Learn how to plan your perfect workday, including being effective vs. being efficient, working your recruiting desk like a retail store, "10 x 10s" and "process calls", following your energy, times when a plan itself isn't enough, and rewarding yourself with a little snack.

Discover what sets ThinkingAhead apart, hear stories from recruiters, and browse opportunities by clicking here.

Hi, and welcome to The Talent Trade. This is

Stephanie Maas, partner with ThinkingAhead Search. Today we

are going to talk about probably one of the absolute most boring

topics that we could possibly ever talk about. However, it is

probably one of the absolute most important topics. We hear

it thinking ahead believes that there are four pillars to

building a successful search desk, recruiting, marketing,

managing the head game, and planning of all of those without

a doubt, planning is the most boring of all. However, for me

personally, it is probably come my secret to success. And some

folks have mixed feelings about planning, especially recruiters.

I know a lot of folks that love the idea of, hey, my day will

tell me what I need to do. I don't need a plan. I hear that

often. Or I hear Hey, when you're overly planned, it

doesn't allow flexibility. And I'm in search because I need the

flexibility. I get it. I probably have heard every single

reason why you shouldn't plan or be playing to the nth degree,

which I personally believe in. But let me share with you some

other folks who would disagree and see if you can't buy in

after these quotes. By the way, if you can't buy in after these

quotes, please stop the broadcast and move on about your

day because the rest of it isn't going to help very much. All

right. First, quote, failing to plan is planning to fail Alan

like it. It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

Eleanor Roosevelt. Planning without action is futile. action

without planning is fatal. Cornelius Fichtner plans are

nothing. Planning is everything. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Dreaming,

after all, is a form of planning. Gloria Steinem. This

is personally one of my favorites. Never begin the day

until it is finished. On paper. Jim Rome. By failing to prepare,

you are preparing to fail. Ben Franklin. Setting a goal is not

the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving

it. And staying with that plan. Tom Landry. If you don't know

where you are going, you will end up someplace else. Yogi

Berra a goal without an action plan is a daydream, Nathaniel

brand that someone is sitting in the shade today, because someone

planted a tree a long time ago, Warren Buffett. It wasn't

raining when Noah built the ark, Howard rough plan your work for

today. And every day, then work your plan. Margaret Thatcher, a

clear vision backed by definite plans, gives you have a

tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power. Brian Tracy.

Okay, hopefully those are enough to inspire you to think wow,

maybe there is something to this idea of planning. If not, again,

I would hit end here and move along about your day. If it is

interesting, or if even before all those great quotes. This was

something that you feel, hey, this truly does help me. But I'm

either out of practice, I need help buttoning up on how to play

on my day, or Gosh, I'm totally bought in. But I have no idea

where to start. Let's spend the next 1015 minutes and talk about

planning the perfect day. So a couple of things as it relates

to planning the perfect day. And again, of course, this is for

folks in the executive search business. I heard one time that

there's a difference between being effective and being

efficient. being effective is getting done what you intended

to get done being efficient is doing it in a timely manner.

That is our goal behind planning. We are trying to be

both effective and efficient. So the backdrop to planning the

perfect day really comes from two main theories. One is the

Steven Covey time management. It's working your four

quadrants, important and urgent and the quadrants that come

along with that to get the most out of your active workday. And

then also to getting the most out of your inactive workday, or

the times when it's more administrative, or behind the

scenes etc. I heard many, many years ago, an analogy that

talked about working your desk as if you were working a retail

store. Most of us don't make calls at two in the morning or

six in the morning or 10 o'clock at night at least we probably

shouldn't be. So instead we work our desk with regular normal

business hours, whether that's eight to six or nine to four

personally That's my preferred schedule, whatever the case may

be, those are the hours where we are, quote unquote, open for

business, we are actively seeking business, what you do

before you quote unquote, open your store, that's all your

inactive activity, those are all the things you do to set up to

be open during the day, we're going to talk in great detail

what those activities actually are. But that's where a lot of

this is coming from is just doing the things that you should

be doing them when you should be doing them. The second

philosophy behind this planning is working in time box, there's

been a ton of study that shows that when you batch like

activities, you become more effective and more efficient. So

instead of literally bouncing around, and I think about you

might remember it from when you were a kid, you go to a looks

like a gumball machine. But instead of being gum, it's

those, you know, little rubber balls, and they are super

inexpensive, 25 cents, maybe, but kids absolutely love them.

