What you need for being a great recruiter

I know that when you are outside the domain and you look for a recruiter’s job, it seems easy. You send messages, you give calls and you talk to people.

But what you can't see when you are outside the domain, is there are differences between an average recruiter and a great one. By being a great recruiter you have more skills to differentiate yourself from others.

Here are some characteristics of a great recruiter:

• Communication skills. A recruiter is an interface between a candidate, a hiring manager, and a company’s brand. It is also the company’s image, so it is essential for him/her to communicate properly with all the parties involved in the recruitment process. Asks the right questions, understand properly the answers, “translates” them to the other part, and come back with an appropriate reply.
• A good listener. Recruitment is about listening to what a candidate wants and listening to what a hiring manager wants. It is not about what you give (what role you propose to a candidate), but more about how you receive the information from others and how you make them feel relevant.
• Being empathetic and building relationships. From the recruiter's sit, you have to give frequently negative feedback to some candidates. Of course, for most of them, it is not a good moment. But you can turn this into a learning moment and help the candidate become better for a future recruitment process.
• Develop a good knowledge of the industry. As a recruiter, you don’t have a certain school to graduate from to become a recruitment specialist in IT, engineering, medicine, or BPO. In most cases, you learn this on the job, guided by a mentor. To be a great recruiter, you will constantly learn in this field from every candidate you meet, from every hiring manager you work with, or from every conference you watch on your domain.
• Being flexible and having negotiation skills. As a recruiter, you have to adapt easily to each new requirement you receive from the tech team and to every change the candidate asks for in the process. It would be easy to solve everything by magic, but in most cases, you will have to negotiate with all the people to solve any problem.

There are a lot of recruiter roles open nowadays. It is happening because a recruitment process needs a lot of time and effort and companies understood that they need persons allocated only to these tasks. Companies need to invest in recruiters' development and take time to grow great specialists in this domain.

HERE are some thoughts of mine regarding how you can build easier a strong relationship with a recruiter when you really want a job.

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