Recruiting Impact

At best, this is only a partial list and a work in progress.  I am using “good” as an obviously relative term and only as a general classifier.  For the purposes here, “good” can mean anything from “above average” to “great”.

In no particular order, “good recruiters” are:

Reflective Listeners
Listening for understanding may be the greatest performance differentiator among recruiters.  Good recruiters listen carefully and confirm their understanding of answers, questions and comments.  Good recruiters hear, understand and record accurate information.  They draw logical implications and ask new or refined questions in order to clarify and gather deeper information. 

Strong Communicators
Most communication with hiring managers and candidates happens by telephone and email.  Good recruiters speak clearly, fluidly and logically.  They write with good grammar, syntax and spelling.  An engaging and confident communication style inspires greater trust and confidence from hiring managers and candidates and helps keep all parts moving during the recruiting, selection and hiring process.

Enthusiastic!
Enthusiasm begins with whole-heartedly adopting the company business, mission, culture and competitive strategy.  Good recruiters are adoptive believers and enthusiastic representatives of their company.  They are passionate and provocative envoys to marketplace talent.  Recruiters can potentially influence what thousands of people think of your company.   Why would any company risk having a less than enthusiastic recruiter?

Evangelistic
The Merriam-Webster definition of “evangelist” (Definition #3) is “an enthusiastic advocate”.  Anyone can post ads, key punch data, send email, screen against selection criteria, meet process requirements and move resumes.  Good recruiters are enthusiastic and persuasive evangelists for your company.  If your recruiters aren’t your strongest active employment brand evangelists, who will be?

Persuasive
Good communication skills are sometimes confused with the ability to persuade.  The ability to communicate clearly doesn’t directly translate to the ability to “move” another person in conversation.  Good recruiters are active, enthusiastic evangelists capable of compelling and inspiring talent.

Personable
How terse, closed-minded curmudgeons make their way into corporate cubes with recruiter titles is inexplicable.  They may appear to be OK with the few candidates who directly hit the mark, but consider the damage they can do to the image of your company over time.  Not to mention the havoc they can wreak with hiring managers.  Good recruiters are personable and likable.  They are open, friendly, inviting, communicative, polite, and professional.  Good recruiters build relationships and good will inside and outside your company.

Empathetic
Perspective is a critical aspect of communication with candidates.  Recruiters who are able to see and feel from the candidate’s perspective are going to be more successful than those who aren’t.  Empathy can be both an innate gift and a conscious discipline.  Good recruiters empathize with their candidates.  They develop meaningful dialogue and trust.  They consistently create win-win results and become a major factor in building a great organization.

Avid Networkers
Good recruiters are connectors and builders of professional networks.  Initiating acquaintances, making friends, building talent pipelines and constituencies, and creating person-to-person contact infrastructure are the natural inclinations of a first rate recruiter.  They join professional associations and maintain regular involvement.  They consistently connect with relevant people via social networks and exploit the vast web-based networking channels.  Good recruiters build networks that result in the discovery of “hidden talent” and passive candidates.

Responsive
Good recruiters are quickly and accurately responsive to the needs of hiring managers and candidates meeting selection criteria.  They recognize urgency and respond appropriately.  Good recruiters are priority focused and service oriented.  They make the extra effort, even when inconvenient, to meet urgency with a productive response.

Fast and Accurate
You can be the fastest gun in the west but if you don’t shoot straight, you’re dead.  You can be the straightest shooter in the west but if you’re not faster than the other guy, you’re dead.  Like gun fighting, modern recruiting is about speed AND accuracy.  One without the other is no good.  It’s not easy to be both.  Good recruiters are both.  We’re not going to head down the time-to-fill path here because that would evoke questions related to how speed is measured.  The point here is that good recruiters are working as fast as possible to acquire the right talent before their competition does.  Good recruiters figure out how to work within a near optimal range of speed and accuracy.

Competitive
Acquiring top talent in a candidate driven market is a competitive sport.  Good recruiters deploy their knowledge, skill, attitude, personality, communication and speed of process to woo and hire right-fit candidates before the competition does.  Any recruiter who has entered the profession without a competitive nature has simply chosen the wrong career path. 

Smart, Creative, and Quick Thinking
Good recruiters are smart people with the ability to think creatively on the fly.  Recruiters are hit with challenging questions and ideas and must be able to respond intelligently in real time.  Good recruiters continually build their professional knowledge banks and study their profession.  They learn from situations and develop intuitive capabilities that help them quickly accurately and professionally answer situational challenges.

Sourcing Experts
Many corporate recruiters don’t have time to dedicate to effective sourcing.  But, good recruiters should be experts in sourcing with full knowledgeable of and competence with effective sourcing methods.  If they don’t have the time themselves, corporate recruiters should enlist internal or external sourcing support.  Rather than dive right into experimental flavor of the day sourcing trends, good recruiters architect a complete sourcing strategy and direct the sourcing effort.  They leverage the most effective tools to maximize candidate quality and quantity. 

