Coaching Recruiters. Doing your job while teaching them their job!
This is the third blog in my series on great coaching for managers of recruiter teams.
Last week I expanded on the importance of ‘Live Feedback’ as a coaching tool, and today we turn our attention to the sadly under-utilised ‘Real Life’ approach to consultant coaching.
One of the major learnings for me about effective coaching is that telling people how to do things is only fractionally as successful as showing them how it’s done. Neither is as good as having consultants actually try the task to perfect it.
Real life situational coaching is best done on an individual basis, and can involve simply sitting down next to the consultant, listening to the way they make phone calls and providing feedback and guidance.
Occasionally, it is important to reverse the roles, and you can make the phone calls, allowing the consultant to evaluate the way you are approaching the task.
An excellent example of this type of coaching is where you have a consultant whose approach is selling a job to candidates over the phone is lacklustre or generally poor. Instead of lecturing the consultant on how to sell the features of a job to a candidate, you pick up the phone, call that consultant’s candidate yourself, while the consultant is sitting there, and brief the candidate on the job. It only takes a few minutes and the learning is substantial. And you earn huge credibility by actually doing the job ‘live’. And of course you are being productive, because you are executing a task that could well lead to revenue.
You are doing the job while teaching the job! It’s beautiful, beautiful thing.
Where possible, make your own recruitment consulting visible to the team, so they can learn from real situations as they occur. Instead of locking yourself in a room when you have to make those difficult phone calls (e.g. fee dispute, counter offer) gather your team around you. Explain the issue, brainstorm with the group how best to tackle it… and then make the call right there, in the spotlight. Yes, its nerve wracking. But the learning is intense, and so is the respect you garner but putting yourself out there.
You will certainly never be accused of not ‘walking the talk’.
Real Life. Nothing like it when it comes to coaching recruiters to greatness.
- Posted by Greg Savage
- On July 13, 2010
- 7 Comments
7 Comments