Because they are super, super bouncy. And when you let them

off, they literally will bounce all over the place for minutes

on end, when you're not playing. And that is often what our day

looks like. What I'm going to encourage you to do is imagine

you're trying to hit every surface of this small room. And

instead of just walking in and throwing the ball, you

continuously aim in one section until every section is covered,

then you move on to the next. Now with that being said, we

don't work for endless hours without taking a break, we

really do typically have about depending on the person, a 45

minute to 120 minute span where we can actually stay focused. So

your time blocks, I encourage you to play in your time blocks

in one or two hour increments whatever brings you the most

focus and efficiency. So let's dive in. With those two

philosophies. What does the perfect day for a recruiter look

like? I'm going to use ours. But again, feel free to adjust as

what works best for you. So here are thinking ahead, one of the

things we like to do is jump right into our day, get on the

phone as fast as possible. To start our day between 8am and

10am, we are committed to something called a 10 by 10,

which is 10 calls by 10am. Doesn't matter what these calls

are, if you'd like to jump in marketing calls are hard for

you. So you do your 10 marketing calls first thing in the

morning, great. For a lot of us we like to kind of ease into our

day and cold calling isn't how we do that. So we set up what we

call mini calls. Those would be things like delivering offers

follow ups from offers that were delivered the day before, we can

also schedule in there prep calls, follow up calls,

reference check calls, warm calls, whatever the case may be.

But the idea is those first two hours of the day, we immediately

jump on the phone and start to create some momentum for the

day. That's from eight to 10. Then from 10 to 12, you have a

batch of either recruiting calls, or marketing calls, it

doesn't matter which it is you follow your energy, whatever

serves you best. What if you're doing recruiting calls, they

need to be recruiting calls that are dedicated to one search. So

you're not then making 10 or 15 calls or 20 calls on five

different searches. But rather, Hey, these are all going to be

recruiting calls for search ABC, then from noon to one. And I'm a

huge believer in this huge. from noon to one, you walk away. This

for me personally is a great time to go work out. By now I've

been on the phone for almost four hours, I need to mentally

disengage so I don't burn out. I need to use a different part of

my brain. Again, for me, it's a great time to go work out

whether it's to get outside and take a walk, go lift some

weights, whatever the case may be whatever works best for you.

But get up get away from your desk and go do something else.

Now sometimes I'll have people say well, hey, how about I get

up and just go watch a training video. Okay, maybe. But what I

really like you to do is completely disengage from the

day, your brain needs a little bit of arrest for you to have

the strong afternoon that you want. If you're super crunched

on time and you can only do this for 30 minutes. That is

perfectly fine. But this is a practice that if you get into

getting up halfway through your day, walking away using a

different part of your brain. You will find the rewards for

that in the afternoon are incredible. So walk away, new

new one. Come back. One day Three, again, recruiting calls

or marketing calls. And they're batched, just like the morning.

So if you're doing recruiting calls again, or for the first

time, again, they're just calls related to one specific search,

you're not calling different people for different searches.

If you're doing marketing calls, and you need to organize those

by types of folks, you're calling on types of

organizations, batch them according to geography, whatever

the case may be, think about trying to be effective and

efficient, then from three to five, this is where quite

frankly, my energy starts to wane a little bit. Based on this

schedule, even though I took a midday break, I have had the

opportunity to put six hours worth of phone work into my day.

So the idea of spending another couple hours in, quote unquote,

cold call or slightly warm call, my energy is just low. So what I

do instead from three to five, is we suggest that you set up

what we call process calls. Now, if your energy really peaks in

the afternoon, I suggest you move this to the morning. But

know at the end of the day, you should have a number of calls

and a phone call goal. That again, if you want to move this

to the morning and make more calls in the afternoon, because

that serves your energy better, I'm totally fine with it. It

just sets up a different level of discipline, so that your day

never gets away from you without having to put in somewhere

between 35 and 60 calls a day. So what a process calls if I

process calls or any calls that you can schedule that somehow

involve the process of the actual recruiting. So if you are

going to be pitching a potential client on working with you,

that's when you schedule it in the afternoon. During this

process time. If you're presenting NPC candidates, this

is a great time to do it. If you are doing preps debriefs,

candidate profiles, whatever the case may be, but it's a call

that you can schedule for me, that is a process call. And

again, I set that out from three to five. Now, if you're newer in

the business, you may not have the luxury of two hours a day of

process calls, no problem, you're going to have to keep

making regular cold calls or quote unquote, warm calls during

that time. And that's okay. In the beginning, we are really

trying to do as much outreach as possible. So that six months, a

year, two years, five years down the road, you have worked your

business in such a way that you can and do set up two hours of

process calls most days of every week that you work, then from

five to six, it's planning. Now I often get folks say, Well,

hey, I don't need to plan for an hour. And I'm going to challenge

you on that planning is a couple of different things. It is

absolutely setting up the next day, not just in terms of what

you're going to do. But do you know who you're going to call?

Do you have their contact information? If you need to call

50 people the next day? Do you know who you're going to call

when you're going to call them and what number you're going to

call that sourcing? If you don't know who you're going to call

then you need to do so sourcing? To me sourcing is a part of

planning. Do you know who you're going to market to the next day?

Do you need to do any research on those folks? To me planning

involves all of those different things. I also like to take a

couple minutes out of my planning to look back on my day.

