Recruiting is not an easy task, sourcing for candidates, posting job ads, organizing interviews, and a whole lot of other tasks. With so many targets to hit and just a few hours in a day, you realize that you’ve not gotten a lot of things done. This means that you need to be more productive to get more things done within a few hours. How then do you boost your productivity and stay on top of the game as a recruiter? Here are some productivity hacks for effective recruiting that can help you become a better recruiter:
Automate some of your tasks
Sometimes as a recruiter, you see yourself spending too much time on some simple tasks. This does not give you time for more crucial tasks. This is where automation comes in; automation helps in changing the recruiting world today. It saves you time so you can spend more time on crucial tasks. Besides, automation helps you streamline candidates and thus hire the best hands. One of the effective automation tools is the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). ATS is a cloud-based software that you can use to automate most of the hiring process. Here are some of the tasks that you can automate using an ATS:
- Posting jobs across all platforms. You do not need to manually send job postings to different platforms again. ATS helps you post your jobs on any platform you want to use in minutes.
- With ATS, you can assess the applicant’s resume and shortlist the best candidate. Besides, you can use it to conduct background checks on your candidate.
- To make recruiting easy, every recruiter must have a talent pool. ATS helps you manage the talent pool.
Have a recruitment checklist
One of the productivity hacks for effective recruiting is having a recruitment checklist. Having a comprehensive checklist helps you to know what task you have done, as well as your ongoing and upcoming tasks. Once you have all these written down, you will be able to work effectively based on the checklist. Here are some of the things that should be on a recruitment checklist:
- Get approvals to post job openings
- Generate job descriptions
- Post job ads on various platforms such as job boards, social media, company websites, and others.
- Shortlist candidates
- Schedule interviews and send out invites
- Conduct the interviews
- Make offers to the best candidates.
As you can see, the checklist is just a summary of the hiring process. Once you are done with one step, you tick that and move to the next step. This way, you won’t be wasting your time thinking of the next step to take in the recruitment process. No matter the role you are hiring for, a recruitment checklist is essential.
Related: How to conduct an effective interview
Building and leveraging your talent pool
If you are always looking for new candidates when there is a need for one, you might be wasting your time. Thus, one of the productivity hacks for effective recruiting is building and leveraging the talent pool. There are times in the recruitment process that you meet more qualified candidates than you need. You need to keep those qualified candidates you didn’t hire in your talent pool for future consideration. Besides, you might meet some candidates that are not qualified but have potential, add them to your talent pool as well. So, when next you need to hire for a role, you might refer back to your talent pool and pick from there.
However, to make leveraging the talent pool effective, you should maintain a relationship with them. Devise a means to ensure you keep in contact with them. You could build an email list so you can send them emails regularly. Besides, you might create a Facebook group for them. This will enable you to keep them updated about the latest happening in the company. When you maintain strong communication with your talent pool, you are keeping the company’s name in their mind.
Create an email template
For effective recruiting, you must have an email template on hand. This is because as a recruiter, you have a lot of tasks surrounding emails. Those tasks include interview invites email, offer letters, rejection letters, and so on. And if you have to sit down and write new emails every time you have to send one, you might end up wasting more time. This is why creating an email template is one of the productivity hacks for effective recruiting.
You can create a template for each of the tasks you need email for. For instance, you can create the template for the interview invite, then create another one for the offer letter. Besides, having a template also helps you maintain consistency in the tone of your email. However, the fact that you have a template does not mean you should send the same email to all candidates. Always customize your template to suit the candidate you will be sending it to.
Designate a time for checking emails
Most often than not, administrative tasks take the most out of the time of a recruiter. And one of those tasks is the email checking task. You are most likely to receive multiple emails in a day as a recruiter. And if you spend most of your time on that, you might end up not doing something productive. For this reason, designating time for checking emails is one of the productivity hacks for effective recruiting. Make sure you give yourself a time frame (maybe an hour or two) to check and reply to emails. After that, focus on other tasks.
Read: Skills every recruiter needs to master
Prioritize your task
Prioritizing your task is an essential hack to being a productive recruiter. You have a lot of tasks on your table and if you do not know where to start, you might end up doing nothing. Therefore, ensure that you take note of crucial and urgent duties and prioritize them.
Stay away from multitasking
Avoiding multitasking is also one of the productivity hacks for effective recruiting. Most people believe that multitasking boosts productivity. However, this is not usually true. This is because when you multitask, you tend to lose focus. And that can affect how effectively and efficiently you are doing the task. So, do not multitask. Make sure you prioritize your workload and work on them one step at a time. Besides, you should assign tasks to your team members if the workload is too much for you.
Read: Common but avoidable recruiting mistakes
Final Thoughts
These productivity hacks will help you stay on top of the game as a recruiter. Besides, you will be able to get better at hiring quality candidates which will help the growth of your company as a whole.
