Survived 2020 – Thrive in 2021

Staffing professionals had a year of very heavy lifting in 2020. Already, America was battling the worst-ever level of skills shortages from 2019, with 54% of companies reporting talent shortages. And then came the pandemic.

17.9 million Americans were unemployed by June 2020. Staffing professionals faced the reality of a huge and rapid shift in the availability of and demand for talent, as the economy oscillated violently.

On top of this, many staffing professionals suddenly found themselves needing to adjust to working from home.

It may feel as though you only just survived the turbulence of 2020. Despite all your best efforts, your performance or quality of work may have suffered a little. It’s time to dust yourself off and review how you can enhance your performance to become an extraordinarily successful staffing professional in a promising 2021 and beyond.

Here are eight resolutions to help make 2021 a year of huge career success.

1.    Learn a New Skill

It’s never a bad time to add to your skillset. Further knowledge or expertise in a topic could really help you in your day-to-day performance, or you may just have an interest in an area of your field. Consider:

• Sales skills fundamentals to improve your candidate outreach
• Learn how to calculate a recruiting yield ratio
• Learn more about your sector – for example, take a coding course to help improve how you write job descriptions for tech roles

2.   Maximize Your Productivity

Get all your emails done in one swoop. Figure when people are more likely to answer their phones. Schedule your calls accordingly. Note when you’re most productive (first thing in the morning, or when you’re on the homerun?), and organize your workload to coincide with your energy and motivation.

3.   Invest in Your Network

Your colleagues are your closest network, so make time to hook up with them and collaborate, or to just switch off and have a chat and a catchup.

Book in those job fairs and start creating new relationships to nurture your talent pool.

Schedule time where you solely communicate with existing or previous candidates and clients and go looking for new.

4.   Prioritize the Personal Touch

To bring empathy and genuine concern for both clients and candidates, you need to understand them better.

Commit to doing more research in discovering how you can help them achieve their goals, so that you become the go-to staffing professional they can rely on. You could do this by:

• Meeting with clients and candidates to discover more about their culture and needs
• Becoming an advocate for your candidates, and providing referrals
• Calling placements to monitor their experience
• Targeting individuals uniquely and personally (avoiding devaluing blasts of emails on LinkedIn searches)

5.   Review Your Career

Don’t ask “am I happy in my current role?” Instead, ask “am I well-positioned for continued growth and earning potential in my current role?” If not, it’s time to identify why, and speak with your boss.

Perhaps you need some motivation through support in developing your career. Perhaps you’re not benefiting from the collaboration you need to thrive from home. Perhaps you are a star staffing consultant, but think you should transition to a new sector?

Job hopping isn’t the answer. But a healthy review or your career and considerations for future pathways will ensure your job in staffing isn’t going stale, leaving you struggling to find the job satisfaction you deserve.

What’s the Way Forward for Staffing Professionals?

Be kind to yourself. This isn’t the time to beat yourself with a stick and pick holes in your performance. You tackled everything thrown at you in 2020, and worked hard to adjust to drastic changes both personally and professionally.

The healthiest, happiest, most productive, and successful staffing professionals use these resolutions to help them thrive in their career and enjoy a healthier work/life balance with more effective results. What would you like to improve on?

Contact EnabledForce for the best career advice in the staffing industry and to access incredible opportunities in staffing and recruitment.