So here I am, writing just over a week into my experience of starting a recruitment company (despite this publishing on Tuesday I am actually writing it on Monday night). What have I learnt?

Many things, of which will cover more than one post. But the main one is simple and one that every consultant learns but goes doubly so for anyone working by themselves. Time management.

As a consultant you would have other people doing things like running budgets, uploading CV’s (if you were lucky), negotiating with job boards… leaving you to get on with the job of recruiting. Obviously when you are working by yourself that is not the case.

So you need to manage your time effectively or you will spend all day working but achieving nothing.

Thankfully I have only had one day like this so far, something I don’t intend to repeat. The reason for this is I have fallen back on my old habits of a) day planners and b) block processing. For me setting up a day planner or to do list is essential. Write down everything that needs doing and then sort it on order of priority, if it can be done out of hours (such as CV processing) then make sure you aren’t doing it in core hours.

By doing this you make sure that you get the most important/urgent things done first, therefore meaning that if you don’t get everything done on that day it is the least important things that miss out.

I then make sure that everything is done in batches, batch processing is big news these days it seems and I am a big fan having hit on or come across (can’t remember which) it early in my career. I’m sure that most of you use this method as well but what I mean by batch processing is simple.

Know that you need to pick up requirements and talk to clients? Set aside 2 hours of your day to just canvass. Not 10 minutes here, or 20 minutes there. By keeping it as one batch you are able to focus on what you are doing more effectively and aren’t wasting time flitting between a bunch of different thoughts, notes, etc, etc. Need candidates for a job… give it your full attention for a couple of hours.

I’m sure it doesn’t work for everyone but it does for me.

But work or not you need to make sure that your time management is efficient, otherwise any business you start up will struggle.