As a physician recruiting agency, we have the usual challenge of any recruiting firm—serving our two different constituencies — candidates and clients — and the challenge of working in a specialized industry, healthcare, which has detailed credentialing requirements that vary based on the state, private versus government, and client to client. Additionally, our agency recruits for six high-demand specialties, each with its own set of expertise and requirements.

To help serve our two customer segments, we divided our account executives into two roles: marketers, who deal directly with clients at healthcare facilities, and recruiters, who work with physicians. Also, each of our recruiters and marketers staffs for a single medical specialty.

About seven years ago, we developed our Research Consulting group, a training program for account executives, to accommodate our unique organizational structure. I took over the RC group about five years ago. I started at the company as an account executive, and I had a passion for sales training. When the opportunity to manage and develop my own sales team presented itself, I was very enthusiastic about it. I am an example of the various career-path options that are available to all associates within our organization. This process guides associates through different stages of their career in a very organic manner by giving them the support and training they need along the way.

Filling a Need

Our objective for the RC program was to take associates with all sorts of backgrounds — previous recruiters or not, sales or non-sales, healthcare focus or not, experienced or straight out of school — and prepare them to work with healthcare clients and physicians in our specialty focus areas.

Aside from its official role as a lead-generating department, the RC group is essentially an incubator for the specialty divisions. Strictly speaking, our formal training program lasts for only a week, but in fact, the RC training and learning are ongoing until the new associate moves to either a recruiting or marketing position in one of our specialty divisions, based on the employee’s readiness and the teams’ needs.

Initially, we only made a stay in the RC group required for people without prior experience in the field. We’ve since made it mandatory for all associates working in either marketing or recruiting. I’ll explain how we arrived at that decision later.

The Program in a Nutshell

During a new associate’s first week, he or she participates in the formal training program, which includes a combination of classroom teaching, shadowing, and hands-on learning. In other words, we target all three learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. They spend mornings in classroom training covering a wide range of topics including traditional sales training, healthcare, and specialty-specific training and database training.

In the afternoons, we use peer teaching by pairing up new RCs with experienced marketers and recruiters to shadow. That’s when they have an opportunity to observe the practical application of what they learned in theory in the morning. We also allow new RCs to observe existing RCs at work. Their feedback is great because the senior RCs have recently experienced what the new RC is just learning. Problems like overcoming objections that veteran marketers and recruiters just do by second nature are very fresh in RCs’ minds, so they can be very helpful peer teachers as well. We make it a point to expose new RCs to associates with different sales styles so they can see that there’s more than one way to approach a selling scenario.

Another unique aspect of our program is that we don’t hire people into marketing or recruiting roles; instead, we expose them to both. The two roles are each unique and appeal to people for different reasons. We’ve found that once they’ve gone through the program and are ready to be promoted, they’ve really become comfortable with one of the two roles, mainly because they had a large part in deciding how to shape it. This approach is one of the reasons why our RC program is so effective.

Our RC program’s success is evident in a lot of different ways, but one very important benefit is our employee retention rate. We have one of the best retention rates in the industry at 87 percent. That goes a long way with clients and physicians because they value the relationships that they build with our associates over the years.

Continual Feedback

An important ingredient in the success of our program is a continual feedback process in both directions. We receive anonymous feedback from new employees at two points. In the first feedback survey, at the end of the first week of employment, we ask them whether the training materials and presentations were effective, whether or not they felt comfortable asking questions, whether the training prepared them to do their job, and so forth. After about a month, they take a second survey where they tell us whether we need to put more emphasis on some topics, less on others, or add new topics altogether to the training. The beauty of our feedback process is that we don’t have to wait until the end of the year to make those changes. We can implement changes immediately. Each time we conduct the training program it’s different. We make tweaks to the training literally every time we give it.

For instance, we started getting feedback that one of our modules was not as helpful as the others, so we opted to turn it into an e-learning lesson that RCs can take on their own time. That way we freed up our time to put more emphasis on the modules that were most valuable.

Our RCs receive regular feedback also. We give them formal and self-paced exercises. We listen in on their calls. We monitor the number of calls they make and their talk time. And we report on the amount of gross profit they helped book.

