Finding a great recruiter can feel like hitting the business jackpot. Placing the right person in this integral role has the potential to produce results that can transform a company, and drive you all towards greater success. But what are the characteristics of a good recruiter?
You’ll often find that the personality traits of the best recruiters follow something of a pattern. Of course, these aren’t set in stone—and can be found in many different types of people. Even so, knowing the general qualities to look for can help you identify the kind of recruiter who can be a true asset to your organization.
So, what makes a good recruiter? Here’s our roundup of six traits that we think matter.
A lot of how to be a good recruiter comes down to a combination of relationship-building skills, recruiting industry knowledge, and the all-important ability to multi-task. Acting as project managers, marketers, and technologists—and everything in between—successful recruiters know how to wear many hats to get the job done. While the background of the best recruiters can be incredibly diverse, you’ll often find the most effective recruiters share the skills we’ve outlined below.
Many great recruiters will have a tried-and-tested system when it comes to finding—and hiring—the best talent. As the market continues to be candidate-driven, having consistent project management skills means hiring decisions can be made as quickly and effectively as possible.
Recruitment can also be a lot like spinning plates. With many different aspects to manage on a day-to-day basis, the best recruiters can play multiple roles, have great interpersonal skills, and are able to manage their time well.
An experienced recruiting manager will also know that part of their job involves keeping a close eye on key metrics. They’ll want to track things like time to hire and time to fill, in addition to proactively looking at ways to improve these metrics.
A successful recruiter is a great listener. They understand that building a positive candidate experience is vital to recruiting success—and a lot of this success relies on effective communication and people skills. Whether building strong relationships with qualified job seekers throughout the hiring process, keeping applicants in the loop with brief phone calls, or providing status updates in a timely fashion—it all matters.
An approachable and open demeanor are also important things to look for in a recruiter. After all, both team members and candidates need to feel comfortable raising a wide variety of sensitive issues. A great recruiter will be empathetic and have a natural tendency to instill trust.
These days, top recruiters need to think outside the box. Successful recruitment requires marketing the company in a way that makes potential candidates excited about applying for open positions—and the possibility of working for your organization. Great recruiters also know how to create attention-getting content for social media, which can be a powerful way to connect with passive candidates.
Effective recruiters are proactive about reaching out to qualified candidates in their talent pool, keeping them up to date with company developments or new job postings that may suit them. Being able to craft and disseminate effective, engaging, and inclusive job descriptions that catch the interest of potential new hires is another vital skill.
An effective recruiter has the respect of hiring managers and executives, enabling them to influence company decisions at a high level. With this influence comes the ability to shape the company’s approach toward new recruiting strategies, such as the use of video interviews and artificial intelligence (AI) in the recruiting process.
Recruiters need to have confidence when communicating the values of the organization they work for, inspiring the best candidates that this is the job they’ve been waiting for. In addition to influencing candidate and company decisions, some of the most successful recruiters take this a step further and become influencers that others in the HR industry follow on LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media platforms.
Recruitment is changing pretty rapidly—and leaders in this field aren’t afraid to blaze a new trail when it comes to using technology. Identifying emerging workforce trends and leveraging technology to respond to those trends will help the best recruiters stay ahead of the game—and the competition. This could mean recognizing that the shift towards remote work is truly here to stay, for example—and implementing remote interviewing techniques in response.
Great recruiters are also consistently looking for ways to adopt proactive, forward-thinking strategies to improve the candidate journey. From interview intelligence platforms to conversational AI, there are a wide range of technologies that top recruiters use to deliver a better candidate experience and streamline the interview process.
As Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) has become an essential component of any talent acquisition strategy, effective recruiters know how to integrate a range of different techniques for building a diverse workforce. That may include inclusive interviewing, attending DEI conferences to learn best practices, unconscious bias training, and making sure their team is committed to diversity. They’ll also know which questions not to ask during interviews—and make sure the hiring managers and interviewers do too.
One of the key characteristics of a successful recruiter is knowing how to monitor and track DEI metrics as they work towards building a recruitment process that’s fair and equitable for all candidates. Their passion for people and good communication skills makes them a champion when it comes to driving DEI, which in turn can help companies become more successful overall.
Recruitment is no longer as simple as posting a job and waiting for the resumes to pile in. From building relationships to tracking metrics and keeping an open mind, the most successful recruiters now possess skills across multiple disciplines. Recruiters are often the first touchpoint for many potential hires, essentially making them the face of your organization—so choosing the right person for this work is critical.
Once you’ve found them, technology can help give you all the edge over your competitors when it comes to attracting and engaging the right candidates. And implementing an intelligent video interview platform like Clovers AI can help recruiters hire the right person, for the right position, every time—leaving them more time to shine at all the other aspects of their job.
Leveraging AI-powered interviewing technology leaves more time for recruiters to spend on the work that only humans can do—like building strong relationships. Schedule a demo to learn how Clovers’ interview intelligence platform can help recruiters hire better, faster, and smarter.
Jackie brings over a decade of HR technology experience to Clovers. She’s passionate about helping companies build talented and diverse (dream) teams and delivering an incredible hiring experience to everyone involved.