge drove some very positive behaviors including:

  1. Folks scheduling in sourcing time BEFORE other activities like interviews, meetings, etc. which is a key principle of our Perfect Week, Perfect Day Time Management methodology.
  2. Folks being prepared for each call session with enough names for the blitz.  This usually meant 2-3 hours of sourcing ‘research’ time to set up these call sessions. Again, another positive outcome of the challenge.
  3. Motivation – Everyone that has participated clearly agreed it increased the quality of sourcing time!  The 7:30 to 8:30 and 4-5 time slots were very productive and before this event . . . those call times were a hit or miss for the team.  Some would get hit and some would be missed.  Moving forward – - it will now become part of their routine.   
  4. Folks are seeing the benefits from this hard work!

Most importantly, everyone has seen increased candidate flow to some very difficult to fill positions during the month that often brings luke warm ‘effort’ as folks seek to enjoy the end of the summer!

I encourage you all to consider injecting some fun into your sourcing routine as we head into the last “official” week of the summer!

Have a great holiday weekend.

Posted in Changing Role of the Recruiter, David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Training, Sourcing, Time Management, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Recently Published Study Indicates Hiring to Pick Up to Pre-Recession Levels — Are you ready?

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Just over half of large, recently downsized U.S. companies plan to boost staffing and reach pre-recession levels by 2012, according to Accenture’s recent High Performance Workforce Study.  The survey included 674 senior executives worldwide from companies with revenue of more than $250 million.

Investment in hiring for the U.S. based companies is expected to increase from 24 percent today to 37 percent within the next 12 months.  The study also found that only 13 percent of executives said that they plan to reduce their employee base over the next 12 months. 

Yet as we all know, the planned growth won’t come easily. If a hiring ‘boom’ is imminent, highly skilled workers will come at a premium again as companies seek to grow.

The focus would soon shift from cost reduction to proactive staffing resource planning required to address spikes in hiring needs.   

Questions you might ask to decipher if you are in for a hiring boom:

  • Does your company have a strong balance sheet with cash to invest in a growth strategy?
  • Is your workforce already stretched thin?
  • Are you using contractors to supplement fulltime staff to get the work done today?
  • If there was a hiring “spike”, do you have the resources to get the job done?

If you answered YES to the first three questions and NO to the last, then it probably is time to start to develop a contingency plan in the event it DOES happen!

Be realistic but THINK POSITIVE about the future!  Most important, be prepared.

I hope you enjoy the last few weeks of the summer.

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Elite Recruiters, Employer Brand, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Talent Aquisition, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Interesting data from ‘Elite’ Recruiter Competency/Skills Assessment Study – some advice to share!

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

We are proud to announce that we have had over 1500 recruiters participate in our ‘Elite’ Recruiter Competency/Skills Self-Assessment Study!   If you haven’t participated, we encourage you to do so! It is free! :)

It is interesting to see that outside of normal areas that recruiters always seem to rate themselves “low” (areas for improvement :) ):

  • Use social networking tools to source qualified, passive candidates (rating of 2.94 of 5)
  • Engage and recruit passively-looking top talent candidates (3.20 of 5) 

The next two lowest scores were related to managing the search process:

  • Sets Service Level Agreements with hiring managers: 3.22 of 5.00
  • Manage and control the staffing lifecycle efficiently: 3.39 of 5.00

We have written articles/posts on this subject that have received positive reviews I thought I would share: 

The Most Important Service Level Agreement

When are you available versus what do you think about this candidate?

Do you have credibility with your hiring managers?

We have also helped many organizations implement an “easy to use” one page Service Level Agreement document to be used when qualifying a new position (especially when it is a new hiring manager). If you would like a copy – please email us!

The scores above point to a skills gap with respect to a consultative approach to managing the search process. If you think this is an area where you need/want to “sharpen your ax”, I hope some of the information provided will be of value!

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Recruiting Buzz, Relationship Recruiter, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Getting through the Dog Days of Summer . . . HAVE SOME FUN!

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

In my 17 years as a recruitment coach/mentor, I have found that the beginning of August usually brings with it a common case of “Recruiter’s Rut.”   Many of us drag ourselves into work on Monday after a long weekend of fun in the sun wishing we were still outside playing!  We wake up realizing that the summer is almost over after it just began!  We start to wonder “Where has it gone?” 

In addition, the reality starts to set in that the year is 60% complete and . . . there is still a lot to accomplish!

It is at this point you can wallow in self pity or . . . inject some fun and passion back into your recruitment day!

I first wrote about “Recruiter’s Rut” back in 2002!  I have personally seen this infectious ‘disease’ rip through entire recruitment departments with ease.  The best cure is to gather your peers and develop a strategy to fight it.

Some ideas?

Well, since at the end of the day, each and every recruiter is measured on their ability to identify and recruit top talent for their organization . . .  fun contests centered around generating quality candidate flow is always a great cure!

Recently, our sister organization implemented a contest for August that might help you to steer clear of ‘Recruiter’s Rut’.

  • They are holding three sourcing call blitz sessions each day (from 7:30 to 8:30, 11-12, and 4-5).  These times were carefully selected as times that they had the best opportunity of getting someone live on the phone.
  • These are ‘optional’ sessions for all recruiters recognizing there are other activities that might prohibit you from attending all of them.
  • For each session, they are tracking:
    • Number of dials
    • Number of appointments set
    • Number of “live” conversations   
  • Points are awarded as follows:
    • 10 points: For attending a call blitz session  
    • 25 points: For a candidate submitted to hiring manager from the call blitz
    • 50 points: For a Hiring Manager Interview
    • 75 points: For an offer
    • 100 pints: For a hire

In just the first week, we have seen more productivity, a spike in activity and . . . a little mojo back into the day.

Another fun contest you might deploy is the Recruiter Decathlon .

Even the most motivated, passionate recruiters I know (including me) sometimes need some assistance getting through the dog days of summer.  If you feel Recruiter’s Rut settling in with you and/or your team . . . inject some fun back into the day!

Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Training, Recruiting Buzz, Sourcing, Talent Aquisition, Time Management, Uncategorized | No Comments »

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