“A recruiter wears many hats, all at the same time. There’s a bit of sales, marketing, investigative journalist and planner, all rolled into one. It’s not a role that anyone can just do. You need to possess the right skills and mindset in order to be successful.”

We agree. To be successful in this particularly important field, you need to have quite a few skills. Today, we take a look at what you need to rock this job.

1. Creativity

As a recruiter, you need to be creative. That creativity will help you when you look for innovative ways to attract the right talent, from places not everybody tries to look. In tight markets or for roles that are in high demand, simply working your way through the job board, resume banks and social media is not enough. You have to find other ways to bring your role, the company and the opportunity to the attention of potential candidates. The better you are able to think outside of the box, the easier job you will have. And at the same time, it will help your and your company’s brand at the same time.

2. Relationship Building

You may think the interaction you have with the external candidates arguably is short: you talk to candidates, match them to roles and fill the position and after that, it’s done. But you’d be wrong.

If there’s no role open, you will work on keeping your candidates warm (read more on that here), and build the relationship from there. And internally you build relationships continuously. Working together with the HR team, dealing with the hiring manager and updating your executive team is nothing short of building relationships. And they are crucial. As your relationships get stronger, your internal clients will easily find you and help you get started with the process even before it takes off. With time being of the essence, any day saved is a day won.

3. Resilience

Being a recruiter can be a tough role. You have to deal with candidates not being honest or even ghosting you. That – having closed the vacancy only to have to start from scratch again – is one of the most frustrating parts of the role. But you need to have a thick skin to deal with ‘corporate’ as well.

Although most hiring managers are patient and helpful, every organization has a few hiring managers that are particularly impatient, demanding, and let’s face it, unrealistic. We’re pretty sure the expression ‘purple squirrel’ is invented by a recruiter. And if you can’t find the purple squirrel, sometimes hiring managers yell at you. You need to be able to shake that off, put on your war face and get out there and attract that talent. Resilience, continuing the course even if the going got tough, is very, very important.

4. Communication Skills

It shouldn’t be on this list, because if you’re no communicator, you maybe shouldn’t be in this field. But it is a crucial skills, so we’ll do the right thing and discuss it.  

Communication goes both ways, in general and this applies to this field, as well. You need to be able to communicate to various stakeholders in many processes at the same time, internally, and externally, with agencies, other recruiters and of course, a flurry of candidates. You need to assure, manage, drive, complete, negotiate, plead and sometimes beg. That means that you constantly switch between communication styles. And you are the receiver of a lot of communication yourself. You need to make sure that through all the noise and chatter, you pick up the right signals. You understand where urgency is, and where importance is a factor, and you also understand what can wait. Slicing through that continuous stream of information and data will ensure success.

5. Detail-Oriented

And that brings us to the last point. Bringing this all together, and that you do by keeping an eye on the details. While you have to keep an eye on the big picture and understand the status of the processes you’re responsible for, the devil really is in the details. The constant switch between big picture and intricate details and commas make this role truly interesting.

You can’t afford making mistakes. Not only could you potentially expose your company to legal issues, you can damage your carefully crafted employer brand and ruin the candidate experience in the recruitment process and with that, the first impactful experience of the employee-to-be.

In Conclusion

There truly rests a lot on your shoulder. This job isn’t for everyone. Luckily, there’s help. Here at AskAway, we are disrupting the way recruitment is done, by eliminating the need to plan and schedule time-consuming meetings in packed agendas and by offering tools to record or even prerecord interviews. This allows you the opportunity to share and analyze the candidates for your interviews when it suits you.

We pre-screen so you don’t have to. Contact us to find out more, or sign up for a no-strings attached free demo of our tool here.