Friday, July 28, 2006

Qualities of a good Recruiter

Who exactly is a recruiter? According to Dictionary a recruiter is

  • noun: an official who enlists personnel for military service
  • noun: someone who supplies members or employees

The first definition perhaps might not be relevant to our context but the later can be considered as a generic description of a recruiter and this is what we shall refer to as a definition of a recruiter. In many parts of the western world where HR/Recruiting space has existed for long, they have in the past decade or so gone through many changes and they are still developing and evolving, one such eg; from Personnel dept. to Human Resources dept. or even Human Capital. Like wise, atleast for some of us, we are experiencing new specialized roles in the recruiting space

  • Consultant
  • Recruiter
  • Researcher
  • Sourcer

The qualities that are essential for a Consultant/Recruiter could vary vastly from a Sourcer (a Sourcer is a computer geek, an introvert, good in mining information/data from the net, etc), however a Researcher’s role might even overlap with some of the roles played by Consultant/Recruiter. A Recruiter source and manage her clients and also generate relevant profiles to meet the clients requirement.

Some of the behavioral qualities that are common in most of the successful recruiters are:

  • Observant
  • Sharp and quick grasp of matters
  • Good memory
  • Fast learner and knowledgeable
  • Self starter
  • Persistent
  • Empathetic
  • Organized
  • Good communicators
  • Good listener
  • Multi-tasker
  • Pro-active

A good recruiter must have a good grasp of the thing that are happening around her, she must have good knowledge about the market, the domain/industry, technology, the client, the job, etc. She must also act as an Information storehouse - have information or knows how to access for information.

Some of the skills intrinsic to any great recruiter would include(source:
Job Junction):

1. Interview skills:
Knows and use array of interviewing techniques
2. Internet skills:
Boolean, Flip, peel, x-ray websites to find passive candidates
3. Computer skills:
Understands what is O.S, network, Local drive, server etc and very handy with keyboards shortcuts and very comfortable with MS word and Excel.
4. Sales skills:
A good recruiter must have strong verbal and written skills, good presentation and negotiation skills. Convince a client for her business-sell your business/company to the client and convince a candidate for the job-sell the job to the candidate.
5. Analytical skills:
Good with numbers and calculations. Resumes sent, shortlisted, interviewed, selected and/or reject - a good recruiter must keep track of these numbers, analyzed, and take action wherever necessary to see the increase in numbers of closures. A good recruiter must always quantify and talk numbers.
6. People skills: Build and develop internal and external relationships – with client, candidate, colleagues etc.

- Happy hunting folks!-

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi.just to add another quality or habit.A good recruiter has to be fond of reading, with a good knowledge of the industry and business,beyong the verticle he is handling, so that he is able to talk sense when he/she is interacting with the client and candidates.

Anonymous said...

Hi Joe,

It was great reading your article
on "qualities of a good recruiter".
It was an enlightening one !
I am looking forward to a career as
a recruiter, just starting.
Tomorrow is my job interview for the post of an IT recruiter.
Your article has surely made a
difference !

Reena.
singhreena29@gmail.com

Anonymous said...

How would you go about recruiting for someone who almost completly bases thier decisions based on handwriting analysis?

Unknown said...

Hey Joe,

It was really useful to know some of the skills of a recruiter and i appreceiate you kindness to share your knowledge.
Could you please tell me what are the key assessment factors while recrutiting a candidite

Div

Unknown said...

Hey Joe;
hope you are doing fine!!
it's really nice to read your Artical, that's great, am also Recruiter (IT),would like to add comment......... Harry Rogers added nice thing and apart from it while interacting with Client and Candidates you must know how soon you get friendly with them to extract each and every thing regarding exact requirement(from Client) and hidden things from a candidate.... to Source Asset to your client.
Vikram 2280.leo@gmail.com

Unknown said...

Hi Joe,

Nice Meeting you.

This artice on recruiter is great.

Regards,
Ambika

NEELAM DAGAR said...

hi joe which qualities u have told that are very important in a recruiter.
i wanted to know the answer of this question and to read ur article i got that information .today was my interview and i did't know answer but from coming there i got this information
thanks


dagar.neelam@gmail.com

Anonymous said...

That's exactly what I needed....Thank you Joe...Ruchi

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Legal Recruiter San Francisco said...

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legal recruiter said...

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