To be a great recruiter, there is a variety of skills you need that will help you hire top talent every time. These skills include soft, hard and technical skills.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the skills needed as a recruiter that will boost your efficiency, save you time, and improve your talent acquisition. These skills help you stay on top in the competitive recruitment market.
Soft recruitment skills
Communication
Strong communication skills are key for any recruiter.
Part of great communication is being able to listen as much as you talk. That way, you fully understand the other person and what they need from you.
Understanding the nuances of body language and facial expressions are also an important communication skill, as most of what we say is in how we say it.
You need to be able to read people, as well as understand that some positions or expressions can be cultural, or different in people who are neurodivergent. Understanding the context and reading the room ensures that your communication and listening skills are effective and nothing is misinterpreted.
Resilience
You’ll inevitably encounter setbacks as part of the recruitment process. How quickly you bounce back will impact how much that setback affects you and what you do next. Also, some aspects of recruitment are out of your control, it is important to let go, learn from the experience, and keep pushing towards your goals.
Reliability
Being reliable boosts your employer brand and your personal brand. Candidates should be able to rely on you to give them the information they need and update them when you say you will.
This also puts candidates at ease, removing some of the uncertainty that can come from the job-hunting process.
On the other side, the hiring managers are relying on you to hire the best candidate for their team.
Big-picture thinking
Being able to see the bigger picture helps with your recruitment and selection process, making it easier for you to choose the most qualified candidate for a role.
You can compare their skills to the job description, visualise how they’ll fit into the team, and imagine how they could impact the business’s bottom line long term.
Networking
Networking can speed up the hiring process. If you don’t know someone who can fill a role yet, you can more easily find someone who’d be a great fit and convince them to apply. When you have built a strong network, the members might refer you passive candidates who you might now have engaged otherwise.
Empathy
Job hunting can be a stressful and exhausting process for candidates. It’s therefore important to remember this and talk to them with empathy and compassion.
A little bit of compassion can ease some of their stress. It may even improve your employer brand if you go above and beyond to make candidates feel calm and appreciated.
Recall
As a recruiter, you’re going to deal with a lot of candidates. You need to be able to recall who they were, what role they applied for, and what their relevant skills were.
One way you can do this is with a note-taking app, or an applicant tracking system (ATS). These can store all the information you need to remember about candidates so that you can easily find it when you need it.
Willingness to keep learning
Now, more than ever, recruitment is evolving.
It’s therefore important to always be learning about the latest trends and explore ways you can use them in your recruiting strategy. This could include using an ATS to shortlist suitable candidates or using AI to draft rejection emails.
Project/task management
As a recruiter, you often have to juggle many balls at once. You need to be able to keep them all in the air without dropping any.
Adopting a task-management app to improve your time management skills, or using an ATS to track your recruitment process, can save you time and make you even more efficient.
Hard recruitment skills
Analysis
You need to be able to dissect the contents of someone’s resume, analyse someone’s interview answers, and pick apart their test pieces to see how they compare to the job description and what the role requires of them.
Being able to interpret recruitment metrics and make data-driven decision based on these metrics, is extremely valuable.
Marketing/sales
Part of your job is to sell the company you’re hiring for to potential candidates. To do this, you need adequate sales and marketing skills.
Recruitment software
Being able to use recruitment software, like an ATS, is one of the key skills of a good recruiter. It will help you keep all your plates spinning and allow you to make more informed choices during the hiring process.
Social media
58% of job hunters have researched a potential employer online, while passive candidates make up 75% of the job market.
If you’re not actively using social media to find, and attract, candidates, you risk missing out on a huge talent pool and having a less effective employer brand than your competitors. We have also written a social recruiting guide to explain why it is essential.
Technical recruitment skills
Industry knowledge
Part of being a successful recruiter for your industry is having deep industry knowledge. This ensures you’re aware of the most important skills required for someone to qualify for a role. It also helps you shortlist candidates.
For example, for technical recruiting, you need to know what languages candidates will be required to use in a role and what level of proficiency they need. You don’t have to be able to write in those languages yourself, but you need at least a basic understanding of how the software they’re going to be working on operates.
Further down the hiring process, you may need to set a test that demonstrates their technical knowledge, then be able to compare their results to those of other candidates.
How to improve your skills as a recruiter
Here are some steps you can take to improve your recruiter skills:
- Look for industry trends. Industry trends will keep you ahead of your competition.
- Keep learning. When you’re always learning, you’re not only aware of those industry trends, but you also know how to use them to your advantage.
- Collect feedback and act on it. The best way to grow is through feedback. Asking candidates for feedback at the end of the hiring process will help you understand what you did right and what you can improve on for next time.
- Test your job descriptions for inclusive language. If you want to truly ensure you’re attracting your ideal candidate, test your job descriptions for inclusive language. This will also help you improve your communication skills as it may help you identify potentially exclusive language you hadn’t previously considered.
- Analyse your previous successes and failures. There will inevitably be some things that went well, and some things that didn’t go according to plan. Analysing these things will make your hiring process more efficient and more successful in the future.
- Use the right software. Software can help you with almost every step of the recruitment process. The more you embrace it, the stronger your recruiter skills will be.
How to upgrade your skills as a recruiter with software
The right recruitment software can streamline and better organise your hiring process, ensuring you hire the right candidate faster.
Teamdash is here to help you better manage your recruitment process. You can design inspiring, attractive job ads without the help of a designer; visualise your progress with customisable recruitment projects; create customisable pipelines; schedule interviews, and much more.
If you’d like to find out more about how Teamdash could help with your recruitment process, book your demo today.
Teamdash – The all-in-one recruitment software.
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