19 Skills you should learn to be a good recruiter

Recruiters are irreplaceable in the process of identifying, assessing, and ultimately hiring employees. But recruiters don’t always come from Human Resource backgrounds.

Experience in fields such as sales, marketing, and customer service apart from knowledge of human resource management can also foster good recruitment skills. Despite their diverse backgrounds, there are a few common qualities that all good recruiters share. 

Undoubtedly, a good recruiter is a valuable resource for any company, in any industry. What differentiates a good recruiter from an average one in the sea of recruiters is a set of traits and skills, lucky for you many of these skills can be acquired. 

We had posted a piece about the personal traits of a good recruiter and we’ll talk about the transferable skills in this one.

The skills mentioned below can be acquired with some knowledge and consistent practice. If you consciously work to improve these skills, you will surely become a much better recruiter over time.   

1.  Social Media Recruitment Exposure

Nowadays, social media exposure is more important than ever. In this era of online recruitment, social media provides a platform for identifying candidates, industry mapping, screening candidates, and building a strong network.

Social media helps you track the candidate’s movement.

Good use of social media platforms can give you an edge in Business Development as well. 

2. Good Communication Skills 

Being a good communicator is highly crucial for almost all the steps in the recruitment process. While discussing the assignment with the client company, you have to clearly understand the requirements. 

While conversing with the candidate, you should be able to convince him/her as well as explain the position in question. 

Good communication skills also help while networking and building your personal brand.

3. Good IT Skills

In this era of digitalization, having good IT skills is beneficial for the majority of the professionals, for recruiters too.

IT skills help you increase your overall work productivity. Working on recruitment software and tools, such as the Application Tracking System, allows you to complete the task efficiently and takes less time.

So, good IT skills are of utmost importance for the maintenance of the database, which is necessary for a good recruiter.

4. Daily Improvement and Upgradation

Personal development is a lifelong process, which allows you to keep upgrading yourself in a continuous improvement process with little increments or daily improvement.

Recruiters need to enhance their industry knowledge in recruitment. By being aware of the new recruitment tools and recruitment software, you can increase your work effectiveness. All this knowledge will help you build proper strategies and action plans.

Daily improvements also decrease the repetition of past mistakes. 

5. Relationship Management

As a recruiter, relationship management is crucial for your business development. By maintaining good relations with candidates, you lay open the possibility of getting more references and responses.

Similarly, by maintaining good relations with clients, you work towards getting more requirements as well as feedback for your service. Relationship management may come in handy to get bill payment early.

6. Planning and Organizational skills

Planning and organizing skills help you manage time, tools, and resources to reach a goal. They help you work out what you need to do to achieve your aims.

Planning your work schedule helps you be more efficient and productive. Being well-organized and developing effective plans also allows you to achieve the given target.

They make a recruiter more capable of managing and maintaining the recruitment data.

7. Goal Setting and Target Orientation 

Goal Setting and orientation allow you to identify the target, understand how to measure the output and work towards accomplishing the desired result. 

It automatically brings clarity about what you want to achieve and lets you make a plan to do so.

Goal-oriented recruiters are good at time management and are thus able to complete their work effectively in less time.

8. Mission mode

Mission mode is the sense of task orientation that causes you to focus on the job at hand. Focusing solely on one job increases your level of productivity. When you concentrate on that one task, it increases work effectiveness and efficiency.

Working on one task at a time helps us see the large tasks as more approachable and this also works as an inspiration for the recruiter.

9. Ability to listen 

In the recruiting world, you should listen twice as much as you talk. You should always be up for hearing more hiring-related information because you need to gather more and more information about the needs of both the client and the candidate. In addition to this, being a good listener also helps you seem more friendly and please your clients and customers.

You can read here about the ways to train recruiters to be better listeners. 

10. Sales and Marketing Skills 

Nowadays, the line between a recruiter and a marketing and sales expert has been blurred. A recruiter has to think like a marketer to attract quality talent and keep them engaged long enough to place within a good organization. This is the only way a recruiter can stay relevant in today’s recruitment world. 

Recruiters are often viewed as specialized salespeople because not only do they have to sell the candidate as a ‘good fit potential employee’ to the clients, but they also have to do it the other way around – persuasively explain to the candidate why that particular job is a once in a lifetime opportunity. 

11. Personal Branding

A personal brand is about endorsing your unique combination of skills and experiences that make you who you are. Effective personal branding will set you apart from the competition and will also allow you to build trust with prospective clients.

Building a strong personal brand enhances your credibility in the market. It helps you to get responses faster as well as to get more high profile requirements and to close these requirements.

12. Networking skills

For any recruiter, networking skills are important for all processes in recruitment. Through interacting with people, you stay up to date in the job market, go hand in hand with current trends, and meet prospective clients.

Networking skills also help with personal branding.

13. Headhunting and Industry Mapping

Headhunting and industry mapping for a particular position increase the possibility of closure of the position. It helps you develop an understanding of companies to be targeted.

It also improves your candidate database and reach, and also adds value to the recruitment cycle.

14. Competition Tracking and Management 

To put it plainly, you are not the only one trying to find top candidates and place them at companies that require their talents. There are other individuals and agencies out there who are trying to do the same. And you need to be aware of what your competition is doing.

This helps you analyze your weakness in closing the position and improve your business and work strategies. Thus, Competition Tracking and Management helps you to identify areas of development.

15. Team Management

As with all the other team-related work, recruitment also requires team coordination and team management. You can better perform this function when you put an effort to know your team members personally as well as professionally. 

Knowing your team members’ mind-set and strengths will allow you to allocate work accordingly and to increase your team’s productivity and performance. This way you can motivate them to work together, which will ultimately benefit the business.

16. Reading Habit

A good and regular reading habit will improve your vocabulary and develop your communication skill, which, as mentioned above, is an essential trait of a good recruiter.

It enhances your convincing skills while increasing your general and technical knowledge. And a habit of reading industry-related books, articles or news keeps you updated with the Industry. 

Here are 5 books for every recruiter that we sincerely recommend.

17. Functions and Segments Understanding

Having a clear understanding of the functions and segments you’re recruiting for will help you understand the client’s requirements  and explain them to candidates.

18. Industry Knowledge

Every industry has its own terms, acronyms, and specialties, and recruiters need to educate themselves about the industry they are recruiting for.

Doing so will help you to find better talent and match them with the right companies, helping you work more effectively. When you know about the industry, candidates you interview may get impressed with your level of understanding and may even end up being a great pipeline for future referrals.

19. External Business Environmental Management

To maximize recruitment, recruiters must continually monitor internal and external environmental factors and adjust their strategy accordingly. To do so, it’s important to know what these internal and external factors are.

The external factors can be monitored by understanding the recruitment industry status and also the status of the Indian and global economy in general. You should focus on analyzing the target sector and networking amongst clients and candidates of the same sector. Considering the external business environment while strategizing will help you make better work plans. 

It will also help you when looking for the required skills and traits in an employee, making the CV screening process easier.

By acquiring these skills you can stand out as a Good Recruiter with an competitive edge among the masses of low-quality recruiters.

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Ishani Singh

Ishani works as Manager – Social Media & Strategy Big Ideas HR Consulting Pvt. Ltd. and also as a Freelance Digital Marketer. She has a knack for problem-solving and also enjoys writing. She loves to share her views and knowledge with the readers by the medium of her blogs.  

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