There’s No Place Like Home — to Recruit

Improvements in technology have impacted the way the world works. In 2013, more than 60 percent of Americans reported working from home, and that number is only expected to grow. With tools like video interviewing, screen-sharing, digital conference calling, and virtual invoicing, as well as an ever-growing preference for digital documents among companies, a recruiter almost never needs to step outside their own home.

Though there is a myriad of tools and technologies to aid teleworkers, working from home isn’t for everyone. When given the chance to complete tasks from the comfort of your own home, there’s no telling what the outcome may be.

Therefore, to be successful in your recruitment efforts while remotely working, remember these four tips:

1. Start your day early and ritualistically.

While it’s tempting to roll out of bed and right to your computer, doing so could hurt your workflow. Give yourself enough time to wake up by taking a shower, getting dressed, brewing coffee, eating breakfast, or doing any combination of those things. Act as though you are getting ready to leave for work.

Be honest with yourself: you can’t be ready to hit the to-do list hard and heavy if you have only been up for 10 minutes. In fact, human fatigue specialist Clinton Marquardt  compares falling asleep and waking up to the physics theory of inertia: a body in motion stays in motion until a force acts upon it. Being awakened by an alarm clock is that force and your body is shifting direction because of it. Marquardt says that, though it varies person to person, your body generally needs anywhere from half an hour to 60 minutes to lose all grogginess.

During the time you’re allowing your body to wake up, your process should be more habitual. As elementary as it sounds, don’t make your brain work too hard early in the wake-up phase. If your workload is weighing heavy on your mind, make a to-do list. It will get everything out of your brain, admit the need to finish the project, and ease the guilt of not starting as soon as you’re awake. How can you recruit the best and brightest talent when you’re tired?

2. Consider your biological clock. 

Though they were silly titles growing up, morning larks and night owls  are a real thing, and they are attributable to a person’s genetic make up. You can take tests to determine which bird you are, but you may already have a good idea of what time of day you work best. If your schedule can be flexible, plan accordingly.

That doesn’t mean working from midnight to 8 A.M., since most candidates aren’t job searching at those times. What it means is, if you find working with the company ATS or scheduling interviews flow better in the morning, then plan to get those done when you clock in. Move to more creative recruiting strategies after you take a break for lunch.

3. Don’t stray from what you planned on doing.

One of the biggest challenges of working from home  is having all the comforts of being out of the office — including all of the distractions. It’s easy to stray away from your computer or the task at hand. The best way to curtail the temptation is to, again, put habits (and rules) in place.

Choose the best place in your home to work. That could be a home office or the kitchen table, whatever works for you to sit comfortably for the whole shift. Once you’ve selected the best place to work, observe the room for what it really is. If it isn’t a home office, consider where possible distractions lie and avoid them with rules you give yourself. For example, the television should only be on for soft music, or the window must stay closed to avoid environmental noise.

4. Don’t forget to lean on your fellow recruiters.

Working from home can seem lonely and even feel a little anti-social. Our team uses a tool called Yammer  to avoid the disconnectedness of working from home. Yammer is a company wide social network in which only employees are allowed. We check in when we’re on the clock, notify the team of breaks and visibly check out when our days are over. The best part is everybody on the team can see the updates and there are plenty of possibilities for sharing images and gifs for a chuckle.

Yammer isn’t the only tool like this either; services like Basecamp, SharePoint, Asana, and other chat systems are all available, depending on the needs of your team.

The most important rule when working at home is to remember that once work is over, it is over. Have a healthy work life/personal life balance in order to save your sanity and success level. Working from home isn’t for everyone. Being a self-starter will make being a productive teleworker easier, but with a little organization, anyone can accomplish the task.