Or maybe you're working so hard to get to the destination that you're losing the joys of the journey, step by step.  As a recruiter, you must surely have heard of the four hour rule for your daily phone time goal.  Have you ever hit four full hours of actual connect time on the phone in your market?  If not, you've never actually tasted the true power of all-out, nothing-held-back investment of everything you are into your work.  I know you work hard.  I'm not saying you're lazy.  But, I am saying that the mountain top of maximum performance for you, a recruiter, includes rising higher than you are, if you've never spent four complete hours on the phone in a single day.  Working hard, you may have lost sight of how beautiful the mountain you're climbing really is.  Would you like to catch a glimpse?  Work harder.  Plan harder.  Dedicate yourself harder.  And keep picking up the phone and calling until you've spent four full hours speaking to people in your market.  You can use the four rules of White Belt Recruiting to hit your very first four-hour day, if you decide to.

And what if you detest the four hour rule, or simply don't believe in it?  No matter. That was just a single specific case.  Break your work down by any measure you believe in and apply the four rules of White Belt Recruiting to master it. 

The most commonly credited metrics I've yet found are Send Outs and Hot Sheet Entries.  My great teacher and client, Bert Miller, has recently converted me to the new study of what he calls Active Interviews.  Bert teaches that there is an observable profile each Account Executive establishes.  Some recruiters can keep about 5 or 6 deals in the hopper, handling all the briefs, organizational efforts, debriefs, closes and general efforts to keep them moving forward.  Over the course of the quarters, he says, this steady number may rise or fall, a little but not much.  When recruiters want to break out they have to learn how to manage a larger number of active interviews at any given point in time.  The larger the number that can be managed, the better the overall performance.  Bert guesses that the peak is somewhere around 15 relationships in motion at all times.

Vern Davis, Mike Bitar, & Bert Miller

Can you see the process that we're engaging?  We first used an ancient recruiting rule that everyone has heard of, the four hour phone rule.  Secondly, we used a familiar area of performance, but found a metric you may not be so familiar with.  You can do this for yourself.  How do you keep track of your recruiting efforts?  What about marketing and sales; do you track Job Orders, or maybe New Presentations, or even the Key Candidates you bring to market?  What about your Key Accounts?

In any metric you select, you can put your White Belt on and reinvent your practice with incredible force and profit.  More, you can reenergize your dedication to your career and your success itself.  You can return to the freshness of a new beginning and reclaim your dream for your work.

It doesn't have to be numbers you employ.  It can be any tactic, such as perfecting the best recruiting or sales call you can master, improving your briefing and debriefing skills, qualifying job orders better and re-grounding yourself in the values that actually drive tactical recruiting value.  Or, you can go strategic.  You can look at your desk and its market position.  Are you on the path to become a true Power Broker?  After the placement is completed, what values have been delivered to your clients and candidates in addition?  Do you make a second placement frequently?  How about your Key Accounts?  Each of these strategic directions demands White Belt study and eventual mastery.

Let's review...

1.  Put On Your White Belt

You don't know what action will lead to a placement.  No matter how many placements you make, you never will, either.  You will learn what actions in general surround the art of making placements.  That is the best you can do.  No single action ever has a guaranteed outcome.  No matter how many times you have done something, you never know that the next person will respond the way the last did, or the way the last 10 people responded.  The coming action remains a mystery even if you've forgotten to notice.  What will the outcome be?  We don't know until we do it!

2.  Build Your Plan

What can you see before you do it?  How mighty is your ability to plan?

The White Belt Recruiter gives himself over to the path of planning, since the number of calls and contacts that must be made can never be organized or executed without a plan.  As with any given action, though, the White Belt Recruiter can never know that his plan is sufficient for success.  You can't even know if you'll obey yourself and execute what you planned.  These mysteries demand our study.  To engage this study, though, we must first master the discipline of creating our plans consistently.  Then, as our planning attains a type of stable repeatability, it becomes our challenge to learn to actually execute what we planned.

3.  Dedicate Yourself TO Your Plan

The art of execution is nothing more and nothing less than simple obedience.  All the times parents and teachers told you to do something "because they said so" they let you down.  If you never learned to obey them, how will you learn to obey yourself?  Contrarily, often the most rebellious souls who fight authority rise to become great authorities themselves.  Are you a wise authority to follow?  Are your commands worthy of your dedication and obedient execution?  White Belt Recruiting demands that you get to know yourself.  This is shown nowhere more powerfully than in your ability to actually dedicate yourself and then convert that dedication into self-obedient execution.

4.  Pick Up The Phone And Call

Here the rubber hits the road.  Yes, in today's world there is much magic to be found.  LinkedIn and e-mail hold amazing powers of contact.  The Internet offers miraculous paths of discovery.  Of course, the instant transport of telephone bears no competitor.  The fact that you cannot see each other and only hear each others' voices is a wonderful thing, too.  The ultimate magic is on the phone.  By any medium, though, all good things in recruiting come from contact.  You must pick up the phone and call.  And, when you do, you must put your entire heart and soul into this one encounter, holding nothing back, giving all you are, rising to become more than you were before.  When you pick up the phone and call, you become a true recruiter.

We're told that when the student is ready the teacher will appear.  Are you ready?  There is incredible power for progress to be found in the right conversation.  On that note, I'd be honored to humbly offer my own services as worthy of your serious consideration. 

The teachings I've shared in these lessons come from the very heart and soul of the service I provide to my clients.  We never do know in advance what steps must be taken to rise to the next level of your game.  It is always a search for new wisdom, new methods, new practice, new conquests.  Why don't we explore whether or not your journey calls out for the special aid I am uniquely qualified to offer?