Recruiting Habits: Making Positive Changes

by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

Much of what we discuss in the Insight posts involves new ideas and best practices.

These insights only become useful if they cross the chasm from theory to tangible action.

According to best-selling author Michael Bungay Stanier, the jump is difficult because our actions are so controlled by habits.

It sounds simple: If you want to make positive changes, just change your habits.

But, simple and easy are often miles apart.

Stanier empathizes with the difficulty of making lasting change and outlines the necessary components for building effective new habits:

  1. A Reason: the clear and compelling payoff for making a change.
  2. A Trigger: habits are activated by small events or stimuli.
  3. A Micro-Habit: change is more doable when it’s done in short and specific steps.
  4. Effective Practice: to gain proficiency, each step must be practiced and measured.
  5. A Plan for Failure: failure and missteps are an inevitable part of building new habits—building a plan for reneging when it happens keeps the overall mission moving forward.

We’ll spend some time this week unpacking these components.

In the meantime, start putting some thought into the changes you may want to make to your own recruiting activities.

What tasks produce the highest return in your recruiting process?

What are the least productive recruiting tasks you find yourself doing each day?

Jot down tasks for each category as you progress through your day. We’ll use these later.

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