What Makes a Good Recruiter?

Sometimes working as a recruiter is a thankless job where the search and job requisition load never ends.  That requisition load is growing with Fortune Magazine reporting that the 100 Best Places to work have over 150,000 jobs to fill.  What makes a good recruiter is important as they can anticipate needs and use their network to find top talent making the job look easy.

• Good Recruiters Ask Questions.  Good recruiters ask questions about the role they are looking to fill.  Good recruiters realize that a job description isn’t always a comprehensive list of the job responsibilities or serve as a laundry list of qualifications. Good recruiters ask questions of the hiring manager as well as the candidate.  They dig deeper and take pride in their work.

•  Good Recruiters Experiment and Take Risks.  One of the things I love about social media recruiting is how innovative and exciting it has made the industry.  Good recruiters take the time to hone their skills and try new and experimentally things.  Equally important, a good recruiter knows when to walk away.

•  Good Recruiters Build Relationships.  Whether it’s with the recruiter, hiring manager or new hires, good recruiters focus on leveraging connections and building new contacts that lend results in the long term.  They are deepening their connections from online platforms such as LinkedIn by making phone and in person contact.

•  Good Recruiters Focus on Efficiency.  Good recruiters are numbers driven and look at hiring metrics like cost per hire or time to fill.  They understand that the economics of hiring demands the highest quality candidates at the least amount of cost. A good recruiter should be able to explain while this candidate is a fit and why the cost and time to hire is a great market rate.

• Good Recruiters Take Pride in Their Job.  Good recruiters take failure personally, looking to learn from their mistakes and improve their quality of hire and procedures.  Recruiting is an art as well as science that takes a combination of traits and talents in which to excel.

Good recruiters are thankful.  They’re humble and willing to learn. Good recruiters juggle the tasks of talent sourcing and candidate management to make great hires in a timely manner.  Collaborating with good recruiter could be the difference in your talent acquisition strategy.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media.  She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs.

SmartRecruiters is the hiring platform with everything you need to source talent (including a recruiting agency management feature), communicate with candidates and make the right hire.