The 5 Skills Every Recruiter Needs to Master

Recruiters are the beginning of every great team. They scour the talent pools to find your team and organization the perfect A player to match your company’s needs. Without a stellar team of recruiters, you wouldn’t have the top level executives, leaders and employees that your organization depends on to succeed.

In today’s world, being a recruiter is one of the hardest jobs out there. From modern workers to evolving tech, there are more jobs available than there are people, which has created a war for talent. This means you want the most skilled and driven recruiters on your side in this scarce candidate market. So, does your team have what it takes to recruit, hire and retain those A players? Don’t miss your opportunity to acquire top talent, make sure your recruiters have these skills and mindset in place:

Marketing and Sales

Modern recruiters should be well versed in marketing and sales, understanding how to win over talent. With the rise of talent-hungry companies, your recruiters need to be able to capture the attention of those A players through effective marketing and pitches on why they should consider your company. Now it’s up to your talent, they have options and if your team of recruiters doesn't present your unique offers and options well enough, you’re going to lose talent in the blink of an eye.

According to  Glassdoor:

“53% of women surveyed indicated that a company reputation for offering a good work-life balance would make them more likely to apply to a job, while only 42% of men would be attracted by this perk.”

Make sure your recruiters know how to attract the right talent by featuring the right perks, benefits and opportunities. Candidates are becoming more specific and are searching for keywords, terms and options.

Locate Top Talent

This seems like a no brainer but is actually getting more and more difficult with the shrinking talent pool and corporate competitiveness. In the past, your recruiters were able to take the traditional route of posting a job and receiving a decent amount of applicants. Today, if you find recruiters taking the “traditional” route, you’ll be scraping the bottom of the talent pool. The A players you want and need to succeed aren’t even necessarily actively looking. They have a job and it's your recruiter's job to find and intrigue them to listen to what your company has to offer. Going the extra mile to step outside of the typical recruiting process is where you can dive into new talent pools and find those hidden gems.

What are your recruiter's follow-up skills like? It’s an odd question to think about, but it’s actually one of the most important if you want your company to stand out to prospective employees. It can leave a bad taste in a candidate’s mouth if you’ve built them up, brought them in for an interview and then they never hear from you again. Follow-ups, whether they got the job or not, are so crucial in a recruiting process. It shows that the company cares. If your team lacks this, it can create a bad reputation for your business and push talent away.

Did you know?

A top complaint many applicants have is “they never got back to me”. Don’t be the company that has a reputation for this, make sure follow up’s are part of your recruiter's skills and strategy.

Passive to Active Candidates

Once your recruiters have located that top talent, they need to have the skills to turn those passive candidates into active candidates. This talent pool doesn’t even know what they are missing out on until you tell them. You’ll want to highlight what your company does better and can offer, including top benefits that would be of interest to your candidate, culture perks and more. Your recruiters will have to be persuasive enough to pull these candidates from a job they are comfortable at and get them excited and interested in what your company is offering them. This would be a big leap for some, and sometimes can be intimidating.

For those that would be intimidated, this is where your recruiters will need to spend some time nurturing them. Making sure they cover every aspect well enough to get them hooked and convinced so that this passive candidate turns into an active one.

Interpret and Leverage Data

Are your recruiters able to collect, interpret and leverage data to enhance their strategy? If you answered no, this is where you’ll want to intervene. Corporations are able to build data-based talent pools when they implement a talent management software. This software can gather and compile the right data needed to track and find the perfect hire for your positions, making those hard talent decisions easier for your hiring team and recruiters.

With the right applicant tracking system to back your team, they will be able to source passive candidates and reach more top talent. Providing the best candidate experience, your recruiters will be able to tap into talent pools that match your company needs and ensure they are making the right hiring decisions for long term success and retention. Using the data they will receive, they can revamp their current strategies to hit their goals and create a more personable and custom recruiting strategy for your organization.

Passion and Drive

Are your recruiters passionate about your company and finding the right people to help make it successful? Do they spark the attention of the right candidates your team needs? There are a lot of similar traits between sales and recruiting. They need to have the tenacity to bring new candidates to the table and find those key hires your organization is looking for. Exceptional recruiting teams possess the motivation and competitive drive to win over those passive candidates.

Not only do your recruiters need to possess passion and drive but they need to be able to communicate it effectively. Being personable and relatable is crucial so they can appeal to their candidates. Passion drives your recruiters to pursue top talent, but communication and being personable help persuade your talent pool. Your recruiters need this bundle of qualities to “land the deal” or score that top talent your company is seeking.

So how can an ATS help with this? A great system will be able to offer multilingual applications to candidates, a more diverse and broader audience for recruiters and applications in your talent’s native language. This is extremely beneficial to a candidate and will make them more likely to apply to your company. At ClearCompany, we offer ClearText. ClearText will help your recruiters get their message across easily and connect with your candidates conveniently. By using ClearText, it will capture text conversations on the candidate's profile for a comprehensive view to help your recruiters find the best-qualified candidates.

Ensure your recruiters acquire the right skills and resources to help them source, recruit and hire top talent for your unique talent needs. By combining their skills and qualities with the right talent management system, your recruiters will be able to successfully connect with the best talent and find your next hires. Learn how we can help with our full talent management platform today!