A couple of weeks ago at our Recruitment Directors event we asked 60 recruitment directors “what is your top tip for getting new consultants to bill quickly?” here are their top 5 suggestions.
1: Quick Success
You may not expect a new consultant to do a deal in their first month, but you need to work hard to help them be part of one. The quicker they are part of a deal the more they believe they will be able to succeed. To this end make sure you get them focused on finding candidates for vacancies where those candidates are relatively easy to find and where you have good levels of control.
2: Clear Targets & Expectations
Clear expectations help you and them understand what success looks like from day one. It will help your conversations be much more objective and will help them understand what they need to do to be successful. Two tips: one: make sure there are lots of little milestones (candidates interviewed, leads sourced) that you can recognise achievement of, and two: ensure they understand how the targets/metrics contribute to their success, explain how the ratios work and how they should improve as their ability does.
3: Support Them Hit Targets
Sink or swim may work in some jobs, but in recruitment it is a sure way to waste time, effort and money. Make time to help them learn the job, with a structured training plan. Remember that very few people learn from “telling” most learn from trying, watching others and discussing successes and failures. Focus on the “why” you ask them to do things and once they understand “self-sustaining” activity will not be far away.
4: Team engagement
Very few people succeed on their own, most managers reading this will look back to their first months in recruitment and think of a colleague or manager that helped them when they started or through tough times. Create a culture where everyone has a responsibility to help new people succeed, maybe involve the team in the hiring process or pick a consultant aspiring to be a manager to be their mentor for a period.
5: Full 360 by 90 days
This is slightly more controversial. New consultants should be exposed to all aspects of the 360 role within 90 days. References and lead chases are easy transition calls for new consultants to make and will typically be off candidates or information they have sourced. They may still be 90% focused on candidates but that 10% will help them grow in confidence and maybe make a fee!!
What was clear in the mastermind session was that there is no silver bullet, we would be interested in hear your thoughts on what the “key” to getting new consultants productive quickly.
If you want to improve how quickly your new consultants get to productivity then feel free to investigate our next mastermind course on Thursday 5th November.
