QUESTION: Mike, we are more than halfway through the year, and I am nowhere near my goal. I am incredibly undisciplined and if I had to confess, unfocused. I have a goal of $300,000 for the year and am sitting at about $75,000. How do I fix that and unlock recruiting success?

The Importance of Tracking Your Recruiting Numbers Effectively

Unlock Recruiting Success: It is simple in theory and a little more complicated in execution. My gut feeling is you are not tracking your numbers. You do not have a roadmap to $300,000. An exact, specific, and precise path to $300,000 in billings exists. Think about the old Chinese proverb, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time to plant it is today.”

You obviously cannot go back to January and start over. I am not aware of any time travel device yet. However, we can say, okay, what has to be true for me to do $150,000, to get on track to do $150,000 in the second half of the year?

How to Set Realistic Recruiting Goals That Unlock Success

I will give you some pretty standard metrics for what our clients do with tremendous success when they follow the numbers. So, $150,000 is six placements, let’s say, at $25,000 a piece, the average fee, adjust accordingly.

Without knowing your numbers, I would just say, that is a placement a month to do $150,000. Then, on the other end of the spectrum of conservative – I do not care if it is phone or Zoom or face-to-face just the first time – that’s eight interviews to a placement, meaning you would need eight interviews in a month. Okay. So, I need 2 in a week, 2 x 4, probably a little bit less because there are 13 weeks in a quarter if we are going to get technical, but to keep it simple, two interviews in a week.

Unlock Recruiting Success by Understanding Candidate and Interview Metrics

Let’s say it takes 15 candidates for you to talk to get one to go on an interview. You have got to talk to 30 candidates a week or 6 per day. Then, of course, I do not know if you are all contingency. Let’s say you are 4:1 on the marketing side, 4 job orders to make one placement. You need a job order a week.

Even in this economy, we are finding, depending on the person, it is 10 to 15 marketing conversations – conversations, not email exchanges, email exchanges that lead to phone conversations – 15 conversations get a good search, even now, so that means three a day. If you are committed to doing $150,000 in 6 months to put you on a $300,000 run rate, you need to talk to 6 candidates and three hiring managers daily to give you 30 and 15 for the week.

How Tracking Your Recruiting Metrics Helps You Unlock Recruiting Success

What you will notice after about 4 weeks is that you will have your numbers. Maybe you are 17 marketing presentations to a job order. Maybe you are 10 marketing presentations to a job order—same thing on the candidate side.

What I always advise people to do, some people have decent records on this, is go back over your last 6 to 9 months and total up all your first-time interviews and total up all your invoices and do the math, meaning over the last year or last 6 to 9 months I have arranged 60 interviews, we have made 7 or 8 placements. Eight placements divided by 60 gets you in that realm of 7.5. Now I know I am 7.5 first-time interviews to a placement.

Unlock Recruiting Success With Focus and Accountability

The most significant transformation I see when people join our program and we put them into an accountability group for a fast ramp-up and have a changing program is that (1) when they are focused, they are shocked at how many people they can talk to in a day, and (2) how much more fun they have when they talk to more people in a day, and (3) knowing, because we reverse-engineered their numbers based on their goal, at the end of the day, they know when they are done.

This person in this example would be saying: Did I talk to 6 candidates? Did I talk to 3 prospects? Yes. Even if they were all hang-ups, you hit your goal for the day. It is literally that simple. We have never not seen people that execute the numbers that are the right metrics for them not get the financial number they want, or greater.

Whenever You’re Ready… Here Are 4 Ways I Can Help You Grow Your Recruitment Business:

1. Grab a free copy of my Retainer Blueprint

It’s the exact, step-by-step process of getting clients to give you money upfront. https://get.therecruiteru.com/lm​​

2. Join the Recruiter Think Tank and connect with firm owners who are scaling, too. It’s our Facebook community where smart recruiters learn to make more money and get more freedom. https://www.facebook.com/groups/there​​…

3. Join me at our next event

3x a year, I run a 3-day virtual intensive, sharing the 9 key areas that drive a 7-figure search firm. Click here to check out the dates of our upcoming event. https://get.therecruiteru.com/live

4. Work with me and my team privately

And if you ever want to get some 1:1 help, we can jump on the phone for a quick call and brainstorm how to get you more leads, more placements, and more time. https://get.therecruiteru.com/scale-now​