#007 5 Top Competencies for Being a Strategic Recruiter

Evolve from a Regular to Higher-level/Value-added Recruiter

Do you spend a lot of your time recruiting as an order taker, but you wanted to evolve your role to be more strategic and value-added and you wonder how?

If so, then you are reading the right article. In this article, you’ll learn top five competencies that you need to embrace in order to scale-up yourself.

Let’s dive into the top five competencies that you must develop to level up yourself.

#1. Create your personal brand: In today’s competitive era, you can only outshine when you are visible and approachable to your targeted candidates.

With your personal brand, you build trust and credibility, and in turn, more candidates reach out to you for their next job and many hiring managers for closing their hard-to-fill positions.

Now, let me tell you how you can create your personal brand.

First things first, become a subject matter expert. Be thorough with all the jargons, processes and what are the day-to-day responsibilities of potential employees who you are going to hire in your industry.

Next, get the knowledge how different business functions in your company are interconnected such as marketing, sales, pre-sales, delivery, support and so forth.

Also, keep tab on your company’s current events to keep yourself abreast of what is happening in your company and use them as selling points when you talk to your candidates.

Moreover, constantly look at your industry trend for availability of talent pool and prevailing salaries across companies to stay competitive.

Most importantly, voice your opinion on LinkedIn or any other platform where you find your targeted candidates. People love to connect with other people who engage with them.

Now lets move on to the second competency

#2: Consult and Influence your business partners:

Some hiring managers might have great expectations such as they need a person with all the boxes checked— which does not work always. Right!

I would recommend set the expectations, right off the bat.

Let your hiring managers know getting all the three parameters of hiring that is — speed, quality and cost in one go is less likely to happen in today’s candidate-driven market.

For example, if you get a candidate in budget and in a shorter duration of time, then they may not be a top-quality hire. If you get a top-quality candidate faster, then you may have to pay for it. Or, if you find somebody in your cost and of premium quality, then it may take a while to fill a position.

Also, you should reach out to your hiring managers(HMs) with a candidate who matches say 80 percent of a job’s requirements instead of holding out for 100 percent match. Coach and influence your HMs if the rest 20% skill set can be learned on the job. Back it up by showing them the no. of candidates available with a specific skill set, how many you reached out, and who all showed interest in the opportunity.

Also, educate HMs or clients about how the hiring process will unfold. Set the SLA that is service level agreement based on your current requisition load.

For instance, let them know that you will return with 3-5 quality candidates by a week’s time as sourcing takes time before you actually start getting some traction on resumes’ inflow, and you appreciate HMs to respond within 24hrs with their feedback on resumes and technical interviews .

Let them know that in today’s volatile market, we may lose candidates if they don't respond quickly or if they add multiple interview rounds to the process.

Next, competency to develop is to

#3. Build rapport and nurture your candidates:

The irreplaceable part of being a higher-level recruiter is your relationship building skills.

Be transparent with your candidates. Let them know about your company, role, and interview process right at the beginning. Also, ask them what mode of communication they would prefer- text, email or phone and stay connected with them throughout the process.

I have experienced that some candidates are not good at articulating their experience on their resumes. Coach them how to refine resume with necessary tweaking. Not only this builds up your rapport and trust with a candidate but it also increases the changes of technical shortlisting with HMs.

Get to know candidates well. For this, ask all the possible questions to see when an offer is made to a candidate, then it shouldn’t fall apart because certain questions were left unasked. So ask as many relevant questions as possible.

Your HM might come back to you and ask some basic yet important questions. Such as, if a candidate has any problem traveling for an onsite role. Be proactive in getting the answers of such questions well in advance. Ask clarifying questions during your initial conversation with a candidate. For instance, how comfortable a candidate is commuting daily?

I know you must be wondering even after probing all sort of questions, sometimes candidates fall through/back out at the last moment. That’s one of the pet peeves of recruiting. But still, I would recommend never miss follow-through with your candidates.

Further, check with your candidates if they have any queries or concerns in between the interview rounds that they need to clarify.

Also, post interviews, don’t forget to ask candidates how their experience was with the interviewers; no matter whether or not they are selected to the next level.

Also, recycle candidates to other projects for candidates who are declined due to company’s issue but are good otherwise. If that’s not a possibility, let your candidates know the rejection reason respectfully and thoughtfully. Make them feel valued.

Most importantly, engage with candidates by sending out targeted emails like relevant content related to their skill set, company culture, employee stories, doesn’t matter if you are hiring internally or for your client.

In all, keep them on your radar. They’ll think of you first when they move forward in their job search.

Further down, competency 4 is to

#4 Leverage Technology: Leverage technology but don’t lose personal touch. Recruiting has always remained a people business. Incorporate technology around repetitive tasks to help you UP your activity and focus your efforts more on candidate and business engagement and final closures.

For this, use automated and personalized email sequencing for initial outreach to potential passive candidates or for follow ups with your active candidates. This saves you tons of time by getting your message out faster to wider range of people.

Also, replace calendar interview scheduling with one quick click on a link Such as Calendly or LinkedIn interview scheduler, as scheduling consumes half of your day and usually involves multiple e-mail threads.

Moreover, in today’s virtual recruiting environment, use video conferencing for an initial conversation with your potential candidate, such as Zoom, Google Meet or whatever is available with your company. It is really important to understand your candidate better and build that trust.

When you take time to know your candidates well, you become confident to stand for your candidates when HMs pass on resumes. On the other hand, you can also give heads up to your hiring team for candidates who appear to be great in the first place, but they might be the ones who turn out to be poor matches and who cause challenges down the road.

If you company doesn’t use any recruitment tech stack, urge them to purchase one as that will save a lot of time, will improve the overall hiring process.

And that leads me to the last but not the least competency,

#5 Track your performance: You can’t improve your efficiency if you don’t know where your bottlenecks are.

If your company uses ATS that is Applicant Tracking System, then I would highly recommend create a culture of doing hiring via ATS so as you can gather data throughout the recruiting process, identify problem areas, and set trackable goals for improvement.

Also, set weekly goals for yourself. For instance, conduct 15 video interviews in a week, 3 in a day, so as you have at least 10 resumes’ submission in a week which could result in at least one final technical selection.

Will all that said, if you embrace these competencies, you become one of the valued members of your hiring manager’s team, someone they rely on when making hiring decisions.

If you still have any questions regarding these competencies, reach out to me at nikita.mehrotra@therecruitmentinsights.com .

I would love to help:)

Nikita