Hey, what did I accomplish today? Where are the winds? I

also like to look for hated anything not go as I hoped it

would? What can I learn from that? What can I do in the

future to set that up? I do believe from an anxiety

perspective, you will be a better person to whoever you see

after work your loved ones, family friend support group,

whatever the case may be, when you can book end your day. Now,

sometimes the nature of the beast is we do have to make

calls at night. Or you know, we might have to do some sourcing

after hours, whatever the case may be, that is fine. But the

goal is to be able to work your day in a way that that is

severely limited. Again, based on this schedule working eight

to six, you have an opportunity for eight hours of phone time.

If you need more than eight hours of phone time to be

successful, please call me, I'd really like to talk about ways

that we can make you a little bit more efficient. So you don't

have to work quite so much. I'm not saying you may don't need

that time to do everything you need to do. But I'm saying if

you can't get in 35 to 60 calls a day and eight hours of phone

time. We're stalling out somewhere we need to address

that. For the rest of us. Eight hours a day of being quote

unquote, open for business is plenty. And in fact, for a lot

of us We get really good at this. And we're so well planned,

that we can accomplish in six or seven hours what most folks need

eight or nine hours. And again, that's where efficiency and

effectiveness comes in when you work a consistent plan. Now,

with that being said, a couple things to be mindful of, you

know, part of it is just simply doing the planning, it'll be

amazing how much more disciplined you will be and how

much more you will get done when your plan. But we can't be

naive. Having a plan isn't going to be enough. We also need a

system to help us accomplish and stay dedicated to the plan. So a

couple pointers on that, number one, eliminate distractions, if

you every time, your email things that you have a new

email, if that pulls you off your plan, turn it off. I have

really over the last several months gotten to this point

where I felt like I was just so attached to my phone, it would

freak me out to leave it in another room. Finally, I just

had this realization, you know what, if someone needs to get a

hold of me in an emergency situation, I'll just know it.

People know how to get to me. Most of the time, though, I

don't even know what the circumstances I mean, unless

you're an on call doctor, they're gonna call you to save

lives, or first responder or you know, something in that genre,

most of us can step away from our phone for 15 3060 minutes at

a time and be just fine. So if your phone is your distraction,

then go do something else with it, put it on silent, turn it

over whatever the case may be. If scrolling LinkedIn is your

distraction, then shut it down, take it off of your desktop,

whatever the case may be, but know what your distractions are,

and do your best to eliminate them. Another way to accomplish

this is being well organized so that when you launch into a time

block, you're already set up. If you need water, you've got water

by your desk, if you need a list of names and phone numbers,

you've got that ready to go. The idea is when you're in these

time blocks, you have a get off the phone, get on the phone, get

off the phone, get on the phone type of mentality. And it just

gives you a little bit of hustle. Another suggestion is

some accountability. If you're new to planning, and you need a

little bit of help to stay committed to your plan, if you

work well with your leader or manager, get them involved, give

them access to your calendar, show them what you plan on

accomplishing the next day, ask them to hold you accountable,

not in a micromanagement kind of way, but a supportive way. If

your manager is not gonna be the person for you for that, but

you've got a peer or outside the office as someone in your

support group. Hey, I really need to follow my plan tomorrow.

At the end of the day, would you please ask me, Hey, how did your

plan go today? Whatever it might be that you need accountability,

that helps tremendously. And then the last one. And I heard

this in the last couple of weeks, and I thought it was a

really cool thing. It said, when you're trying something new, you

will not continue it unless you can see or feel positive

reinforcement pretty much right away. So I like to be committed

with rewards. Now in my time blocks, they're pretty much back

to back. But I may need to take a five minute break in between

each call block, that's perfectly fine. Each call block

is two hours long. If it ends up being an hour and 55 minutes, I

can easily accomplish what I need to accomplish during that

time. So for me, I'm very food motivated. And for my health, it

serves me well to eat small little things throughout the

day. So quite frankly, a lot of my rewards are if I have a good

time block, I get to eat a snack with that. I'm also a big water

drinker. By the way, I'm not like the super health nut.

There's just certain things I got to do here. But I drink a

lot of water during the day. So guess what, a lot of my breaks,

my rewards are crazy as it sounds, I get up and get go to

the bathroom. I know that sounds ridiculous. But sometimes that's

what it is. For me. Sometimes it's responding to a text, I

really try not to let those rewards take more than five

minutes, because then it becomes a distraction. But what ever

does it for you. I know folks that will work really hard for

you know, two hours and then they do a set of push ups to get

ready for the next called Walk. Or you know, they go take the

dog for a walk, which again, not a 20 minute walk, but a five or

10 minute walk just to get outside, get some fresh air,

whatever it is that works for you. Be committed and use

rewards. So you get that instant feel good about what you're

doing. If accountability is a I'm going to text somebody and

tell them I just rocked those calls. And you know I've told

them hey, I'm going to text you text me back a thumbs up or you

know, celebration, whatever they whatever you need, but make sure

you have those rewards setup as well. You don't immediately send

to your brain positive reinforcement for your

commitment to your goals.