Managing Recruitment Time Better
Improving Recruiter time management is all about learning how to prioritise your responsibilities and ensuring that these priorities are effectively applied and managed. Effective time management and learning ways in which to do so in the most operative manner possible is a skill that requires continuous attention and refinement throughout your career.
As a Recruiter on Jobs.co.za, applying fail-safe time management to your day to day functions can be the defining element in meeting your hiring deadlines. Not only does time management constitute a large portion to your success as a Recruiter but gives a direct purpose to your routine tasks which helps to define company expectations and the attainment of company objectives.
A common misconception regarding time management strategies is that there is a set structure to follow or apply across the board to guarantee effectiveness and success. This is in fact not the case but rather the understanding that what may work for some, may not work for others. The biggest challenge in managing your time as a Recruiter is finding 'your own way', and specifically applying what works for you to your personal schedule.
When looking to map out an effective time strategy to manage your time better by, defining core characteristics will aid you in your quest. When are you most productive? When do you begin to feel tired? During what point in the day does it become most pressured? By looking at all of these questions will help to define your day in terms of productivity and using the best part of your day to capitalise on.
By focusing on the following 5 elements that constitute to better time management put together by Jobs.co.za, you will begin to notice a marked improvement in personal time management and may even find more time available during the day to attain your set out objectives.
Time Element One: Prioritise your Priorities
The most important factor when learning to manage your time more efficiently is learning how to prioritise your tasks and to take this one step further; to prioritise your priorities. List all of your tasks; no doubt there will be several of these for you to tackle and the only way you will get to all of them is to document them and then weight them according to their urgency. Recruiters sometimes tend to avoid following this process as the list of tasks can appear too overwhelming to manage. While this may take time getting used to practicing, once you have listed your 'things to do' and prioritised them in order of their importance, you will have a clearly defined path to follow to getting things done. At the same time, this will help not let anything slip through your grasps, as you work through these items and check them off, you will also feel a sense of accomplishment which will motivate you to keep moving forward.
Time Element Two: Acknowledge that Time is a Scarce Resource
One of the greatest means to better managing your time is acknowledging that time, as with any other natural resource is a scare and limited commodity. Once time is used up it is used up and there is no going back. By being disciplined with your time and utilising it to the very best of your ability will help you to avoid procrastination and time wastage. There are only 24 hours in a day, where during an average day, 8 to 10 of these hours are spent in the office or hard at work. Wasting the already limited time we have to reach our objectives is counterproductive. Remain in the present and don't concentrate on what happened yesterday or what may happen tomorrow. By diluting your focus from the now or today, leads to procrastination and distraction. Take charge of today and tomorrow will positively follow suit as a natural by-product of today's focus and hard work.
Time Element Three: Define your Role
By having a clear understanding of your role and purpose in your organisation will keep you head in the right place as opposed to drifting off into someone else's role that you would prefer to assume. In order to map out your objectives and utilise your time effectively you need to have a solid understanding of your purpose and your role in order to deliver optimum output. When prioritising the items on your agenda, it will become apparent where you may be wasting valuable time on performing tasks that are not core to your role. Be sure to understand the company's expectations of you, as well as KPI measurables in order to prioritise those tasks that are in fact innate to your purpose and role in the company.
Time Element Four: When is Your Best Time?
We all have days where the productivity buss just seemed to forget to pick us up and instead left us standing on the pavement wondering what to do next. Understand that your mood and you state of mental consistency all plays a part in your ability to stay productive and stick to a time management plan. This may be a one day on, one day off experience but some of us even experience different moods through the course of the day that effects our productivity. Some of us are morning people, others afternoon and those that specialise in the graveyard shift deliver no surprises as to when they are most productive. While time and mood both contribute to our productivity and ability to manage our time, continued symptoms of poor productivity is not going to fly with your employer. On the days that you feel past your expiry date, be sure to account for your mood and be even more conscious that things may be a little more difficult to achieve on that given day. There is also no point in preoccupying an already distracted mind with further thoughts of panic about how difficult is it to focus. Take ownership of your mood, acknowledge it and in doing so, you will notice that by simply accepting this you will automatically throw yourself into your 'things to do list' with haste and efficiency.
Time Element Five: Schedule a break during your Day
Taking a break during your day may feel like a little bit of an anomaly when trying to improve your time management however this is in fact the fifth and thus most 'elusive' element to managing your time properly. By taking a break during your day, based on how much time you have to spare, serves more of a purpose than any of the above elements listed. When your engines begin to fail and lethargy sets in, not only do you begin to do things a lot slower but your level of accuracy and proficiency fails as well. As a result of this negative-negative, often mistakes are made and duplicate work is generated due to poor attention to detail and an expended focus. Try to take at least a 10 minute break every 120 minutes to get fresh air, change your focus for a moment and remember that while work is vital and deadlines are imperative you can only be as productive as your mind allows you to be. Burnout and exhaustion is the number one reason for common workplace mistakes and can be avoided by taking regular short breaks during your day.
Jobs.co.za's five elements to better time management will serve a function to you if realistically applied to your schedule. The only person you will be lying to by applying false time management applications to in order to look good is you. Take tenure of your time schedule and process this in the most functional realistic and articulate way to aid you going forward. Time is yours to use or loose and you are the only one responsible for making sure your personal objectives are reached.
