A day in the life of a Recruiter

Absenteeism

2004-11-16T03:34:00.000-08:00

Of a total staff of 4, 2 were off today.One of them called - I blasted her.

Suddenly calling up absent - it really throws me off gear.I have not been able to concentrate on my work today. And two doing it together.

I wanted to fire atleast one of them.But allready another firing is lined up and now this - don't know what to do.

How to maintain the discipline while keeping the office ambience light.

On a sunday

2004-11-13T23:13:00.000-08:00

Came to the office. Downloaded the mails accumalated.Brought my daughter along.Not that I expected to accomplish much.

She is yapping away - ca'nt do much.

Back UP

2004-11-10T06:07:00.000-08:00

Bought additional back up over 5 hours.Today was the first day of total power shutdown. But we continued to work.
I had to make quite a few trips out. Paid of the tax component.
Auditors office had a festive look.

The trainees dont seem to be picking up things fast enough. Each and every thing keeps coming back to me.How can this continuous spoon feeding go on.

And in a months time I am looking at giving a Big push to Business Development.That would mean more postions and I would be spending a lot more time travelling. In such a situation the staff needs to deliver in the same way as they are doing now.

This calls for an ability to work without supervision and learning on the Job.

The aspect of personal Calls has'nt died down completely.

2004-11-10T06:05:00.000-08:00

Carlene Wilson

2004-10-30T04:06:00.000-07:00

An intersting article on Nudes. Check out this link

http://www.nzartmonthly.co.nz/wilson_001.html

Quizzing

2004-10-29T23:28:00.000-07:00

Today the review meeting was a quizzing session. Fair amount of participation. Sandhya seems to be good at remembering the details of the position.

War of the maidens

2004-10-29T20:13:00.001-07:00

Did'nt expect a routine incentive to create such a rift. But it has.
The office mood is not what I would like it to be.

Well I have tried to explain to J. But in three days there does'nt seem to be any change in the situation. Her anger is visible. I dont like it.But have not been able to devise a way round it.

Plan to introduce measures so that we have a more interactive office.

Hope to make some breakthroughs in contributions from the staff.

War of the maidens

2004-10-29T20:13:00.000-07:00

Eyes open

2004-10-26T02:17:00.000-07:00

A peaceful after noon. Good food and a call to sleep.
Spirit is willing - flesh is weak.

One day at a time

2004-10-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

Lord help me today
Show me the way
One day at a time

Weekend

2004-10-23T01:24:00.000-07:00

This was good week. A very important process I have been able to put in place. Morning and evening meetings. This was something I have been planning on over close a a year but never been able to do so. This week we started. Some advantages are :

1. It promotes learning. People become aware thru other peoples experiences.
2. It keeps people on their toes.

As I keep throwing questions at them regularly they get to keep themsleves tuned for what they should be knowing when they see resumes.

Now I need to start on real traing and knowledge sharing stuff. Maybe seminar type work.

Before that I should be preparing a proper presentation and distributing among clients.

Quite a lot to do...

Ayudha Pooja

2004-10-22T21:01:00.000-07:00

Got over with Ayudha Pooja on the 21st Thursday. Had the pooja at around 5:00 PM. Sweets distributed. Friday was off and back to work on Saturday.
This week saw two offers.But at the same time - lost out on 4 positions with my key client in the last two week period. That hurts.
Need a system in place whereby all interviewees are ensured that they attend the interviews once confirmed.

New Born Baby Boy

2004-10-20T07:22:00.000-07:00

I am the father of a New Born Baby Boy - what shall we call Him?

Power Outages

2004-10-19T06:50:00.000-07:00

Another day started with power outage. Yesterday was a complete washout. Till 10:30 we sat without power.And then one of the systems is not working. Have ordered for a UPS system with 2hour back up for three systems. Yesterday downloaded the Google search engine. Only think is it works only on XP. Now if I work on XP the other systems are not able to see me on LAN.
We are generating Good no. of resumes. Each persons target is 5 resumes per day.These people have still not been able to learn the art of searching resumes.
And the personal telephone calls need to be dealt with.I dont like the idea of people chatting away for 15-20 minutes on the phone.
That is not why they come to office.
From tommorrow every evening I will be keeping a tab on the kind of work that is going into the resume search.

Keep it Simple

2004-10-17T20:35:00.000-07:00

The Motto for the week - Keep it Simple

The targets for the team make it specific & clear

Verse

2004-10-17T19:51:00.000-07:00

Online is where we try to drop our thoughts ...

