Conquer Your Workday: 7 Tips to Increase Productivity for Agency Recruiters

If you're feeling overwhelmed - Don't worry, we've got your back!

Here are some actionable tips to boost your productivity and become a recruitment industry rockstar.

Map your current processes and workflows

Conquering your workday starts with understanding how you currently spend your time. Here are some tips to map your processes and workflows:

• Track your time: Use time tracking apps or a simple spreadsheet to record your activities throughout the workday. Categorize tasks by staffing project, client, or activity type (e.g., emails, calls, sourcing, paperwork). Aim to track your time for at least a workweek to capture a representative sample of your activities.

• Analyze your data: Once you have a week's worth of data, analyze it to pinpoint tasks that take up the most time. Are there recurring activities that seem excessive? Are there repetitive tasks you can streamline or automate? Identify areas where you feel disorganized or frustrated.
• Identify root causes: Are you bogged down by paperwork, data entry, or scheduling? These tasks can be delegated or automated if possible. Is it due to unclear communication channels, or inefficient meetings? Implementing a project management system or daily planning routine can improve organization. Are you wasting time creating documents from scratch? Develop templates for common tasks like emails, proposals, or interview questions.
• Document your workflows: Create a basic flowchart or process map to visualize your workflows for key tasks. This helps identify bottlenecks and opportunities for improvement. Are there handoff points between yourself and colleagues that cause delays or confusion? Documenting these workflows can ensure smooth transitions.

Prioritize your workload

As an agency recruiter, you're constantly juggling multiple tasks and responsibilities. Without a clear system for prioritization, it's easy to feel lose focus on what truly matters.

Here are some prioritization strategies you can use:

• The Eisenhower matrix: Apply the urgency-importance matrix mentioned above and assign specific actions to each quadrant.
• The ABC method: Categorize tasks as A (critical, must-do), B (important, should-do), or C (low priority, can delegate or defer).
• Timeboxing: Allocate specific time slots in your calendar for prioritized tasks.

For example, let’s say you opt for the Eisenhower metrix or the Urgency vs. importance matrix. What you need to do is create a 2x2 matrix with "Urgent" and "Not Urgent" on one axis, and "Important" and "Not Important" on the other.

• Urgent & important: These are top priority tasks that require immediate attention. Examples include candidate interviews for critical roles with tight deadlines, resolving urgent client concerns, or handling time-sensitive paperwork.
• Not urgent & important: These are important tasks that can be scheduled for dedicated time slots. This might include building your talent pipeline for upcoming openings, networking with industry professionals, or developing training materials for new hires.
• Urgent & not important: These tasks might feel pressing but don't contribute significantly to your core objectives. Delegate these if possible, or schedule them for short bursts when you have downtime. Examples include responding to non-critical emails or attending meetings that could be optional.
• Not urgent & Not important: Eliminate or automate these tasks whenever possible. This could be unsubscribing from irrelevant notifications or using templates for routine communication.

Start your day by reviewing your prioritized tasks and adjust as needed based on any urgent developments.

Batch similar tasks

Group similar tasks together and work on them in batches. For example, schedule a dedicated time slot for candidate screenings or client meetings to minimize context switching and improve focus.

Batching these activities helps maintain momentum and reduces the cognitive load of switching between different types of tasks.

Here are some practical ideas:

• Morning screening session: Dedicate a couple of hours each morning solely to initial candidate screenings. This way, you can handle multiple applications in one go, maintain a consistent evaluation criteria, and make quicker decisions.
• Group phone interviews: Schedule all phone interviews back-to-back. This keeps your mind in interview mode and reduces the downtime between calls.
• Daily resume block: Set aside a specific time each day, such as the first hour after lunch, to review resumes. This helps you tackle a bulk of applications at once and quickly identify potential candidates.
• Weekly client catch-ups: Designate one or two afternoons per week for client meetings. By clustering these meetings, you can prepare more efficiently and address multiple clients' needs in a streamlined manner.
• Email hour: Allocate a specific hour each day for sending follow-up emails to candidates and clients. This prevents your inbox from becoming a constant distraction throughout the day.
• Content creation block: Spend a fixed time slot, like an hour on Monday mornings, creating and scheduling all your social media posts and job advertisements for the week. This way, you ensure a consistent online presence without daily interruptions.
• Weekly scheduling session: Dedicate a specific time each week to plan and schedule all upcoming interviews. This reduces the back-and-forth typically involved in coordinating with candidates and interviewers.

By implementing these batching strategies, recruiters can create a more organized workflow, reduce distractions, and focus better on each task at hand.

Note: You can make this step a lot more efficient by teaming up with an AI recruitment solution like Carv. I'll detail how exactly to do this in a step below.

