Recruiters are busy, and time is precious, so productivity is essential. The problem is that a lot of us confuse working more (longer hours) with working harder, which doesn’t always equal efficiency or success. That’s where working smarter comes into play. 

With some reviewing, planning, and prioritizing, you can move candidates through the pipeline faster and create a better experience for them and yourself. Here are a few helpful tips to help you spend less time working and more time connecting with candidates. 

1. Plan your goals before you dial the phone or sign in to Zoom. The first rule of time management is to measure what you do in terms of results, NOT activity. Wouldn’t you prefer to talk with 10 candidates who are ideal for an opportunity versus having conversations with 100 candidates who don’t fit the bill? Plan ahead and you’re already working smarter, not harder.
2. Tell candidates why you think they’re a great fit for an opportunity. It may sound obvious, but helping a candidate understand what you see in them – whether it’s their experience, training, or past ties to an area – will help them better understand what you’re looking for. If you’re off base, it gives them a chance up front to correct you (or steer you in a different direction).
3. Standardize your evaluation process. Do you know what makes up your ideal candidate? Is everyone on your team in agreement? Don’t wait until you’re ready to make an offer to figure out that your criterion for potential candidates is different than what others have in mind.
4. Grade your candidates. You might think a candidate is ideal for a position based on their experience and training, but are they “ideal” when it comes to interviews and calls? You’re not going to place a candidate if you can’t ever reach them. Assign a value to certain behaviors (always on time, never on time, quick to communicate, never returns a call or email, etc.), and the whole process will be quicker (and easier) on you. 
5. Plan your day before it begins. Best-selling time management author, Brian Tracy, says one minute of planning at the start saves ten minutes of work later. Knowing which tasks need to be done before you even begin will keep you from getting stuck. Tracy also makes this great point: “Look at time management as a vehicle that can take you from where you are today, to wherever you want to be in the future.”  
6. Do your most important task first. Or as Mark Twain once put it, “eat a live frog every morning.” What Twain meant is that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that the task you dreaded most has already been accomplished. 
7. If you’re using Doximity Talent Finder to find and recruit ideal candidates, you should check out the slides from our recent webinar: Work Smarter, Not Harder: How to Use Talent Finder Efficiently. You’ll learn how to save time by utilizing job templates as well as how to run targeted candidate searches to narrow your candidate pool more efficiently.

Recruiting is all about connections. The human element is how you and your organization (or the organization you’re recruiting for) make the biggest impact – and how candidates leave their best impression. When you work smarter, the process is better for everyone. 

If you’re not using Doximity Talent Finder to discover candidates, post jobs, and more, we’d love to give you access to over 80% of physicians now on Doximity. Grab your demo today!