The Difference Between Good and Great Recruiters

By Alicia Geigel on January 16, 2019

As a recruiter, sorting through resumes and filtering through prospective hires can be relentlessly tiring, repetitive and boring. With an average of 250 resumes received for each corporate job posting and approximately 427,000 resumes posted weekly on job search websites like Glassdoor or Monster, recruiters like you are in difficult positions when it comes to the hiring process. Receiving hundreds and even thousands of applications for a position can make it difficult to sort through worthy, potential candidates and unworthy ones.

In addition, the high frequency of applicants and pressure to secure a top candidate for your position can make it hard for you to know how to go about being an effective recruiter, or being a great recruiter versus just a good one. Are you currently a recruiter? Wanting to improve your technique and gain new skills? Have a desire to set yourself apart and be a great recruiter? Check out these key traits that set great recruiters apart from good ones! Not only will you gain new information but you’ll also learn new tips on how to be the best you can in your industry!

work, recruiter, job, hands, handshake, talk

Image via Pexels

Being a recruiter has a very specific skill set and job responsibilities. Many people are unaware of this, and often confuse the titles and responsibilities of a recruiter and a hiring manager. Both are very important to the hiring process, and both have similar obligations, however, there is one key aspect that differentiates recruiters from hiring managers.

According to Christina Pavlou of Workable.com, “The recruiter manages the process, it’s the hiring manager who actually closes the deal. While the hiring manager takes responsibility for the outcome, this by no means implies that the recruiter’s role is minor or simple. Recruiters lay the foundation for hiring the right people.” Why is it important to know the difference? Knowing the difference between being a recruiter versus being a hiring manager is important because it allows you to center on your specific duties and improve on your skills to become not good but great.

Fernando Ramirez of Recruiter.com details the behavior of recruiters, and what makes their job so unique, stating, “Recruiters are part artists and part scientists. Recruiters have to use their time wisely but also strategically. It’s just part of the business. Technology has added new aspects to their work, but it has also improved the way recruiters find candidates. Recruiters behave the way they do because their job is to present the most viable candidates to organizations. Plain and simple.”

With an understanding of recruiter responsibilities and behavior, let’s dive into how to move upward from a good recruiter to a great recruiter.

Infographic by Alicia Geigel

Key Traits that Set Great Recruiters Apart:

1. Great Networker: Being a great networker is key to be a great recruiter, because so much of the recruiting process relies on connections and branching out to new territories. Additionally, a great recruiter knows how to effectively communicate with others, exudes strong confidence, and is approachable to potential candidates.

Excellent Communication Skills: When we think about excellent communication skills, we typically think about a person’s comfortability to engage with other people, tone and volume of speech, eye contact, hand gestures, etc. While all of this is especially important for a great recruiter, communication is more than the obvious skills. For a great recruiter, communication is also about being transparent, honest and open with your candidate about specific things regarding the job position.

Jackie Clayton of RecruitingDaily.com notes, “Let candidates know as many details as possible about the expectations for the role, the dynamics of the team or business unit they’re interviewing for and the company culture as possible – and make sure that you realistically represent the drawbacks as well as the selling points while selling any opportunity.”

Confidence: No one wants to deal with a professional that isn’t confident, well, because it sets off the wrong vibe and can often send some mixed messages. If a recruiter isn’t confident, that is going to bleed through the rest of the company, which isn’t good. A great recruiter, however, is confident in themselves and their ability to do their job effectively and to the standard the company demands. They smile often, give firm handshakes, make good eye contact, and engage with the candidate in an attentive and understanding way.

Use Current/Former Employees to Help Build Your Message: One thing that people love nowadays is being social, whether it is face to face or on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter, we all just love to connect. Connections not only expose us to new ideas, cultures, lifestyles, etc. but they also can help us figure out our path in life! A helpful recruiting technique is to use current or former employees as a way for candidates to connect and get a feel for what working with your company is like.

According to Recruiting.com, “It’s especially valuable to have brand ambassadors available when you are recruiting. Their testimony to success will convince other great candidates like them to explore your opportunities and perhaps gain future employment.”

2. Candidate-Focused: Some recruiters simply focus on building a group of people to fill a vacant position at a company or pick the next resume on top of the pile. Recruiters like these are what separates the good from the great. Great recruiters, in contrast to those good ones, go out of their way to make sure that there is a decent pool of candidates to refer to hiring managers when the time comes.

According to Brian Rudolph of Skywatersearch.com, “It is about adopting a long-term strategy established through trust, diligence and integrity over a period of time. The best recruiters don’t focus only on their successful candidates but offer resources for all of their job seekers, building a network of invaluable candidate referrals that ‘good’ recruiters simply don’t have.”

3. Ask Questions/Anticipate Needs: Part of what separates good recruiters from great ones is a level of preparedness one has. Great recruiters get their hands dirty, pay attention to trends, research, and do anything they can to understand what their company wants and needs.