Build a daily schedule - and stick to it

I know you’ve heard this one before, but if you really want to maximize your productivity and efficiency, you need to stick to a schedule. What this means is that you need to schedule not just your work hours, but also your breaks.

Schedule your work hours

Block time in your calendar for dedicated tasks like sourcing, screening, candidate calls, and client meetings. This helps focus your energy and avoid context switching, which is one of the main causes of burnout among recruiters.

For example, you can start your day with the most urgent admin tasks, like checking the progression of your talent pipeline and answering to client and candidate emails, then block 2-3 hours for interviews.

The interview process is the most important in the entire recruitment process, as a bad experience during the interview can cause candidates to drop. So make sure you block enough time for interviews, and use an AI assistant to take your notes, so you can focus fully on candidates.

Schedule your breaks

Take breaks throughout the day to avoid energy dips, as your productivity will significantly drop if your mind is no longer fresh.

Step away from your desk, stretch, or grab a coffee, and if you’re using an AI recruitment platform that offers automation capabilities, instruct your AI colleague to fill in your ATS with information from previous interviews or intake calls while you’re on your break.

Delegate tasks to AI

Don't be afraid to delegate tasks to AI where appropriate.

For example, transferring notes from interviews and intake calls to the ATS or CRM can be done by an AI assistant. You just need to integrate your recruitment tool with your Applicant Tracking System, and customize your workflows to automatically populate the ATS.

In the same way, writing job descriptions or follow-up emails for clients and candidates is a task you can delegate. Add an AI workmate to your meetings and ask it to prepare the follow-up communication for you, personalizing the content and maintaining your tone of voice.

If you’re comfortable delegating screening candidates and reaching out to potential candidates, this is another time-consuming task you could delegate.

AI voice assistants can call job seekers and pre-screen them, shortlisting only the top talent. As candidate sourcing and screening conversations happen in real time, you can always customize your workmate to pass over a candidate to you if they have questions the AI can’t answer directly.

This approach might seem risky, but it can give recruiters’ time back, while creating an engaging experience for candidates.

Of course, if you prefer to keep communication written, you can ask your AI recruiter colleague to reach out to candidates in your talent pool or in your ATS via text messaging. Make sure your chatbot knows enough about your company and role to answer questions candidates might have, and put some rules in place for things the AI can and cannot say.

In principle, any task that involves unstructured data can be delegated to gen AI, and the rest can be automated using regular automation software. The only parts of the hiring process we recommend not delegating are the interviews and intake calls, to keep the human touch and build rapport.

Automate repetitive tasks

Some tasks can be delegated to AI workmates, while others can simply be automated using regular automation workflows.

Scheduling interviews, for example, is something that can be done with or without AI. You might ask your AI assistant to always use a specific email template when reaching out to candidates, and to always include a link to your calendar, via Calendly or whatever other solution you’re using.

Some Applicant Tracking Systems and assessment platforms have this functionality built in though, so it’s up to you to decide what works best.

Next to scheduling, you can also automate the creation and engagement of your talent pool.

For example, AI recruitment software can be integrated with LinkedIn or other job boards to scan the social media platforms and find suitable candidates. The AI can pre-screen them, and add them to your candidate pool - even if they don’t feel your currently open roles.

From there, you can move the best quality candidates to the next stages of the process automatically, through ATS integrations.

An AI solution can also help with automatically engaging passive candidates in your talent pool, speeding up the talent acquisition process and increasing your team’s productivity. Just tell your AI assistant how many candidates to screen per day, and what to do next with the suitable candidates.

By delegating to AI, you’ll be able to quickly check tasks on your to-do list, while keeping the overview of the entire hiring process.

Develop a referral system

A less used but very effective tactic for increasing recruiter productivity is using referrals.

Reach out to both candidates and hiring managers within your network and encourage them to refer suitable leads. Provide them with a personalized link to make the referral process easy and trackable.

Motivate your network by offering a commission or bonus for every new hire that comes through a referral. This financial incentive can significantly increase the number of quality referrals you receive, and boost the effectiveness of your recruitment strategy.

If you’re part of an in-house recruiting team, use this referral strategy internally. Encourage current employees to refer potential candidates for open positions within the company. This not only helps fill positions faster but also fosters a culture of collaboration and engagement.

Establish a transparent system to link new hires to their referral sources. For example, add an option for submitting referrals directly in your job postings.

This allows anyone who sees the post to recommend qualified candidates from their own networks, expanding your reach in a targeted way.

Over to you

By implementing these strategies and using productivity tools such as time trackers, project management software, or AI assistants, you can end the multitasking and transform your hectic workday into a structured, efficient, and productive experience.

Stay organized, focus on what truly matters, and let technology empower you. Happy recruiting!