£15,000 Per Month Under a Recruiter’s Nose: A Success Story.

There are many free ways to improve recruiter billings, including improved management, setting better activity targets, AI recruiter coaching based around transcripts of Teams, Zoom or Hangout meetings or call recordings, weekly micro training sessions run by managers, one-to-one mentoring and more.

But four months ago, one of our top RecruitmentTraining.com trainers, discovered £15,000 per month that was sitting inside a recruitment company. That’s £180,000 per annum, or perhaps £500,000+ over the next 3 years from 1 coaching session.

The Initial Consultation:

Our client had hired a 26-year-old trainee with the same industry background as their niche. The young man was smart, hard-working and hungry. But he did not bill in the first three months. We asked the client how hard-working the trainee was, and the client replied that he was ‘first in and last out, hardly took a lunch break’ and was 100% focused.

1-to-1 Insights:

We then met with the trainee for 45 minutes and quizzed him about his attitude, hunger and work ethic. Satisfied with that, we drilled into the reasons for the lack of success. It was clear that the recruiter was using ineffective cold calling techniques and was weak at objection handling. He did not attempt to close for client meetings nor was he asking for candidate referrals in the best way possible. He was also not interviewing candidates in three dimensions – i.e.

• How good is the candidate?
• What other candidates can I source from my candidate during this interview?
• What new business information can I source from my candidate during this interview?

The client had purchased a branded version of the RecruitmentTraining.com recruitment-sale training manual and he had taken the time to tailor the manual to his business. Upon asking the trainee if he had read the manual, he replied: “What’s that?”

Our client had invested in training materials from RecruitmentTraining.com and other providers but wasn’t organised enough and forgot to give these resources to his new trainee. Instead, as a busy billing director, he reverted to so-called on the job training (which isn’t really training). When we pointed this out to him, he asked us to help with the set-up of his Learning Management System induction program, which we did. Within this, we added chapters of the training manual in addition to our learning resources plus the client’s own materials.

Whilst this was being set up, we gave the training manual to the trainee and explained the value to him.

Remarkable Results:

In the next three months, the trainee billed £45,000. Our client said that he had a printed copy of the training manual on his desk and that he saw him pretty much every lunchtime, reading the manual and making notes whilst eating a sandwich. In addition, the client began running micro-training sessions every week to sharpen one skill per week for the trainee and other staff members.

Our client told us that he had “learned a sharp lesson”. He had been on the verge of firing the trainee only to discover £15,000 per month (or £500,000+ over the next 3 years) was sitting under his nose in his own business.

Conclusion:

Are you or your managers making the same kind of mistake?

Not every recruiter will respond as positively as the young man in this case study, but some will. Managers should understand training resources that they have at their disposal and, as they know their staff better than anyone, they should be made responsible for improving the skills of the recruiters.

Moreover, if you invest in external training solutions, either allocate some of your own internal resource or seek some outside help to maximise your investment.