7 must have skills for advancement in recruiting career

They are essential in ensuring that companies have the best employees and the right resources needed to achieve their goals

More recruiters have a lot of pressure to maintain the current trends in their line of profession. The impact of a recruiter can be described as twofold: to start with, they can change the life of an individual by giving them their dream job, and they can also effectively change the success of a company with just one great hire on a specific job.

So, it’s important for a corporation to have the best recruiters in the market. If you want to keep up with the recruiting profession, it’s time to start analyzing how updated your skills are. If they don’t fit the required standards you may need to upgrade them or seek resume writing help from professional writing services

Here are some key skills that can set a great recruiter apart from the rest.

Ability to build great working relationships

The recruitment industry is a people-driven field and the antisocial individuals may not fit in this category. A recruiter must be around people. They are delighted to meet new people and hunt for opportunities even when they aren’t recruiting.

Great recruiters like to develop real connections. Tony Sorenson, the CEO of Versique Search and Consulting, says that it’s the real connections that allow the recruiters to get the best candidates.

Perhaps getting to know a little about what makes the candidates tick, their hobbies, engaging in a real conversation and so on can help build strong relationships.

The benefit of having great relationships is that they help the recruiter to improve their interview experience, thus making them comfortable asking any questions during the recruitment process.

In the end, the recruiter will find the best candidate, and the job seeker will get their dream job.

Good listening skills

Listening skills are key for every business, especially for recruiters. They must possess the ability to listen first and take a proper job order.

They also need to understand what a hiring manager is looking for in a candidate, even when the HR cannot articulate what they need clearly. Further, the recruiters need to listen to prospects and identify those that match in culture and attitude.

They understand the process of getting the right candidates since they have deep knowledge of the capabilities of every candidate.

Having great listening skills increases the chances of the recruiter landing the top talent for an employer, which is a win-win situation.

Excellent sales skills

Recruiting is more about sales. Recruiters need to sell candidates on different opportunities and explain why a certain company is the best choice and it offers an opportunity of a lifetime.

Recruiters with a strong sales background have an advantage over those who don’t have. If you want to be a recruiter, you need to understand that recruiting is a sales function of any organization, and you are responsible for providing the top employees who will propel the organization to success to fulfill the long-term strategy and goals.

Good follow-up skills

A key thing in building relationships is communicating and empathizing with candidates. It doesn’t take much time to return a call or an email. It shows the candidate that you value their time enough to update them on the progress.

We have cases of where a recruiter or agency calls someone and setting them up for an interview, only to never call back to inform the candidate of the progress. All this will only breed negativity and it destroys the relationship building process.

Take a few minutes to keep the candidate informed to promote a good relationship in future.

Excellent communications skills

A great recruiter should have excellent communications skills. It doesn’t matter whether the conversation is face to face, on phone or through the email.

It will not sound right to tell a job seeker that “Your educational background and skills are good, but unfortunately you just came at the wrong time.” The recruiter should be tactful and considerate to maintain a good reputation.

Team work skills

As a recruiter, you should be ready to work in a team of other recruitment consultants to find the best talent for a company.

It is important to know how to handle and manage people to achieve a certain goal. This will ensure good communication between the team members to avoid inefficiencies.

Problem-solving skills

A great recruiter should also be a good problem solver. It is likely that you will face strange situations which you may have never imaged could come along.

For instance, not finding the right candidate for a certain job, candidates not appearing for their interviews, corporations informing you that they already found the right candidate for a certain job they had previously advertised for, and so on.

You should be ready to experience these situations and apply the right skills to solve them.

Conclusion

There are those people who think that it’s a good idea not to return calls or email and that their client seems too hard to work with. But for a recruiter, these are things that should appear in your to do list.

Remember, no one is perfect, but a little effort to be a better recruiter won’t hurt. So, take a step back and see what you can do to advance your skills as a recruiter.

By Mia Stokes 

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The British Institute of Recruiters is the Professional Body operating The Recruitment Certification Scheme

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