10 Time Management Tips for Recruiters

10 Time Management Tips for Recruiters

At work, less than 18% of people use a time management system, and 1 in 8 never feel in control of their work. With the Life Science industry demanding more from recruiters and hiring managers every day, now is the time to review how your time is currently being spent, and implement new techniques to help you stay productive and motivated at work.

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In this article, we’ve outlined 10 time management tips for Life Science recruiters, helping you to make the most out of the time you have and stay in control of your workload…

Analyse Your Current Work Habits

49% of people have never carried out a time audit, yet this is the most important step to improving your time management. Before you adopt new ways of working, first ask yourself the following questions:

  • Which day(s) of the week am I the most and least motivated/productive?
  • What time of day am I the most and least motivated/productive?
  • Which tasks do I enjoy?
  • Which tasks do I dread?
  • Which tasks do I find the easiest/hardest?
  • Which tasks take up the most and least of my time?
  • Which tasks take up more time than they should?
  • Which tasks would I like to have more time to focus on?

These answers will help you to plan out and structure your working day in a way that helps you get the most out of your time. If you want to go a step further, you could even time yourself getting through tasks for a couple of weeks to help you visualise where your time is going, and where it could be better used.

Measure Your Results

There’s no point in changing up your work routine if you’ve not got a system in place to effectively measure the results of your efforts. This is something you should be doing continuously, ensuring you’re getting the best results possible for your time. If you use four different social media platforms for jobseeker outreach and get the best response rate on LinkedIn, you’ll know to invest more of your time into this channel than others.

Here are 21 recruitment metrics you could measure to track the results of your hiring efforts.

Get Clarity on Your Deadlines

Let’s say you work at a recruitment agency. You might have two different clients approach you with positions that need filling urgently, or ‘asap.’ Instead of making both an immediate priority, ask for clarity on the deadlines they need you to work with. One client’s idea of ‘asap’ might mean a couple of weeks, whilst another may mean within the month.

Of course, you should still aim to help your clients as soon as you can, but having dates in mind will relieve some of the stress from having a list of urgent, ‘asap’ tasks that you can’t manage.

Know Your Target Candidate, But Don’t be Too Rigid

For each role you’re hiring for, know exactly who you’re looking for from the start. Go through the job requirements and grade them from most important to least, working with your hiring managers/clients to decide this. Then, you can leave a handful of requirements as absolute must-haves, allowing room for compromise on the lower-priority skills, knowledge, and experience.

This will allow you to focus your time on only relevant, qualified candidates, and will give you more direction in your search.

Improve Your Job Adverts

If your job adverts are too generic, you’ll be inundated with unqualified and irrelevant candidates that you’ll then have to filter through. Ensure your job adverts are targeted, clear, well-structured, engaging, and concise. The better your job adverts are, the more engagement they’ll receive from the right candidates, allowing you to fill your positions faster and with high quality talent.

Here are 13 ways you can improve your Life Science job adverts.

Manage Your Inbox

As a recruiter, you’ll likely have an extremely busy inbox which can take up huge chunks of your day. Keep on top of your inbox by:

  • Scheduling time in your day to focus solely on clearing your inbox (this doesn’t mean you can’t reply to the odd quick/urgent email)
  • Deleting or archiving every message once you’ve actioned it so you can see your progress
  • Using categories to help break down and organise your tasks
  • Setting boundaries with your internal team, letting them know when you’ll be in your inbox and when you’ll be out focusing on deep work

Prioritise Effectively

To help prioritise your tasks, try out different methods of categorising your tasks such as the Eisenhower Matrix. This will help you visualise which tasks are urgent and important, allowing you to order and manage them efficiently.

Another tool to consider is the Eat the Frog technique. When looking at your daily to-do list, identify your ‘frog’ – the hardest or most important thing on your list. Then, get this task out of the way by completing it first, boosting your sense of productivity and accomplishment, and encouraging you to focus on the tasks that will have the biggest impact first. 

Time Block Your Day

After identifying which tasks need to be completed first, use the time blocking method to divide your day into blocks of time you’ll spend completing a specific task/set of tasks. Structuring your workday like this will help you to get the most out of your time, and will help you to stay focused on your work.

As a recruiter, you’ll likely be spending a lot of time on social media platforms like LinkedIn, where it’s easy to get lost in scrolling, get distracted by a trending news article, get involved in a debate on a popular post, and ultimately lose track of time. Make sure you block out time for social media and be specific with how you’ll use your time. For example, if you set half an hour in the morning for ‘LinkedIn outreach’, what are you hoping to achieve? Who will you be reaching out to, and how will you get their attention?

Create your own goals for each time block, and plan ahead to spread your time efficiently across the week.

Schedule in Regular Breaks

Schedule in regular breaks between your time blocks, helping you to switch off from one task before moving on to another, and reducing the likelihood of burnout. Spend these breaks giving your eyes a rest from the screen, getting up and moving around, or going outside to get fresh air – whatever helps you to switch off.

Bring Automation into Your Hiring

Automate parts of your hiring process to ease your workload and reduce unnecessary administration. One way you can do this is by using PharmiWeb’s job scraper which automatically copies your roles from a nominated source onto our job board every day. Any amendments you make to your adverts will also be picked up by the scraper, as well as any expired roles, meaning you only need to update your adverts in one place.

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