When you’re looking to recruit the best possible candidates for your vacancies, having a strong, high performing resourcing team is vital.
Giving your resourcers the tools and guidance to achieve from day one and reviewing their progress throughout their career, is essential to having a team that achieves.
Below are six ways to get the best from your junior resourcers.
1. Give them a proper induction
Developing a successful team starts with how you onboard your resourcers into your organization. Giving them the tools to succeed, providing them knowledge of the industry, or teaching them essential skills such as how to use your phone or applicant tracking system.
From the beginning, ensure they are working inline to your company’s policies and procedures. Arrange for them to shadow more experienced resourcers, enabling them to embrace how to correctly perform telephone screenings or how to craft an appealing job advert.
Giving them an overview through shadowing, working through online training modules, or even looking to match them up with experts such as job board account managers, which will train them on how to use CV databases or how to post jobs. As well as allowing them time to settle into the organization.
2. Set them well-defined targets
Setting clearly defined targets is the best way to give realistic expectations to your resourcers, providing them direction within their work. Targets can help motivate and drive your resourcers, so look to form weekly or monthly goals.
Instead of setting large targets that can be overwhelming, break these into more manageable metrics. For example, rather than a broad objective to fill vacancies, add in sub-targets such as the number of calls made, candidates sourced or the amount of client leads generated.
3. Provide them with detailed written candidate briefs
Finding the perfect candidate for vacancies is made much easier when you’re equipped with the right knowledge. By providing your resourcers with a detailed brief, they will be able to identify the best candidates, matching not only the right skill-set but pinpointing candidates who will fit with an existing team. This will assist your resourcers in being able to source strong candidates who will retain in the business.
A comprehensive specification will support them to describe roles more accurately to candidates, making the position more appealing when selling the organization. Ensure you are delivering a specification that includes not only the qualifications, skills, and experience that the successful candidates require but the type of setting they’ll be working within.
For example, will they be recruiting for a family run company, a private firm or a large well-established organization?
4. Be approachable
Support and guidance is a vital element to creating a high performing resourcing team. You need to be approachable, and open to your team asking for help. Establish an environment where your resourcers feel comfortable asking for assistance and aren’t afraid to make a mistake, but instead, are able to learn from them.
Training and development are imperative to performance, adopt an approach where questioning is encouraged. This will help make training and self-improvement become second nature within your team. Promote an environment where your resourcers can openly come to you with problems, so a plan of action can be implemented instead of them fearing the consequences of mistakes.
5. Meet with them regularly
Meeting with your resourcers regularly is critical, allowing you to discuss performance, consider areas of improvement and equally as important an opportunity to praise any successes. Consider employing a daily 5-minute catch-up, where the team can align focus and shout out any concerns for the day. More formal team meetings can allow team members to discuss best practice, and debate project work or continual development.
But meetings shouldn’t just be limited to team discussions. Individual 1-1’s whether weekly chats or more formal appraisals are central to sparking open conversation. During these conversations, allow resourcers to voice where they feel they are excelling, where they need additional support and how they would like to see their career progressing.
6. Evaluate progress
Setting clear objectives is irrelevant if you aren’t frequently reviewing progress with your resourcers. Look to evaluate set metrics such as call rates, candidates sourced and vacancies filled on a regular basis, reporting back to your resourcers and discussing their progression.
A huge element of retaining good employees is giving them the chance to progress within their career. Assessing crucial metrics regularly will assist in giving your resourcers the feeling of advancement within their role. Supporting them to become a better resourcer and potentially giving them the steps to enhance their career to a consultant, account manager or to other senior recruitment positions.
Evaluating the progress of the team as a whole can also aid friendly competition and a sense of team work, working together towards a common goal.
