Recruitment: What Makes a Great Recruitment Consultant?
At times, recruitment can feel like a constant battle. You’re always trying to find open vacancies, stay close to your clients and attract new ones, get the best talent before your competitors and ultimately fill roles before someone else does.
The UK recruitment industry is made up of over 29,000 agencies, ranging from small start-ups with a couple of staff to large global staffing firms. There are a number of character traits that can help you survive in the fast-moving recruitment industry. So if you are thinking of beginning a career and want to know what makes a great recruitment consultant, see if you have these attributes before you dive in.
Confident talker
As a recruiter you will have a lot of conversations with people at all different levels, so excellent conversational skills are vital. Recruitment is essentially people selling people.
Being able to chat confidently and naturally will help you draw out all the information you need, even when things are not being overtly said. Being a confident talker can be the difference between enabling consistent billings and being at the bottom of the league table.
Resilience
If you like a challenge, get spurred on by rejection and enjoy rolling up your sleeves to achieve results in difficult task, being a recruitment consultant could be your calling. Clients will frequently change job requirements, candidates will pull out of the process, candidates will no-show and you will have to start the whole process all over again. It takes grit, guts and heaps of resilience.
Patience
Remember, you’re dealing with people’s major life decisions and that will always require sensitivity. People get nervous and worried as and they will be looking to you to guide them through the interview process. Recruitment is often a long game.
It can take time to find the right candidates, send them for an interview and gather feedback.
Emotional intelligence
Changing jobs, or even an entire career path, can be a stressful experience. Being emotionally alert to candidates’ feelings can help not only build better relationships but can also help you ensure their placement will be successful and the right decision for them.
On the other hand, there will be times when you have to reject a candidate.. Having emotional intelligence can help you deliver this news more sensitively and with minimal damage to the candidate’s confidence and to your ongoing relationship whilst you seek other opportunities on their behalf.
Listening skills
While you will certainly do a lot of talking, you’ll do equally as much listening. Listening to your clients and candidates is vital to being a successful recruiter. Letting them do the talking will give you the information you need to make a successful match.
Whatever size your business is or aspires to be, our cloud software covers the entire recruitment lifecycle, available as integrated or standalone solutions. Get in touch with us to learn how our software can help your business be more profitable.
