What To Do When Things Stop Working

Have you ever had something that used to work well lose its effectiveness? I have…..MANY TIMES!   

When things that used to work well produce diminished results, most people do one or more of the following things in this order:

1. First, they deny that there’s a problem until it’s almost impossible to deny.
2. Then they tell themselves that it’s only temporary. Things will bounce back to normal hopefully soon.
3. Then they acknowledge that it’s not temporary and decide that they just need to work harder to get the previous results.
4. And finally, they resign themselves to the new reality and accept that their results will be less favorable going forward.

Does this sound familiar?

There’s another option...discover a better way of doing things to achieve equal or better results than you did before. 

For example, many staffing and recruiting firms that used to get great results working on a contingency basis don’t anymore. Are you in that category? 

If so, you have two basic options:

1. Continue working contingency OR
2. Learn to work on a retained basis so that you get even better results than you did before

Whatever your situation is, you can either resign yourself to accepting things or choose to adapt and improve. The choice to adapt and improve is a recruiting industry best practice that will never become obsolete. Below is a simple five-step process you can use to move beyond your problems so that you can adapt and thrive:

1. Keep records of just a few simple metrics that get to the heart of your challenges. For example, if candidates you source are not responding, track the number of outreach attempts per response:
2. Track your metrics weekly and set regular times (at least monthly) to review and reflect on the results. Experience doesn’t make us smarter; experience plus reflection does.”
3. Make specific changes in your approach based on your insights (e.g., short outreach messages emphasizing selling points). Experiment with your approaches and measure the results of these experiments. This is the scientific method at work.
4. Talk to other people on your team and people in your industry to get their opinions and challenge your own. Industry mastermind groups and experts can be excellent resources for this.
5. Focus on continuous small improvements over time rather than sudden home run changes that will double your revenue in three months. The reality of success is more a compounding of constant improvements over time rather than a sudden epiphany.

If these steps don’t lead to the significant improvements you desire, it may be time to invest in yourself via training or a good recruiting coach who is focused on the specific issues you are facing. Resigning yourself to subpar results takes a big toll financially and emotionally. Choosing to learn, improve, and grow renews, reenergizes, and reinvigorates us. Could now be the time to make that choice?