Computer literate
Proficiency with the Microsoft Office suite of tools including Outlook, Word and Excel are basics needed in many recruiting environments.  Document creation, email maintenance, communications management, and other basic functional computer skills are proficiencies every good recruiter will have.  Fast keyboarding skills are essential.  A good recruiter will have the ability to have a phone conversation through a headset while typing at the speed of talk. 

Internet/Web Savvy
Beyond Googling, Boolean search strings and deep web search methodologies, today’s recruiter needs to be skilled in all things Internet.  Web 2.0 sites like MySpace, FaceBook and LinkedIn are only a few examples of the many social networking applications that have become potential fields to harvest for recruiters.  Creating networks, sharing information and maintaining connections have moved from happy hours to desktops.  Nearly all new Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and Recruiting Management Systems (RMS) are web-based and nearly all recruiters need to be efficient with these.  Not long ago web innovations were part of a technological revolution.  Today, these are common tools used by just about everyone.  Today, it’s about using and managing the huge amount of information and accessibility.  Good recruiters are not just Internet savvy, they must be great information managers.

Skilled in Recruiting Process
Recruiting is saturated in administrative tasks.  A good recruiter is able to organize their own work pattern and automate redundant tasks in order to maximize efficiency.   Good recruiters understand the workflow and process necessary to drive results through the full recruiting, selection and hiring cycle.

Time Managers
Lots of unpredictable things happen in recruiting every day: the urgent call from a hiring manager, the candidate with a last minute question, the meeting called by a business unit.  Time management in a corporate recruiting context is really priority and task management.  Establishing priorities and consistently working the most important things first is basic “time management” survival.  A recruiter’s work life really doesn’t leave a lot of room for idle time.  Good recruiters are disciplined in their work effort.  They use their time wisely and keep focused on the tasks needing to be completed.  Discipline and focus is especially important attacking the overwhelming task loads that occur during spikes in hiring demand.  

Detail Orientated
In a position that requires a constant flow of large amounts of information, a good recruiter has an eye for detail.  It is critical for a recruiter to record information accurately, have an understanding of the detailed information being dealt with and forward information accurately as required.

Memory advantaged
A super-strength memory of candidate names, circumstances and finer details can make for better communication, better candidate relationships, less mistakes and a better overall process.  Good recruiters often seem to have the advantage of a good memory.  Maybe it’s really that they ask better questions, listen intently, are genuinely interested in what they learn and retain it.  Either way, information retention is an advantage.  Information overload is the enemy of total recall.  In the information age, good data collection, maintenance and storage of information is the only reliable “memory”.   

High Energy
High energy translates to strength of continued effort.  Demands, deadlines, obstacles, heavy task loads, twists, turns and changes place a high demand on the energy of a recruiter.  Positive attitude and strong self-motivation fuel high energy.  High energy work efforts produce consistent results because they spend less time in complaint tailspins and break-fix despondence.  Good recruiters meet requirements in stride and consistently dedicate their full energy to producing strong results against challenging circumstances. 

Positive
Good recruiters are, generally speaking, strong individuals with a positive outlook.  They meet challenges head on.  They overcome difficult obstacles.  They play to win positive outcomes.  They wake up the next morning ready to do more.  A strong positive attitude is at the root of energy, friendliness, confidence and success drive.  The recruiter walking around in a circle, kicking a can, talking to themselves is probably not going to make it very far.

Adaptable, Flexible and Change Minded
Recruiters are involved with a function of an organization likely to experience constant change.  Hiring demands surge.  Hiring freezes follow.  This business unit is priority today.  That business unit takes priority tomorrow.  A rigid, inflexible recruiter that is resistant to change is simply not qualified to be a recruiter.  Change happens daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly.  Change always happens.  Good recruiters excel in rapidly changing conditions.  They embrace change and meet the challenges change brings.

Students of Business and Economic Conditions
Before all else a recruiter needs to have a complete and sophisticated understanding of the business they’re recruiting for.  Good recruiters also understand competitive business models and the differentiators that will appeal to candidates.  Knowledge of general economic conditions and trends contribute to helping candidate’s asses industry and company choices.  A good recruiter is genuinely interest in the industry domain they’re involved with and the key competitive companies in the space.  They can pick up on changing conditions as well as strengths and weaknesses of other companies in the industry that may affect candidate choices.

Continual Learners
Good recruiters keep informed of company product and service introductions, global business initiatives and growth strategies.  They read relevant trade journals and keep in step with industry news and trends.  Good recruiters invest themselves in their own professional learning.  They actively explore new recruiting tools and stay well read on sourcing, recruiting and hiring.