You're one good PowerPoint slide away from a promotion
Posted Monday August 29th, 2011

Most of the best recruiters I know are great salespeople:  They build relationships, they really enjoy talking to people, and they love 'closing the deal' - matching the right person with the right job and seeing it work out well.

But, like most great salespeople, they hate administration.  They hate making charts and graphs and filling in timesheets, and their ATS system looks like a bomb went off in there.

The problem is that there are lots of people in the rest of the organization who 

(a) Really, really love administration, and think their lives can be changed by a good chart that just sums it all up for them

(b) Don't really understand recruiting all that well, because they still think that you can just post a job on a job board and zillions of terrific candidates will apply right away

The result?

Even great recruiters aren't always properly appreciated, either by their co-workers in other departments (for corporate recruiters) or by their clients (for agency recruiters).

A little admin work can go a long way

Now, I'm not suggesting that you (i.e. all you great recruiters who are reading this right now, of which I know there are many!) suddenly change the habits of a lifetime and become devoted to creating Excel charts that track your every activity.

However, you might be surprised to find how effective a little administrative work can be:

• For junior recruiters eager to demonstrate their hard work, a chart showing how many calls you've made in a day, how many resumes you've screened, and how many candidates you've spoken to can be a good way to measure your progress, both to your manager and to yourself
• Feeling like you're working harder but getting less done?  Tracking your activities for a week or two can help you figure out where you're spending most of your time - and where you're using it most effectively
• You may know you're getting great results, and that your ratio of applicants to screened candidates to hires is excellent - but does the rest of the organization?  Taking the time to create an easy-to-understand chart showing business successes like time-to-hire, cost-per-hire and long-term quality of hire can be a great way to demonstrate your value to the organization - and put recruiting in terms that they can understand.

Instead of thinking of administrative work as a chore that you just want to put off indefinitely, try thinking of it as a marketing opportunity - and the product you're marketing is yourself!

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