What skills do you need to be a recruiter?
Being a great recruiter takes more than just a list of skills off of a job description. If you’re considering a career in recruiting, having a skill set that will not only get you started but also set you up for success is key.
Strong Emotional Intelligence
Quite honestly, this is one of the most important things when it comes to success in recruiting. You can have the best communication skills in the world (we’ll get to that in a moment), but that alone won’t make people want to work with you.
A strong EQ is going to help people trust you. Are you a great active listener who truly cares about what others are saying? Excellent. Candidates and hiring managers alike will see value in your ability to connect with people and validate them.
Emotional intelligence also means being trustworthy, conscientious, ethical and self-aware. Ultimately, you want to be someone you’d want to work with, who you can trust has your absolute best interests at heart.
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Incredible “People Skills”
Have you ever been told that you’re the life of the party? Or that people just feel better when you’re around? How about that you’re a great listener, or that you have an infectious laugh?
Being a “people person” comes with the territory in recruiting. Since our entire job revolves around people, it is pretty important that you actually like (most) people. If you don’t, you’re really not going to enjoy life as a recruiter. Plain and simple.
People skills come in many forms but are all equally important in a successful recruiting career.
Exceptional Communication Skills
As a recruiter, you’re going to spend your entire recruiter life communicating – with hiring managers and organizational leaders, with candidates, with industry experts, with other recruiters, and others in your network. You’re sending emails, hosting virtual meetings (in-person ones too!), calling candidates and hiring managers, sending follow-ups and thank you notes… the list goes on, and on, and on.
“Strong communication skills” also means being able to translate job descriptions to candidates, and resumes to internal hiring managers. When you’ve got a candidate you know would be a good fit for an open position, you want to be able to effectively communicate that to both the candidate and the internal team.
Deep Industry experience
This is important so you understand the business and the field/category, but it is more than that. Industry experience also gives you the history and context you need to find success. When you have deep knowledge of the companies and humans in a particular industry over time, it becomes a ‘database’ in itself.
Brad and Rose, for example, know just about every single company in adtech. So chances are, they know the context of working at a particular company at a point in time. What value does that bring? It helps us evaluate and understand candidates a few steps further. If we know someone worked at XYZ company in 2018 when the market was consolidating, and they made it through three rounds of layoffs, that tells us something special about them.
If we know their boss was XYZ person and know that he or she has a super high bar and was also hard to work with – and this candidate did it, then we know more about them than “They worked at ABC company.” We might also know what tech stack a company used, so we know what platforms the candidate has experience with so we won’t even need to ask about it.
Having this insider understanding is something that truly only comes with experience in that industry.
An Extensive Network
This is critical. It really is all about who you know. Your network is everything in the recruiting industry. If you don’t have it yet, you need a plan to build it and a plan to continue to expand it.
You may have heard the sales phrase “always be selling.” In this industry, it’s more along the lines of “always be networking.” There are opportunities for you to network every single day. Digitally and in person, with candidates and recruiters, you should treat every engagement as an opportunity to connect with people and share your value.
Your network should include connections deep in the markets you serve. Rose goes to Cannes for a conference and gets an invitation to every party that’s impossible to get into. Why? Because she knows who and how to get them. It’s the same with recruiting, you have to be able to access the candidates that are right for the roles you are hired to close.
Join the WhatsApp groups that matter, the Slack channels that matter, and attend every virtual happy hour that makes sense for your industry. Contribute to the conversations outside of recruiting. Nerd out about the industry you’re working in, follow the industry news, and have an opinion.
Influencing Skills
If you’re transitioning from a career in sales to becoming a recruiter, you’ve probably already mastered half of the job. Congrats! We’re only somewhat kidding. Having a background in sales makes you well-suited for a career in recruiting because you likely have mastered the skill of influence.
You’re influencing candidates who might not consider themselves “in the market” for a new opportunity.
You’re influencing hiring managers and showing them your candidate’s true value and potential.
You’re influencing how the future of a company takes shape.
You’re influencing the way that all parties see value in each other – the candidates, the hiring managers, and the organizational leaders.
Having a deep understanding of the company, the opportunity, and the candidate is so crucial. When all these things are in alignment, recruiters help each side navigate the “courting” process to bring everything together. As a recruiter, your biggest objective is to influence each side to see the value (as long as it’s truly there).
Positioning Skills
Positioning is how you help someone realize their value and potential. It’s how you share the importance and excitement of an opportunity. We don’t market our roles, we go and find exactly what we are looking for in a candidate. Then, it’s all about education and influence.
