Productivity hacks for recruiters are the big-time concern of these new days within and after the Covid-19 pandemic. We all might know how a recruiter's job is one of the most stressful, compelling, and fast-moving positions in an organization. But why?
Well, I put it like this: Because recruiters spend hours checking CVs, then they are busy fixing an interview all day long, rescheduling, calling candidates, coordinating with the hiring managers and peers, checking feedbacks, and finding the most talented one for the job position to hire while following the culture, inclusion and stay biased free. They mostly look forward to hiring the bests in the shortest time possible.
But when a crisis comes, the situation changes! By having the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic, now everyone knows that things are not going to settle down as before.
Pressure goes up, the bar is high for both sides, stress rises, interviews cancel, managers annoy, and this repeats each day. You suddenly may think of the reason and relates it to yourself:
If you are reading this, let me tell you this is normal and not your fault. I try to touch on different aspects of productivity in times of crisis in this article. In the end, I will recommend some productivity hacks to feel well-organized and efficient in reaching your goals by the end of the workday. So, stay tuned.
Well, let's start from the basics.
Productivity is often defined as the efficiency of a product, service, or employee. When you divide the total output by the number of working hours, you have the productivity ratio.
Managers can measure the productivity of recruiters with 360-degree feedback, time tracking, or productivity output calculations.
It is essential to calculate the productivity ratio of every employee in an organization to understand the efficiency of that one at work.
When looking at different aspects of human resources productivity, measuring recruiters' quality of work and their willingness to put themselves in the required efforts seems essential.
But sometimes, when a crisis comes, the productivity of recruiters drops off as the result of the unknown situation. These employees encounter a pile of work that needs to be done, but they feel tired, hopeless, or frustrated.
Let's see why a recruiter must have productivity at work.
According to the Rescuetime survey, 98% of employees get interrupted a few times in the workday. Relatively, it caused a loss of at least $1 trillion to the U.S economy. Of course, this number will go up in the time of crisis because their research has shown that even working from home causes the interruption.
This interruption is one of the primary reasons that make recruiters and other human resources less productive.
The productivity of recruiters is crucial as they are the ones who can change the culture of an organization. Also, by hiring talented employees, the entire company benefits. There are other reasons why a recruiter's productivity is critical:
When a recruiter recruits better employees, they work more efficiently, making a profit for the company.
By increasing productivity, you may have more time and control over your tasks. If you manage your time, you can recruit better candidates and help the organization to grow faster.
If you manage your time and get more productive, you will reduce your stress and exhaustion. Therefore, productivity will decrease the total burnout.
Not only being productive at recruiting people may result in better recruitments, but also, it may boost morality and workplace culture in other employees.
It is true to say everything begins with the productivity of the recruiter in a company. In recruiting, especially in times of after crisis, scaling when a company needs agile decision-making, the recruiter's productivity comes to play a vital role.
In a recently published Harvard business review magazine article, Eric Garton and Michael Mankins have studied organization productivity before and after Covid-19.
They believe that every organization's performance is changed after this crisis. Three factors have to be considered in the productivity of large organizations:
If a company can manage these three factors, it can assure a high level of productivity.
Their research shows that large companies were more successful in managing these three elements than others.
In the case of recruiters, if they manage their time, try to focus better, and stay away from unnecessary meetings or bureaucratic procedures, they will have less stress and more productivity.
Also, If the recruiters try to use their actual talent and motivation for the job, get teamed better with others, and use the help of leaders, productivity will shine again.
Last but not least, the recruiter may feel distracted and without passion; in this case, the role of managers and leaders shows itself. Because they are responsible for fixing issues immediately to spot the light on and laser focus people on the top priorities.
Let's take the example of Adobe in the time of the pandemic. They made a perfect plan for people in times of pandemics to keep their employees' motivation, spirit, and culture high.
They've made a video series called "Take Five" to help people know business updates and get more information about the pandemic. Also, they planned for the employees to have one day extra off to cheer up.
Eric's survey has shown that companies who have managed their workforce's time, talent, and energy were 5% to 8% more productive than others. They also suggest to drive the productivity in the time of crisis by considering these steps:
You, as a recruiter, indeed need to stay focused and organized. If you want to stay efficient at your work, try to avoid holding loads of meetings and instead use automation platforms and technology to streamline the workflow.
After the crisis came, many technologies improved and made every employee's job easier. If you don't restrict yourself to the old patterns and openly embrace modern technologies, your talent and creativity will help you be more productive.
Managers should consider ways to engage and inspire recruiters to the job. Based on statistics, engaged employees are 45% more productive than merely satisfied ones. Remember Adobe's example that could enhance the productivity of its employees since the beginning of the pandemic with its new plan.
If you want to know how productivity hacks for recruiters work, you have to know some skills and the way to get the best out of it.