The ROI of Training

As mentioned earlier, we decided to make the RC program mandatory for newbies as well as veterans. A little over a year after I took over the RC group, we conducted an analysis comparing the performance of associates who had gone through the RC program and those who had not. We found that RC graduates produced more gross profit as a whole, and they ramped up a lot faster than the non-RCs. Our RC program paid for itself in spades.

As a result of this analysis, our training program has grown and flourished. In addition to the RC group, we have ongoing training throughout the year for all our associates through our Lunch and Learn program and other training offered by our parent company. Each associate has a personalized training plan tailored to his or her career path. And we’ve recently begun a mentoring program, which pairs our vice presidents with directors whose interests and career goals complement each other. Later, those directors will mentor senior associates.

There’s a tangible ROI from training. I see examples of it walking around the company every single day.

This year will mark my fourteenth year in the staffing business.  They say time flies when you are having fun, and I feel lucky to be able to make a living helping people find rewarding opportunities.  But had it not been for some wise advice from my father, and a recruiter I never met in person, I may have never landed in this business.

It all started after I graduated from college in 1994. Almost all of my friends immediately jumped into outside sales. I had a degree in Communications and Journalism, so while I was not sure if sales was for me, I knew one thing – I wanted to be successful.  I knew salespeople typically made good money and I definitely did not want to be short stacked when going out with my friends on the weekend. So, I gave it a shot, unfortunately selling one of the hardest products imaginable – copiers. Not just copiers, American-made copiers during a time when the Japanese were manufacturing them for 20% less consistently.

Recruiters called into our office all the time, so after two years of staying employed but always being under quota, I was called one day by a sales recruiter in Philadelphia about a job in the rental uniform business. Not a sexy line of business, but the recruiter had some great things to say about the position and the company. I will never forget – after my interview with her client, the recruiter called me back and said, “My client thought you were ‘The Man.’” Remember, I was struggling selling copiers and still wondered if a career in sales was even in the cards for me. Talking to her was what I needed – she made me feel confident and I ended up taking that job. Turns out my experience with her was the only good thing that came out of those two years of my life with that job.

Once I realized that selling dirty uniforms was not my thing, I had a great conversation with my father to seek some guidance for my career. He had spent his entire career in Human Resources, and his specialty was coming into new corporations and building entire HR departments. I remember him interviewing people in the evenings at home and talking about recruiting. When I spoke with him, he advised me that there were recruiters that he used in the past who loved what they did, but that it was also a sales-oriented position where the harder you work, the more it paid off.

Bingo! I stopped just looking for a sales position and specifically sought out recruiting firms. My first two interviews were awful, but thank goodness for an ad in the paper (this was in 1997) for a Technical Recruiter. After two interviews, my career was born and I was on the phones. But that was just the beginning.

I had pretty much failed in my first two jobs and while I was excited, I was also very unsure that I was cut out for it – would this be my third job that failed? It was November of 1997 and I was getting married to my high school sweetheart in May of 1998. She was a nurse working nights and had made a lot more money than me. She often called herself the breadwinner to be funny, but I really wondered if that would always be the case.

I was determined to make things happen with this career change, and really loved trying to help candidates find rewarding positions. It was very different from product sales. It took me six months, almost to the day, to place my first consultant. However, it just happened to be the weekend of my wedding. As if that wasn’t good enough, I will never forget at the reception, while I was greeting family and friends, one of my co-workers who was also there came up to me and said, “You did it again, they want to hire your candidate!” Don’t tell my wife, but this is one of my fondest memories of my wedding. Placement #1 and #2, all in the same weekend! Imagine how I felt when my boss called me on my honeymoon in Jamaica to tell me in I was “on fire” and another one of my candidates being hired by our client. Placement #3! There was a rush that I hope others feel when these things happen, and I still get that same rush when it happens today. It is what keeps me going.