Additionally, great recruiters make it a point to communicate well with the hiring manager, asking questions to get better insight and perspective on the needs of the company as well as the opinion of the manager. In a blog post by Jessica Miller-Merrell, she writes, “Great recruiters don’t simply ask questions, they research, learn and absorb because they understand the company and its ecosystem through experience.”

4. Use Technology Effectively: This may seem like an obvious tip, but there is great truth in it! A majority of us rely on technology for just about everything in our lives, with an equal amount of reliance on social media as well. Social media can serve as a news outlet, job market, or simply a way to connect with family. Regardless, when recruiting it is imperative that you take advantage of technology and social media.

Fernando Ramirez writes, “94 percent of recruiters believe that LinkedIn is the best network to vet candidates. In your listings, include links to social media pages like Facebook and Twitter, where potential applicants can see and explore what your company is about as well as see what others have to say about you. Set up a monthly email newsletter that people can sign up for that can relay more information about your company and its mission.

5. In it for the Long Term: Hand-in-hand with being candidate-focused, great recruiters look beyond filling a position just because its open. Rather, they are focused on building meaningful relationships with employees and candidates after the whole hiring process is long over. Thus, great recruiters are candidate focused for both the benefit of the candidate and the company itself.

Miller-Merell writes, “Great recruiters understand that employees hold see their recruiters as brand ambassadors who serve as the first point of contact with their new company. They continue relationships with their hires and placements long after they have finished employee orientation and onboarding.”

6. Share Skills for the Benefit of Others: Great recruiters are not just in it for themselves. Great recruiters are in it to see their company succeed, which means they are in it to see their coworkers and other recruiters succeed as well. Because of this, great recruiters share their techniques, skills, and hiring “secrets” to other recruiters so they can implement the same techniques and skills to make the overall company thrive.

Rudolph writes, “[Great recruiters] aspire to build a successful brand through implementing best practices resulting in long-term success and a coherent, fulfilled team of skilled recruiters.”

7. Leverage Their Uniqueness: As a great recruiter, you shouldn’t have a broad “one-size fits all” approach to filtering through candidates. Instead look at each candidate as unique with specific skills and traits that your company can benefit from. Expanding your scope and allow yourself to be open allows you to focus on the very best candidates and be a great recruiter.

notebook, pen, desk, person, work, paper

Image via Pexels

8. Good at Multi-Tasking: One important trait that recruiters need while working is the ability to multi-task. Since recruiters have a lot of responsibility, multi-tasking is imperative to being a successful great recruiter. Juggling multiple candidates and dealing with more than one company at a time, there are multiple documents, files, and records to keep track of. If you’re able to keep track of significant details and effectively balance your projects, your work life will not only be easier, but you’ll also grow to become a great recruiter.

9. Strong Sales Skills: Recruiters are in part salesmen, selling their company and services to the candidate in question. Recruiters want candidates to be apart of their company and to contribute to the company’s overall success. To be a great recruiter, you have to have a good grasp of marketing skills, knowing how well to sell your company as well as display knowledge of your company to potential candidates.

A blog post by Skillmeter states, “Knowing how to market and promote your services, expertise and knowledge effectively to clients and candidates is of utmost importance. If you have lots of candidates on your database but are not able to convince a company to hire any of them you will not close any deals.”

Emphasize Benefits: People desire and appreciate certain elements of working, and it’s not just about money. For instance, a lot of people like to be able to have valuable input in work, express ideas and creativity, incorporate advancing technologies and social media into work, have upward mobility, and balance between work and social life.

Nicole Fallon of BusinessNewsDaily.com suggests, “The key is selling potential employees on the benefits of working with you. This makes recruiting almost a marketing effort, and in truth, the best recruiting techniques have their roots in the most effective marketing tactics.” As a great recruiter, it is important to include these elements in your listings/career site as a means to differentiate your company from the rest and appeal to your candidate

Being a recruiter is not an easy job. Striving to be a great recruiter takes a lot of learning, research, experience, and yearning for personal connections with those you come in contact with. Good recruiters can all do the job, but it takes a great recruiter to go the extra mile and take the time to appeal to the candidate, build a decent pool of potential employees, and dedicate themselves completely to the growth of the company.

Being a great recruiter is demanding, and requires you to have excellent communication and networking skills, strong familiarity with technology, good marketing strategies and techniques, and above all else, the ability to connect not only with your candidate but also your fellow recruiters and your company at large. Though it may take a while to get there, you have the ability to become a great recruiter if you align your goals and actions with these key traits! As always, good luck!

Follow Uloop

Apply to Write for Uloop News

Join the Uloop News Team

Discuss This Article

Get College Recruiting News Monthly

Back to Top

Log In

Contact Us

Upload An Image

Please select an image to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format
OR
Provide URL where image can be downloaded
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format

By clicking this button,
you agree to the terms of use

By clicking "Create Alert" I agree to the Uloop Terms of Use.

Image not available.

Add a Photo

Please select a photo to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format