Here goes, Here’s a brief insight into how I work, week to week. As a talent manager, my main responsibilities lie in candidate sourcing and managing inbound applications for our current recruitment opportunities.
What do my days look like?
I split my time up daily between messaging, emailing and calling potential candidates through LinkedIn and the other job boards we use, and reaching out to our inbound applicants. Alongside new candidates, we also have a pool of existing candidates who we’ve already had contact with. They are qualified, processed and looking for opportunities. So, I also allot some time to managing these candidate relationships and maintaining their interest.
I also leave some time for weekly meetings within ExP, and self development through our coaching platform. As a coaching and training company, we constantly strive for self development.
I keep track of these different demands on my time through targets. My personal targets revolve centrally on placing candidates, and every other target aims to assist with this. For example; to place 1 candidate, a company may want to interview up to 4 applicants. For 4 interviews I will probably have to submit 4-8 applications for review. I have to keep in mind that some applicants will apply for several roles, and may withdraw from the process. I may interview over 15 candidates to successfully place one.
As you can see, my personal targets are simple and derived from my chief responsibilities. The good news is that the higher the target at the top, the less the targets at the bottom have to increase. For example, I can conduct 15-20 interviews to place one candidate, but that would probably only increase to 20-25 interviews to place 2 candidates. And so on.
I really enjoy this part of my job. Speaking with people who are eagerly seeking self improvement and looking for the next step in their life/career is rewarding.
How do I stay motivated?
Despite finding so much satisfaction and enjoyment from work, it has many of the classic pitfalls of professional work. Repetition can turn anything from exciting into mundane, so processes and discipline are essential to keeping things fresh! For me, the most important thing is to not spend too long doing any one thing. I know this won’t work for everyone, but it really does for me!
I might spend two hours in the morning doing LinkedIn, and then go onto our coaching platform to change my area of focus entirely. I’ll then go into my emails and do some correspondence. These really help me keep things interesting and keep me motivated to get on with working towards my targets. Perhaps more important for me though is keeping physically moving. I set alarms every hour throughout the day and get up and do some exercise on the hour, every hour. Keeping physically active somehow keeps me mentally active and productive. As soon as I loose discipline and stop doing this every day, I can tell that I am less effective at work. Again, this probably isn’t the same for everyone, but for me it makes all the difference in the world.
Having a good diet and drinking enough water keeps my mind free to devote my attention to work. Writing this down, it seems a little strange that all of my processes to be better at work, don’t really relate to work but if you’ve never tried it, I really recommend it!
Working at home, I have a space downstairs where I can be separate from the hustling and bustling of other people in the house. I don’t know about other people, but my attention span is awful! If anything else is going on around me it’s almost impossible to focus on the task in hand. I’m grateful I can find a quiet space which is dedicated to work. Despite needing a dedicated space for work, I also thrive off working in a communal space where I can bounce off the energy of other people working towards similar goals. I’m excited to get back to an office space however infrequently, to reconnect with colleagues.
Colleagues bring so much variety and schooling to my career, especially when they share their knowledge across the team. One of the best pieces of counsel I was given was just the other day, actually, on a work call. I was taking on an additional aspect to my role and my manager said ‘teething issues will always happen, but you know what, that means teeth are coming through’. I really liked that. Having new challenges at work is important. It’s so satisfying to see how you have grown as time goes on.
I’m always open to changes in the way I work. I’m not a finished article and will always have areas for improvement. I’ve really enjoyed writing this piece and embracing this opportunity for some self-reflection. It makes me want to do it more often, even if it’s just for myself!
Cheers,
BM