*In times of high demand for staffing services and low supply of candidates, recruiters must be selfish with their time. *
*By selfish I mean selective.*Selective about which job orders get worked first, next, and perhaps not at all. Staffing agencies that do this well have higher fill rates.
The way to bring order to the chaos of a full job board is to establish job order rating criteria and adhere to a system of prioritizing job orders consistently. Daily, in fact.
First, name your Job Order Rating System. A,B,C…Green, Yellow Red…whatever you fancy.
Next, work with your recruiting and sales team to determine the criteria that makes a job order for your firm highly fillable, fillable, and difficult to fill.
*At the top of the criteria list is PAY RATE. *My clients continually report that job orders below market pay are almost impossible to fill in today’s candidate’s market. In fact, if a salesperson brings in a job order that’s below market pay they should be coached on how to avoid doing this. But that’s for another blog post!
*Other criteria to consider are *client location, work hours and degree of flexibility, benefits, company culture, etc.
Once criteria is finalized, make sure everyone is trained on the system. “A” job orders get assigned to recruiters and worked first. When “A”s are covered, they move to their “B” orders. And only if time permits do they work the “C”s.
*Each day at your morning huddle, revisit the job orders and ratings before assigning them to recruiters. *Last week’s “A” order may move to a “B” if the hiring manager who must interview your candidates is out of the office this week and unavailable.
*Already have a job order rating system in place? *If it’s working (meaning you are happy with your fill rates and recruiters are fully productive), terrific!
If it doesn’t seem to be working, it’s time to take another look at it. Are the criteria you established years ago still realistic in today’s environment? Have you truly institutionalized the system, or has the team let it slip? Have you allowed your business development manager to pressure the team into rating every job order an “A” (because to a salesperson, every job order is an A job order?).
*Time is money, and in today’s environment you cannot afford to invest time in unfillable job orders. *Rate all those orders and watch your fill rates increase!
