Whether you're entirely new to recruitment or are an old dog, there's always room to improve skills that will make your recruitment job easier. Simplify your life in the long run by learning a few simple skills. You'll fill more positions, make more people happy, probably end up with a promotion and make plenty of money along the way!
We asked our network of new and experienced recruitment consultants what skills they thought you needed to help make recruitment life slicker, and these five popped up.
1) Marketing Skills
One of the most valuable recruitment skills you need to develop is marketing flair. Finding the best talent for your job openings can be tricky, especially in job markets with more open positions than available candidates. Having a little marketing oomph will make it easier to generate interest and catch the eye of your talent pool. Learn how to create attention-grabbing job adverts, post engaging content on Linkedin and find innovative ways to sell your services.
2) Patience
They say 'patience is a virtue', which couldn't be more accurate in recruitment! Setting up good search terms and filtering through applicants, CVs, LinkedIn profiles and qualifying candidates can sometimes feel like an endless task. Developing patience will help you to avoid hot-headed blowouts if you're prone to them! Luckily patience isn't just a character trait but can also be learnt. Breathing exercises, mindfulness and slowing down will all help you improve your levels of patience. You'll find you enjoy your job more if you improve your levels of patience too.
3) Communication Skills
Good communication skills in recruitment are a given in order to get ahead. You can't do the job without them, and there are some great ways to develop those skills further.
If you haven't already, it's worth googling 'active listening' as it's an incredible skill to develop. Not only will you find you absorb more information from a single conversation or phone call, but your clients and candidates will come away from talking to you with a strong sense of trust and respect. There's nothing worse than feeling like someone hasn't really 'heard' you. The beauty of learning active listening is that it works well in day to day life too!
4) Persuasion
You might not need the art of persuasion for every placement, but it's undoubtedly a skill you'll want for the harder to fill jobs! Sometimes a candidate might need a little nudge in the right direction or reminding about why the role on offer is so appealing! Use your knowledge of their requirements to tap into what sells it for them. That might be going after logical, emotional or cooperative appeals and you'll need to have listened (using your active listening skills, of course!) to know which of these three routes to follow!
5) Body Language
If you've ever seen any clip from a silent movie, you can start to realise how non-verbal communication can say so much! Using positive body language only comes with an awareness of how to read it and display it even when you don't want to. Read up on expressing openness and approachability from yourself to improve client and candidate relationships. Equally, learn what defensive and closed body language looks like to understand when you need to soften your approach during the recruitment process.
Learn More About Successful Recruiter Skills
Recruiting, or at least recruiting well, can be a time-consuming process at points. However, shake up your skillset and add a few more tools to your belt and you'll find yourself flying in the recruitment world!
Contact our team to learn more about our services and to find a list of our available recruitment jobs.