Recruiting is hard, it has often been said that Recruiting is a sales job where your product can say no. We don’t actually view our candidates as products but recruiting is one of those unique opportunities where sometimes you can do everything right and still not get the results you are looking for. Recruiting is part sales, part HR and sometimes part therapist.
When things are going well, recruiting can be such a wonderfully rewarding and satisfying career but success usually comes in waves and slumps are part of the business. Most successful recruiters measure themselves with some sort of metric this is great when things are going well but makes things even worse when things are slow.
Making the problem even more challenging is that a recruiter’s head space is incredibly important to their success. We need to be motivated to work hard and we have to sound good on the phone (trust me, you are not convincing anyone to take a new job if it sounds like you hate yours.) So when things are going bad you have to get yourself out of it. We decided to ask the team, what do they do to stay positive. Below is some advice from some Rockstar Recruiters. We have divided it between our teams, hopefully some of these tips or tricks help, you’ve got this!
Add your own tips and tricks to the comments.
Tips from the Rockstar Mechanics team:
- Staying present and in the moment. Concentrating on “right now” will help your ease your mind instead of worrying about the future and your slump/ past performance.
- Focusing on one specific task at a time, with full effort and attention going into that task. Sometimes we try and to multi-task and do too much at one time.
- Remembering many aspects of this job can be out of your control. You can do the job perfect yet not see a positive result.
- Focus on the factors you can control – effort, attitude, being on the phone, submissions, etc.
- Try and remember this job and your performance is more judged on long term results, as opposed to short term booms/slumps. Who cares about winning a short-sighted battle when you are trying to win a war over the long haul
- The nature of recruiting and any sales based position comes with peaks and valleys in performance. The best recruiters in the world go through slumps, no recruiter is perfect. Same for any profession.
- Don’t be afraid of failure.
- We all make mistakes, have realistic expectations of yourself. Be kind to yourself.
- In the darkest moments of your slump is when you need to be your toughest and working your hardest.
Tips from the Rockstar HVAC team:
- Maintain a schedule
- Meditation/exercise or other form of stress relief
- Learn a new skill/improve your Recruiting skills (read blogs etc)
- Declutter desk/ inbox- when work is slow it is time to clean it up
- Added bonus is you get immediate results and can see an improvement
- Stay connected with colleagues/friends- seek advice, different perspectives, get help etc.
- It’s ok to walk away and take a break
- Focus on long term goals
Tips from the Rockstar Millwrights team:
- Look back at past accomplishments as a reminder of your achievements. For a while, I used to tack every offer letter to my cubicle wall, whenever things were slow looking back on that wall reminded me of the previous success that I have had and reminded me that I can do this
- Surround yourself by positive people, negative people can tear you right down but a good talk with a positive person who has been through a slump before can get your right out of it
- Remember it is darkest before the dawn, recruiting has high highs and low lows and you need to be able to ride them
- Be honest with yourself, look back at the deals that didn’t go through. Is there anything you could have done differently, are there any patterns, are you doing anything differently during your slump
- Remember we are dealing with people and sometimes you can do everything right and still not get a positive outcome
- Don’t change too much, remember what made you successful in the past and don’t abandon that
We genuinely hope these tips and tricks help. Remember tough times don’t last, tough people do. You’ve got this. If you have any further questions give us a call at 1-833-937-3546 or shoot us an email at info@rockstarrecruitinggroup.com.