Recruitment isn’t the easiest job in the world, especially when you have difficult clients and candidates to deal with on a daily basis. There are, however, seven attributes that might be able to help you along the way.
Confidence
Many of the recruiters I have met ooze confidence. It comes into play when attending events and having to network with a range of people, most of which you probably haven’t met before. There can also be a lot of negativity attached to the job with candidates bailing out of jobs last minute and people hanging up on the phone so a successful recruiter must be able to keep/stay confident in their ability.
Communication skills
Impressive communication skills are important for any job but recruiters must be able to adapt to different circumstances such as talking to clients and candidates, whether that’s over email, texting or on the phone. A successful recruiter must also be able to interact with a variety of people with different personalities, interests, cultures and backgrounds.
Listening skills
As great as it is being able to communicate with your candidates and clients, you also need to be able to listen to them. A successful recruiter should also have the ability to ask relevant questions and actually understand what they’re clients and candidates are after.
Resilience
As mentioned previously in this post, recruiters face a lot of disappointments so they need to be able to bounce back from this and not get hung up on negativity. It’s a tough industry to be in when you spend weeks working on a role and it doesn’t work out but with resilience, the top recruiters will be able to get through these setbacks.
Knowledge
It’s essential that you have vast knowledge about the industry you recruit into as well as your recruitment software. A lack of understanding of the jobs you are trying to fill or the tools that allow you to do it, will damage both yours and your agencies’ reputation when you are unable to answer the questions your candidates are asking! So if that means spending your evenings learning industry terminology out of a dictionary then so be it!
Target driven
The ability to handle pressure is something recruiters must possess, especially when working in such a competitive industry. You must be focused on achieving your targets as ultimately, if you don’t then you won’t be reaching your OTE (on target earnings) which can put your position in the company at risk. It’s crucial for successful recruiters to have a target driven attitude to their work.
Sales and marketing skills
A successful recruiter must be able to promote their services to clients and candidates and then actually be able to sell to them. Recruitment is essentially sales after all. If you lack this flair for sales then you’re going to find it difficult to sell your services to a client and then sell your candidate to your client.
Are there any other traits you feel a successful recruiter must have? If you think so, tweet them to us @itris.