When you’re sharing an opportunity with a candidate, positioning it as the role for them is key. If you believe they’re the person for the job, it’s your time to shine and share what you see in the candidate that makes them a perfect match. Share the benefits of this particular opportunity, what makes it great, why the company is a good one to work for… why is this career move one worth making?
Technology Skills
Don’t run away, it’s not what you think. You don’t need to be able to code an extensive application from scratch, build a website with custom coding, or even have all the answers to your coworker’s questions about working in a cloud environment. You do need to be confident in using technology. Depending on which path you take in recruiting, you’ll come across different software and systems to organize open positions and candidates. Recruiters can use an Applicant Tracking System or other CRMs to manage their business. You might also utilize scheduling tools like Bookings or Calendly to manage appointments and interviews. As a “modern recruiter,” the technology stack at your fingertips can (and should) make the job easier.
Business Acumen
Business acumen is also important. You might have particular experience working inside a company/industry, but you need to have business acumen and hiring experience during your time working in an industry in addition to the other things listed in this article to be great in this field as an external talent advisor and hiring specialist.
You don’t need an MBA or 32 years experience in corporate America to become a successful recruiter, but you do need a solid general understanding of business. Recruiters are thought to live solely in the HR sector, but it’s important to have a grasp on how to build and manage teams, how different functional departments work together, how to identify the most pressing needs of an organization, how decisions are made, how budgeting plays a role, and how big companies operate vs start-ups in terms of its impact on the ins and outs of building teams within an organization.
Being able to “talk the talk” with companies looking to fill an opening makes a difference. Your ability to have knowledgeable conversations around basic business principles will take you far. Having a strong business vocabulary is something you can establish before you begin your recruiting career.
To take this one step further, having industry specific knowledge will set you apart from the rest. We’ve shared about getting started in recruiting with no experience, and how you can launch a successful recruiting career after years in a different industry. If you have extensive knowledge about how SaaS businesses operate, lean into that and position yourself as an expert in the field. Once again, you don’t have to have 32 years of experience in whichever industry you want to focus your recruiting efforts in. The internet is a powerful tool. Use it. Leveraging the resources available to you to become fluent in industry jargon, business structures, and leading trends is going to be an incredibly valuable skill set to have under your belt.
Measured Approach
Numbers do matter in recruiting. At People Obsessed, we don’t get caught up in quotas and requirements for the number of InMail messages sent, interviews held, or new leads brought in. However, as a recruiter, you’ll have a lot of data at your disposal. Being able to make sense of it and learning from it will take you far.
Recruiting metrics include everything from cost per hire to applicants per opening and sourcing channel cost to candidate satisfaction. While we don’t place a ton of stress on these numbers (just do good work with good people), many agencies and internal HR departments do.
Confidence and Curiosity
These might not be listed on a job description for a recruiter, but they’re just as important as the skills that are. Confidence is key when it comes to recruiting. You have to have the confidence that you can fill a difficult position. You have to have the confidence in yourself to position your candidate as the best fit. You have to have confidence in speaking with executives and hiring managers. You have to have confidence in advocating for your candidate.
Curiosity killed the cat, but it kept the recruiter relevant. That’s how that saying goes, right? A curious recruiter is a good recruiter. We ask all the questions, want to learn all the things, and strive to stay ahead of the latest trends. Having the desire to continually learn and perfect your craft will take you from the recruiter no one has heard of to the recruiter everyone wants to work with. Candidates and companies alike will recognize your curiosity and love for knowledge.
Curiosity also means being open to trying new things. The world of recruiting is ever-changing. Never stop learning and improving.
Human Resources Skills
Of course, we’ll save the most obvious skill set for last. While having human resources skills might seem like a given, there are specific skills that are more important than others in this category.
You must have strong resume building and reviewing skills.
You must know how to ask the right questions to qualify and understand a candidate (and be aware of what you can and can’t ask legally – no legal battles here, please).
You must understand the hiring process.
You must understand what is important to the hiring manager and candidates alike.
You must know how to understand and negotiate an offer.
You don’t have to know every company policy, performance metric, training standard, or formalized procedure. You have others to lean on for that. But you do need to know what makes a good candidate a good candidate, how to weed out the bad ones, how to navigate the hiring process, and what is included in a strong employment offer.
There are many other skills that can transfer to recruiting. The possibilities are as endless as laundry for a family of 12. Whether you’re coming from a decade long career in IT management, five years in sales, or four years of waiting tables while you finished your degree, nearly any career path can translate to recruiting if you have the confidence to commit. You are the author of your recruiting story, the path is up to you.