2004-10-15T05:12:00.000-07:00

Smiling Men

Effective

2004-10-14T04:02:00.000-07:00

We are being flooded with work - very stringent schedules - and in the midst of everything I get the feeling I am just not in control.
I sometimes spend hours simply not doing anything unable to delegate unable to do things myself.

Today I tried to take a hold of myself. Have been slogging it with positions one by one. But we need to do more.

Is it possible to plan things in such a way that at any point in time I will know what is the thing to be done next. It is the not knowing what to do that makes me totally loose it. In sucha a situation evne though I might be having something urgent in hand and I wont be able to do it.

Learning

2004-10-13T01:13:00.000-07:00

Learnt something on how to contact candidates in bulk. Shared it with staff.

Tragedy Queen

2004-10-12T21:29:00.000-07:00

One of our staff has decided to cry her heart out.Dont know what's happened - teased, assaulted, breakup with fiance , or maybe the parents played spoil sport on something.

When was the last time I really cried.

An air of confidence

2004-10-12T06:08:00.000-07:00

There is a marked increase in the general confidence level at office.
The indexing work that we have been doing - is it generating any results - cant say. It would if we care to see the indexes. But is it worthwhile to index all the cv's that come to us.

Monday

2004-10-11T04:48:00.000-07:00

Introduced a new system of keeping track of the positions that have been worked on.

A common worksheet shared by all recruiters and which can be updated easily.

One of my clients is very angry with me.It could be because I did not return his call yesterday.

My staff are very slow in working on positions. What do I do to push them to work faster.

Delgating

2004-10-08T20:21:00.000-07:00

I can do a better job in delegating. Lot of room for improvement.

Good Day!

2004-10-08T06:08:00.000-07:00

A couple of cheques came in that kind off made the day quite good. Especially since one of the cheques was due for close to three months. Now I can pay off my borrowings - most off them atleast.
And this makes the UPS much more closer to reality.

Infact met one of the UPS vendors today.The price he quoted will put a hole.

Another thing - Today the girls seemed to find me very attractive.A couple of them actually turned around to take a good look at me-
No Kidding.And another couple gave quite prolonged stares. Feels good.

Am loving it!

This month will have the highest billing for 2004.Have to plan on cutting the tax outgo.

Staffing

2004-10-08T02:42:00.000-07:00

Have been planning to get into the temp staffing line. But when am I actually going to do that.There is a lot of news nowadays on staffing and Bangalore is right in the middle of the action.

3:00 PM

2004-10-08T02:36:00.000-07:00

Have given work for the staff let us see how they fare.

I am getting a bit tired of having to clarify every small detail when ever some shortlist work is given. This is worse than spoon feeding.

Bloopers

2004-10-07T22:20:00.000-07:00

One of the good things about being a recruiter is - one gets some intersting mails. Today I recd a mail that goes like this:

Hi

I am interested in building a courier in Environment Health & Science....

Bossing around

2004-10-07T20:52:00.000-07:00

Feeling good today.Issued some warnings.
Have had enough of this coming-late business. Deducted half day salary for one of the staff. That should set an example.

Get On with it

2004-10-07T05:11:00.000-07:00

Today we lost over six hours due to power shutdown.Of late this has become a weekly feature. UPS with 5-6 hour backup looks like a must.

Mood Awfull

2004-10-06T20:30:00.000-07:00

I wish my staff could learn to come on time everyday.Spoils the mood seeing them walk half an hour after office start.

Of Positions & work outs....

2004-10-06T05:54:00.000-07:00

Today was quite slow. We had a power shutdown for a couple of hours that brought the work to a halt. Got in touch with a real good candidate for one of the positions. But it didnt work out. Now the client is chasing us for equally good profiles ASAP.

Spent some time going thru IT magazines.Trying to keep abreast of the latest gizmos on offer.

One nagging thought ... how do I go about training my staff.They need regular training and I am not up to it and well I cant afford the hi fi trainers. We are too small for that.

And there was the ......

2004-10-06T05:51:00.000-07:00

This is my diary. As a recruiter I get to meet/interact with a wide section of people on a daily basis. Some of the interactions are funny, some serious mostly mundane.But the more interesting stuff is in the resumes that I get to go thru . Some are absolutely outrageous.So here is an outlet for me to share the mundane/unusual happenings with perfect strangers.