What Qualities Make a Great Recruiter?
Ms. Pomerantz has served as the Chief Executive Officer of Mary Pomerantz Advertising for the past twenty five years. She was formerly the Chief Executive Officer of Pomerantz Staffing, which grew to be one of the largest privately-owned staffing companies in the US under her leadership.
Due to the increasing demand for talent and the millions of available jobs in the U.S., your recruiters are likely among your most valuable employees. They can help uncover hidden gems, snatch star performers from the competition and find great employees that fit into your budget. Since the quality of your staff directly correlates to the quality of your products and/or services, the quality of your recruiters is essential to your overall success. But how do you know what qualities to look for in a great recruiter?
The Importance of Strong Employee Recruiting
While there may be some industries where high-quality workers are not necessary for success, most businesses go as far as their employees take them. This is why companies like Google, Wegmans Food Markets, Quicken Loans and others invest so much money and effort into making sure their employees are happy, consistently finding themselves on Top 100 Places to Work lists.[1]
Great employees make a great business. They improve the customer experience, which leads to increases in revenue, ultimately putting more money in owners’ pockets. If you have recruiters who can consistently land ideal candidates for your open positions, your company is likely poised for future success.
What You Should Be Looking for In Your Recruiter
1. Confidence: This is an important quality to have in any occupation, but it’s especially important for recruiters to exude confidence. They must know they can meet their employers’ workforce demands.
2. Marketing Skills: Recruiters need to be able to sell potential applicants on the merits of a job and an employer throughout the entire employee recruiting cycle, from the initial job description to the final interview.
3. Effective Communication Abilities: Recruiters can’t afford to get their messages mixed up when speaking to employers about the candidates they need or to applicants about the details of available positions.
4. Good Listener: Listening ability is an underappreciated aspect of effective communication. You need recruiters who are good at listening to your directions and good at listening to the things applicants say.
5. Good at Multitasking: If you only have one position to fill at a time and you always have two weeks or more to get it done, multitasking may not be as important. But the reality is that employee turnover and fluctuating workforce demands necessitate recruiters who can handle multiple duties at once without sacrificing quality.
6. Time Management/Speed: Most vacancies need to be filled as quickly as possible and don’t have open-ended deadlines. You need recruiters who can manage their time to accomplish multiple duties and who can fill positions quickly.
7. Resilience: When you’ve been trying to fill a position for weeks and keep running into dead ends, resilience is extremely important. It’s easy to get discouraged during an employee search. The best recruiters are always motivated to keep going until the position is filled.
8. Patience: Recruiters must also show patience. Sometimes you don’t find the right candidate right away. Recruiters who show patience are able to avoid making bad hiring decisions because they don’t jump at the first decent applicant. They’re also able to remain encouraged if and when things don’t go well at first.
9. Understanding of Basic Psychology: Job candidates do not reveal everything about themselves during interviews. A skilled recruiter must read in between the lines and interpret body language and other cues to draw conclusions about candidates.
10. Reliability: You need the mental peace of mind that tells you that your recruiter will find his or her target no matter what. If your business runs on deadlines and is beholden to client expectations, you can’t afford to have recruiters who can’t get the job done.
11. Social Media Skills: Though the importance of social media in recruiting is debatable, it is not debatable that most job seekers have at least one social media profile. In addition to a new avenue to reach candidates, social media also offers employers the chance to build their brands at a low cost. A recruiter who has social media skills offers an advantage to his or her clients.
It may be difficult to find all of these skills and others in a single recruiter, but not as difficult to find them in a team of recruiters. MPA Recruitment Marketing offers dedicated employee recruiting services for all positions and all industries. With over 30 years of experience in the recruitment marketing and employer branding fields, we are confident that we can improve your current recruiting success and help you land the ideal candidates your business needs. Get started today by contacting us at 732-214-9600. 732-214-9600.
