By Las Rodrigo – Head of Recruitment, Links International Macau
It’s that time of year again. Its mid-November and the middle of Q4. Working for a recruitment agency in Macau, although it’s almost December (where one is always looking towards finishing the year and inevitably has one eye on next year), it’s not yet time to wrap up the year, as, effectively, we still have two months to go…
Depending on the sector where you work, activity levels may be dropping. This is particularly true in recruitment, since, historically, work levels do tend to drop – although in certain markets they do, of course, rise. (Read last year’s market trends in our 2016 Asia Salary Snapshot.)
You may have had a good year so far, or maybe it has been a challenging year. Perhaps it has been a year of lessons learnt, but you can’t really change any of that now. The one thing you can do is finish on a high and ensure that you are geared up and fully focused right into the end of 2016, to set yourself up for a strong start to 2017.
Here are a few things you could be doing as leaders or managers, to ensure that you are keeping the momentum up in your teams and driving as much business and workflow as possible:
- Offer office incentives. We do this very well here at Links; in the run up to Christmas we have little weekly prizes up for grabs to reward top internal activity.
- Continue to lead from the front. Set up more sales deals, confirm more meetings, meet more people. Do this more now than ever.
- Be the first one in and last to leave. Obviously have things to do and don’t just be in the office for the sake of it. Perception is reality.
- Get your business plan in place for 2017 and start refining it. Analyse what has been positive and what hasn’t been so good this year.
- Catch up with all business meetings. Follow up with all your business meetings from the first half of the year and plan to have a coffee in December with them to ascertain plans for next year. Lock them in.
The seasoned sales professionals or recruiters out there are probably already doing these things, or similar, but, as the market landscape changes every year, it is just as important to keep our own energy levels and motivation high, since this is reflected onto our teams.
Communication with our teams is even more vital now to ensure that no eyes are off the ball.
For further advice on how to get the best out of your workforce and achieve great things in 2017, please do not hesitate to contact us. All the best in closing out your 2016!