SELECTING A RECRUITER

Whether you do your recruiting through an Internal Corporate Recruiter, or third party retained or contingent recruiters, there are key characteristics of a recruiter that can spell success or failure of your recruiting program:

1. Knowledge of your company, its practices, policies, environment and culture. 

2. Knowledge of Federal, State, and local hiring laws. 

3. Experienced Interviewer.  Uses an array of interviewing techniques.

4. Experienced Prospector. Uses a full range of prospecting tools.

5. Exceptional Internet skills. Knows how to flip, peel, x-ray websites to find passive candidates.

6. Exceptional PC skills.  Paperwork is the bane of recruiting.  Good recruiters need to be able to organize, store and retrieve information from their PC and work with contact databases such as Act, Goldmine, Access, and or Applicant Tracking Systems.

7. Sales skills.  While many folks look upon recruiting as a function of the Human Resources department and a supportive role for their recruiting managers, recruiters need good sales skills.  Consultative selling skills assist them in exploring the motivations and interests of the candidate.  This requires good verbal communication and listening ability. Good presentation skills are also needed to "sell" the company and the company's career opportunities to candidates. Above average listening skills are prerequisite, along with good negotiating and closing skills.

8. Analytical abilities. Good recruiters track the numbers of resumes they receive from each of the company's recruiting efforts, and the number of interviews and new candidates obtained from those sources. Analyzing those numbers, they tweak the company's recruiting efforts to minimize the cost per hire, and to evaluate the quality of the recruiting programs and reduce turnover.

9. People skills.  Strong ability to build internal and external relationships with multiple customers / clients.