I now work a desk in addition to hiring and training recruiters.  I love seeing them go through the same process I did.  People who were once were waiters, bartenders, temps, and mediocre sales reps are now successful recruiters earning six figures at a minimum and, above all, are happy with what they are doing because they are helping others.  I appreciate the failures and relish the successes. In my interviews with them, I tell them that this will be the wildest roller coaster ride they have ever been on. Half of them will be yelling to get off, and the other half will be begging for more. I’ve watched the latter of those flourish to become great recruiters, and I have loved seeing the success. There are no doubt days that I wonder what other things I could be doing, but I always go back to those two failed jobs, that recruiter in Philadelphia, and my father’s advice, and know that I have found the career for me.

What about you? What got you into this industry, and what has kept you in it?

“…but Mike, I don’t have enough time,” says the anonymous, struggling owner with about $400,000 in office revenue as we discuss strategies he agrees he needs to implement to grow his business.

This is a common lament among the many owners I coach and mentor.

Let’s face it: As recruiters, we are salespeople. If you own your own firm, you are an entrepreneur. Is there no more perfect recipe for short attention spans, lack of planning, and focused effort?

Here’s the big problem.

Most of us (me included when NOT planned) REACT to incoming calls, issues with our employees, incoming emails (this one is huge), the shortage of staples in our office, etc. in the MOMENT instead of having a system of handling these issues.

When we react, we diffuse our attention. When we react, we are by default unable to be PRO-active.

Here are some ideas on how to fix that.

1. Before you leave the office Friday night (or if you prefer, on Sunday night), invest 30 to 45 minutes and answer the following questions:

• What do I need to accomplish next/this week?
• What is the best use of my time this week?
• What will I start to do on Monday and what time?

2. What is the payoff of the above to complete the above activities?

• What can be delegated? (Tip: if you are managing your database, your computers, ordering office supplies or doing data entry, delegate these tasks to an assistant or hire someone part time to do them.)
• Train someone to do those tasks like research that take up much of your time.

When asking the above questions you need to answer them in the context of the vision for your company and your annual business plan. Are the answers to the above questions moving you closer to your annual goals or not? If not, why are you doing them? You would be surprised how many times I ask that question and get the “deer in the headlights” look and response of “I don’t know!”

This is what being proactive requires. It REQUIRES you to look at your annual plan (some of you may need to write one first!) and chip away at the objectives one week and one day at a time.

But where do you find the time when your recruiters are asking questions, candidates are calling and you need to order staples to keep the office running?

Follow these SIX simple steps and you will add two to four hours of productivity EVERY Day:

1. First, track a week of your time in a notebook in 15-minute blocks to see where your major time leaks are. Begin to reduce these the following week.
2. Schedule two or three hours of strategic initiative time into your weekly calendar in one-hour blocks. Don’t answer the phone or take questions from your recruiters during that time. Also, this is key, CLOSE YOUR EMAIL application during this time. Most calls, employee issues, emails, or office supply orders can wait at least an hour to be handled.
3. If you run your own desk, have uninterrupted phone blocks in your day to make your calls. Again, no questions from employees during this time. For the truly proactive out there, close your email for at least ninety minutes during your call time.
4. Put office training and development on your calendar one to two weeks in advance. I like to do this first thing at 8 or 8:30 am for about 45 minutes three days a week.
5. Schedule “open time” in your calendar every day to handle the unanticipated. It could be 11:30 to 12 and 3:30 to 4:30. This does NOT mean you sit there and do nothing if there are no emails or employee questions. You can continue to make your calls, etc. but you allow interruptions from your employees, vendors, and emails without feeling like you are falling behind.
6. To avoid the temptation to be taken off track with one of those random thoughts that crosses your mind while in one of your focused time blocks, keep a simple, small note pad on your desk. When one of these thoughts cross your mind and it is NOT part of the task you are focusing on, write it down to do during lunch or one of your open time slots.

In summation, stay focused!

If you are a billing manager I bet you make MORE phone calls, have MORE connect time, and MORE openings than having traditionally scheduled days where every hour contains bits of every task.

I also bet by focusing on days and weeks as blocks of time as it relates to your business plan you will actually get to some of those strategic things that you have been meaning to get to. I challenge you to implement this in your day, starting NOW!

The Fordyce Letter recently chatted with Tory Johnson about her Spark & Hustle conference, scheduled for July 29-31 in Atlanta.