There may be a time in a crisis that you lose your discipline and get overwhelmed. You may set many interviews, waste your time and energy, attend meetings with every candidate and treat everything as urgent.
To avoid this chaos, you have to consider these 7 productivity hacks for recruiters, use them in crisis time, and spend your time, talent, and focus wisely.
When robots can perform more accurately and more precisely, why should you waste your time doing their job? Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs and recruiters are unaware of these simple and affordable technologies and decrease their productivity by not using them.
There is a list of automated tasks that you can perform with the AI technology of the platforms such as QPage:
Isn't it excellent that by using an automation platform for recruiters, you will work more efficiently?
You have a limited amount of time in a day. Doing all your tasks, holding interviews, scoring, and assessing a candidate needs concentration, attention, and focus.
Many recruiters are busy answering phone calls, emails, holding meetings, and many other unpredicted tasks, which can cause a block in the progress of their jobs.
Some researches show that every employee has just 1 hour and 12 minutes of uninterrupted time in a working day. It means that if you have limited time to focus on your work, you have to be more accurate in estimating your time.
I recommend you slice your task into short time pieces (like 20 to 30 minutes). Then focus on the one with the most priority first, and protect yourself from being distracted in that short amount of time.
There was a time that everyone needed to know coding to create a workflow with an online platform that works for him or her. But nowadays, with different tools, you can easily make integrations and define your suitable workflow.
Try to make a checklist, make a candidate pool, define your criteria, look for integrations and make a whole plan. Having this workflow helps you to accelerate recruitments efforts and to be more productive.
Qpage can help you do all these things automatically without bothering yourself. In this way, you'll get the most value from a platform, and you can make your day successfully. Using this recruitment platform to make your workflow is a total game-changer.
Some old ways recommend you to stay focused on your work:
And the list goes on.
Unfortunately, these methods are not working for us, and each time we try harder, we achieve less and less.
Suppose that none of those mentioned above suggestions works for you. In that case, you need a more practical way to consider.
First, you have to admit that you need time for the deep work. Try to fight against this feeling and not let it sit on your awareness and make you powerless. Appreciate your strengths, remember your accomplishments of the past days, and believe in yourself to solve this problem.
Second, prioritize your tasks during the day. Start with polishing and organizing your calendar, block deep work time slots. A personal experience I had and worked truly out for me was to list every single incident I had in my day including lunchtime, a walk, power nap, and even call with the team. Then add another layer into the events to list tasks, takeaways, and notes.
Don't struggle with yourself to be focused. You have to do it in a way that fulfills your needs and gives you more motivation and energy.
Don't copy other people's productivity strategy because that may not be suitable for you and doesn't make you motivated enough.
I discovered that social media a distraction and useless to some extent as I had almost no control over what content to come next. I removed the mobile app and only now check Twitter on the desktop web app and no surprise it reduced the tension, distraction and boost my overall productivity.
Lastly, it would help if you considered that focus is something dynamic, and there is no single tool or magical way to help you control it. It would be best if you took control by compassion and reevaluation of your work process.
Most of your precious time goes into holding interviews with candidates. You need to prepare, stay focused, take notes, ask relative questions, and have the following interview every day.
When a crisis comes, you do not have enough time to do all these pieces together efficiently. It may decrease your interview's productivity and may cause a wrong decision.
Using tools like QPage, especially at scale, many evaluating, planning, scorings, and reporting steps would be done by artificial intelligence.
Using proper tools leads to a significant amount of time waste, effort, and attention interviewing the one who is not suitable for the position. While you could have all required assessments, machine-led interviews and connected the data dots to form an unbiased picture.
Sometimes bureaucratic procedures and workload make you slow down. It is necessary to consider eliminating these unnecessary procedures during a crisis.
Don't think of more working hours as your first solution to increase productivity; instead, think of the most impactful works that should be in the priority of your list.
To identify your most impactful works, you have to define your goals, organize your tasks, omit social and digital distractions and plan for a detailed strategy for using technologies and tools that make you more efficient at doing your job.
By finding your impactful works, you would be able to focus better, maintain your engagement and commitment, use your natural talent, and stay energized during the day.
When you don't know that there is an emergency coming for the organization, you can not truly predict and control your stress.
HBR uses the "bat signal" to say that every company should find a bat signal to indicate the emergency in the organization so that everyone understands there is an emergency coming.
Bat-signal is a metaphor coming from the Batman movie, used when a disaster happens in the city. The police summons the superhero (Batman) to take action.
According to HBR, organizations must define the urgent and non-urgent situations for the people properly.
So, remember, before the next time you get stuck in an emergency, ask your managers to define the bat signal correctly and make a system to communicate the problem before it becomes a disaster.
Defining protocols that should be considered during an emergency must be done before a crisis comes.
That was all from me, now it's time for you to share your experience. Drop a comment say your amazing hacks of productivity to help others perform better in time of crisis.
