There are many attributes and skills that go into making a great recruiter. But there are certain skills that one must have if they want to be an excellent recruiter. Most recruiters out there in the world are less than mediocre, and mediocre at best. It’s rare to come across an excellent recruiter who’s a cut above the rest. This is another reason that if you do find a good recruiter, you want to make sure you hang on to them. No recruiter is perfect, so expecting perfection from a recruiter is going to leave you disappointed. Perfection isn’t the point, the point is to be better than average and better than the rest. The point is to stand out in the crowd.
A CUT ABOVE THE REST
This is how we train our recruiters here at Aldebaran Recruiting. We don’t train them to be perfect, we know that we’re not going to find the perfect candidate for every single search. But, we strive to be the best, and we do stand out in the crowd.
#5 – BEING SALES MINDED
A good recruiter is going to have a similar mentality to a good sales person. At the end of the day a recruiter understands that they’re selling an opportunity to a potential candidate, they’re selling a career move, they’re selling the next step in this person’s career. So, it’s critical that this person be able to understand if you’re going to be an above average recruiter, that really at the end of the day you’re a sales person. What better product could you be selling though than an amazing opportunity for someone to take the next step in their career, to not only advance as a professional, but in most cases also increase their earning potential?
So, if you’re afraid of sales, or you don’t like to be a sales person, or you feel like sales people are pushy, or you don’t want to be a pushy sales person, recruiting probably isn’t for you. You’re going to need to be comfortable in creating the opportunity of a role with somebody, and really selling them on the opportunity.
#4 – BEING A NATURAL RELATIONSHIP BUILDER
A good recruiter knows how to build relationships with candidates as well as their clients. A good recruiter knows how to bridge that gap and be the middleman between candidates and clients, and truly build trust and solid relationships in order to broker deals that are long lasting and fruitful for both parties. In other words, you’ve got to be a people person and you’ve got to like people, and you’ve got to know how to deal with different personalities all across the board. If you’re someone who’s easily frustrated, or somebody who doesn’t have patience to deal with people, recruiting most likely isn’t for you. In fact, stay out of human resources in general!
#3 – BEING A CREATIVE THINKING AND PROBLEM SOLVER
When given a position, you’ve got to be a creative thinking type person who’s going to be able to put in the research and the creative thinking to truly source good candidates. Sourcing candidates can often times be the trickiest and most laborious aspect of the recruiting process. And if you aren’t skilled in knowing how to turn over every stone that there is to turn over to find where the right candidates are, you’re not going to come up with a sufficient level of candidates per requisition you work.
So, being someone who is a problem solver and a creative thinker, as well as someone that has the resilience and patient to continue to dig when needed, will go a long way for you being a solid recruiter. If you’re impatient, you easily give up, or you get frustrated when working with a problem, recruiting most likely isn’t for you.
#2 – BEING SOMEONE WHO IS GOOD AT ASKING QUESTIONS
Sometimes in this busy world we are afraid to take up people’s time, and therefore we don’t ask a sufficient amount of questions. A good recruiter asks a sufficient amount of questions both to their clients, to learn about positions and the requirements of the roles and the company themselves, and also asks sufficient questions to candidates to really vet if they’re the correct person for the role.
Asking questions is critical, and it’s important that you’re someone who’s comfortable knowing that asking questions and asking a sufficient amount of questions is what’s going to give you a competitive edge to really get the job done. Only by asking enough questions can you truly learn what you need to learn in order to find the right candidates for your clients. And in the same vain, only by asking the right questions can you truly learn if a candidate is going to be the right candidate for the role. Asking them the right questions, and asking them in the right way is critical to being an excellent recruiter.
#1 – ABILITY TO LISTEN
This is the number one skill that we say is critical for being a recruiter. Your ability to listen leads and feeds all the other previous skills we talked about. The better listener you are, the more sales minded you would be, the better relationship builder you would be, the more creative thinker you’ll be able to be, and the better questions that you’ll ask. Your ability to truly listen to what clients and candidates are saying is going to guide you as a solid recruiter.
Most people don’t listen. We don’t listen to what others say, we listen to the little voice in our head about what other people say. So, if you can get good at the number one and number two here particularly, asking the right questions and then truly listening, you will really come out as an excellent recruiter.
CONCLUSION
If you combine the five skills we’ve talked about here in this blog and you put in the work to consistently get better in these five areas, you can truly be an outstanding recruiter. And if you become an outstanding recruiter, you will be someone who is rare in the market place. There are not a lot of people out there that are able to combine all five of these skills into something that truly is powerful and palpable.
So, study up, always be looking to grow, and we wish you the best!
Want more tips on being the best recruiter? Check it out! https://bit.ly/2Um6bPS
Want to consider us as your recruiter? We would love to work with you! Contact us for an exploratory call!