As the CEO of Women For Hire and Workplace Contributor on ABC’s Good Morning America, she has a significant following among career management professionals. She is offering Fordyce Letter readers who may need help turning their ideas into cash a discount to attend (use code FORDYCE to save $200; leave a note that you’ve registered so she can flag it for her staff and she can include you in the after-hours get-togethers).

Tell me more about the agenda and “inner circle” of experts. Also, is this designed mostly for female business owners?

While the contents of the three-day conference would apply equally to men and women, our market is primarily women. Don’t get me wrong, we love men — and they’re welcome to register to attend — but truthfully it’s largely a women’s event by default!

The core focus of the agenda is turning passion and potential into PROFIT. The current and aspiring small business owners and solopreneurs I meet are generally really good at what they do. Where they fall short is how to SELL their services. How to PROMOTE their businesses. How to EXPAND their platforms. This isn’t an event to come discover your passion. Our attendees will arrive knowing exactly what their passion is—that is their SPARK. And they’ll leave having gained the tools and tactics for turning that passion to profit—that’s the HUSTLE part! It’s all about making money right now.

Readers of The Fordyce Letter are motivated by becoming or maintaining their status as “Big Billers”; along those lines, what tactics do you teach at these events to MAKE MONEY NOW?

That’s my kind of crowd!

In no particular order, attendees will learn how to build their digital identities, how to overcome sales objections, how to write compelling copy that sells without being sleazy, how to generate media coverage that’s for profit not just for vanity, how to form complementary alliances, how to generate multiple revenue streams to enhance the core business, and so much more. All of these things can be put to work Monday morning after the event.

Without being stereotypical, it seems that women are better multi-taskers – but does multi-tasking also equate to increased earnings? Or do you advise women to become single-taskers for financial success? How?

Being all over the map doesn’t usually equate to financial success. Sometimes when we focus on too many things, we don’t give the required depth and attention to the one or two things that can make us the most money.

Pause every so often and go deep. Get rid of the stuff that’s sucking your time and not generating any money. Long TO-DO lists never get done. Having 12 priorities means you really have no priorities. Focus on the top 1 or 2 or even 3 — and give those your all.

How is it that in this economy, you have found a way to expand business and serve people who have been victims of this economy and job market?

We’re having record growth in our business because we’re adaptable and nimble to change. That’s the benefit of small business, but you have to act — you can’t hide your head in fear.

Recent government stats show that Americans are starting more than 500,000 small businesses a month. Even though I’ve spent 11 years focused on employees, in the last year I’ve been bombarded by women asking for advice on how to start and grow a small business. I turned $5,000 into a multimillion-dollar venture — and many women come to me for advice on how to do just that. Or even how to turn $5,000 into $50,000 or $500,000. So we developed a series of programs to help them do just that. We have a high-level series that’s a significant financial investment for attendees who want customized intensive help, and then there’s this Spark & Hustle conference that’s highly affordable no matter what stage or income level for that business owner.

When Women For Hire launched in 1999, you didn’t know you would become a millionaire success story. Would you say that anyone – including brand-new recruiters in this otherwise dismal jobs market – can map their own successful career blueprint?

Yes, yes, yes! There’s nothing special in my background that differentiates me from everyone else. I dropped out of college to accept a job offer. I was fired from a job I loved—one I really thought I’d have forever. I married for love, not money. I’m not a beauty queen. My family has no connections in my industry. I had no advantage over anyone else. If I could do this — through sheer determination and a whole lot of hustle — anyone can.

Do you think it’s critical for the owner of a small recruiting firm to build an online identity? What tips do you have for recruiters who may be hesitant to jump into the open atmosphere inherent in social media?

Of course. You can’t be serious about recruiting today — or frankly any business — if you’re not willing to embrace social media. The key is to just start — and to recognize that it’s really quite simple.

With hundreds of millions of people on the biggest sites — Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter — you know there’s a place for you. There are so many free online tutorials. Or invest in some training. Or get your kids to do some reverse mentoring to get you going. Just start — just dive in. You’ll see the results quickly and you’ll be hooked in no time.

