Do you want to know the Top Most Attributes of a Great Recruiter?

The attributes of a Great Recruiter!

Are you a recruiter?? Or do have friends who do recruitment?? Or simply would you like to know how recruitment works? If your answer is yes, please read on… you will be able to relate to this write-up.

It is rightly said by Robert Half that “Time spent on hiring and recruiting top talent is a time Well Spent”.Robert half is the founder of the Robert Half Staffing agencies founded in 1948.

The main target of any recruiter is not just Finding Talent but finding the right person with the right skills suitable for the job opening. This candidate must have the potential to be in sync with the culture, the vibe and the values of the organization as well. When that happens, it is said to be a perfect hire.

Acquiring the right talent is a key to the success and growth of any organisation. And to achieve that, A Good Recruitment Process is implemented. The hiring cycle plays an important role in engaging the candidates until joining. The recruiter has to define the recruitment cycle suitable for that particular company. There may be different interview rounds, technical rounds or even written tests implemented to check the skills required for that job. It’s the responsibility of the recruiter and the interviewers to include suitable selection process before finalising the candidate for that role.

Recruitment is one such function which is very crucial in all types of companies, all domains, all sizes. Every company has its unique challenges in recruitment. All the recruiters strive to find solutions suitable to their environment, their budgets and their timelines. It’s definitely difficult to tick-in all the boxes while hiring a candidate but it’s not impossible. In the end a recruiter is as good as a sales person only selling jobs!!

A passionate recruiter has to develop a lot of skills, communication is one key skill. How one portrays the company and the opportunity to the candidate makes all the difference. One has to be very smart to tap what the candidate is looking for and has to show them how the company promises to offer him just that. The recruiter also has to pick up signs and use them to make candidate want the job they have to offer. Off course one has to be transparent and truthful throughout the process. One tiny false promise can ruin the relationship with the candidate and the company name for a very long time.

Here are 5 attributes which in my view helps make recruitment interesting.

1.  Sources of the perfect candidate profiles. The primary tool of any recruiter is the sources of good and suitable profiles or resumes. There are recruitment portals, consultants, job postings, Social and professional networking sites and off course the references. References from the potential, current or former employees. The careers page of the company website also gets in a lot of applications. These applications need to be screened. It would be good practice that every applicant receives an email acknowledging their application and that they will be contacted if the profile is suitable. Another great source of good references are the current employees. They have been in the industry for quite long time and they know so many people with the same skillset. The company has to take efforts in engaging the employees and give them good work opportunities. They become the brand ambassadors for the company and get references for the open positions. The best practice here adopted by most of the talent acquisition experts is to ask for employee referrals or a reference from a successfully placed candidate ,as it is rightly said that “People always listen more to people they know”

The recruiters and the HR team has to make sure that they create a rapport with the rest of the office and keep everyone in the company well informed about the open positions. That’s an additional skill a recruiter has to develop.

2. The Art of Interviewing: The candidates admire companies which give them a great interview experience, even if they get rejected. The experience counts from the first call to the candidate till the feedback of the interview or test they just appeared. The recruiter has to create a bond with the candidates and strive to give them a constructive feedback when they are rejected. How a candidate is treated in the company is remembered for a long time, they tell their friends, the friends tell their friends. So a positive experience gets percolated and there you get a lot of references.
3. Turning your company into a Brand:Employer branding is useful especially when it is for a growing organization. That’s the job of the PR. What can a recruiter do for branding? Well, they can create their own brand. On the professional or social networking sites, if a recruiter gets associated with a particular type of hiring, for example, a domain like banking or insurance or education, they attract the candidates’ expert in the skills required in those particular domains. This becomes a pool of candidates the recruiter already has connected with and easy reference when the suitable requirements are open.
4. KYC: What matters to the quality candidates is what value a company will add to their resume, their experience, their personality and lastly their wallets. Few job seekers are keen on brand of the company. The brand or a known company promises those uniform policies, big projects, spacious offices to work at, an opportunity to show off in front of their relatives and friends. Few others give more weightage to challenging projects, more work exposure with more responsibilities, lot of learning. They choose small, mid-size companies or start-ups for their next job.The Recruiters should understand what type of job seeker they are dealing with and converse with the candidates accordingly. The job seeker should be able to trust the recruiter from the first call. This trust, polite communication, good rapport, will help the recruiter convert even a passive job seeker to an active one and a potential hire.

It might happen that there are few technical concerns or queries which the recruiter would not be able to solve. In this situation taking the help of the interviewers or the Managers, the in house experts or decision makers is a great way. This creates confidence about the company in the mind of the job seeker. The recruiter has to understand that a job seeker will also have certain financial responsibilities, ambitions. They need to develop this confidence to risk this their current well settled job to join the new company.

5. Engaging the New joiners: Once the offer is rolled out to the candidate, the recruiter has to keep the candidate engaged. Calling, emailing or simply sending a message to the new hires keeps them engaged. This continuous contact also serves as a way to know the developments further on the candidate side, like their resignation , their release from the current company, any other offers if they received and more importantly their inclination towards joining our company. The recruiter needs to follow the positive or negative signs to be ready for what might happen on the Day of Joining. Recruitment is all about managing people ultimately. Selling your job to the job seekers and building a great team for your company. Recruiters can make a deep impact on the lives of the job seekers. They have the power to Change lives!!

These were my thoughts on the recruitment tactics that we try to implement at Verinite. If you would like to share your views, I would love to read them in the comments section below 🙂