Many recruiters would argue their success stems directly from cold-calling. You obviously know what cold calling is about and how to use it effectively to get people to talk to you! But recruiting is different than an interview on deadline – how do you ensure quality results over quantity, and what advice do you have for recruiters who are ready to give up?

It takes a lot of NOs to get that YES. Assume that most calls won’t produce results. Be realistic about the odds. You can’t brush off cold-calling or say it simply doesn’t work because several calls have gone unanswered. It works — so keep at it.

Don’t leave tons of messages. Alter your methods of connecting — phone, email, Tweeting, LinkedIn. Call at various times of day. Befriend assistants.

Have your pitch down cold. So many times I get sales cold calls, and the person is stunned when I pick it. It’s their golden chance to pitch/sell. Instead they get tongue-tied because they’re so accustomed to leaving messages.

Be ready for your moment since you don’t know when it will come.

Client and candidate development matter in recruiting…tell us your “sourcing” secrets for finding good people and clients. How do you manage these relationships to build a healthy long-term business?

Referrals are still the best method for me. I have a big database of 250,000 women, so if the person I need isn’t in that database, someone in that database will know someone to get me where I need to be. I also have a robust group on LinkedIn with 20,000 active participants.

I use Twitter (Twitter.com/ToryJohnson) and Facebook (Facebook.com/Tory), and it’s rare that from all of those sources I can’t find exactly who I need — usually within hours!

The key to getting those people to help me with sourcing is by maintaining a healthy, active dialogue even when I don’t need anything.

In conjunction with RecruitersConnection, I’ll be conducting a free one-hour webinar tomorrow (Wednesday, May 26) on perm fee negotiations. It is scheduled for 1:30pm-2:30pm Eastern.

You have probably seen this in your free training, but this will be live! So join us to refresh what you know, or to ask questions or share with your team. This fast-paced session will bring you back to the basics — let’s face it, everyone in the industry is often faced with having to lower their fees or go head-to-head with free resources, such as job boards and ads.

If you hear, “Your fees are too high,” or “We are going to see what we can get for free first,” this session can save your desk.

The method can be implemented on your very first call after this session; the concept lies in getting back to the point of understanding what the word contingency means and how you can better sell this to the client. In essence, you can never be overpriced when it will always be the customer who will decide if they want to pay the price. The best part about this technique is that you don’t have to change the things that have worked for you in the past.

Be sure to register here.

Leadership is a winning combination of personal traits and the ability to think and act as a leader, often having to make the difficult decisions!

Your members are looking TO YOU for leadership and guidance, especially after what most of them have recently experienced.

The following are the five key strategies followed by the most successful leaders in the staffing and recruiting profession.

KEY #1 – A LEADER PLANS
Effective leaders PLAN in order to elevate their level of success as well as the success of their members. The core of leadership is being proactive rather than reactive.

Last year MANY conferences experienced very low participation. That does NOT mean you will experience the same results THIS year! If you put together a program targeting the greatest challenges of your members, they WILL come!

KEY #2 – A LEADER HAS VISION
Vision is essential to strong leadership. If you don’t know where you’re going, you won’t get there and neither will your members!

KEY #3 – A LEADER SHARES THEIR VISION
When I spoke with many owners who lost their companies during 2009, one commonality was they had NO IDEA what they were attempting to build. Sharing your leadership vision will significantly help your Association or Network Grow. They need to understand and prepare for new trends that will occur during this coming year.

KEY #4 – A LEADER MAKES DIFFICULT DECISIONS
A true leader makes difficult decisions on a timely basis. If you wrote down the characteristics of a great leader, “procrastination” would never be included on the list!

Study what your association did right last year – do more of the same. Also, study what wasted your time last year and stop those activities today. Determine the greatest NEEDS of your members and provide them with the information and services they need to thrive.

KEY #5 – A LEADER INSPIRES THROUGH EXAMPLE
As a state leader, it is important that you attend educational events and bring your staff; your membership will follow your lead!

Another trait of leadership is staying ahead of trends. Since some associations have decided to CANCEL events this year, market your event to those owners! Education IS power and your members need to be empowered after last year.