5 Skills All Recruiters Need in 2022
If you’re a recruiter, or you’re interested in becoming one, it’s important to know that the industry moves quickly. The job can change in response to the job market, the needs of different industries and candidates’ behaviour. The best recruiters need the right combination of skills to adapt to these changes and stay on top of a fast-moving industry.
So, whether you’re looking to develop your skills and turn your weaknesses into strengths, or to start a brand new career in recruitment, The People Pod can help. Here, we’ve listed the five top skills that recruiters will need in 2022 to stay ahead of industry changes and maintain a focus on people over placements. If you think you have what it takes, get in touch and learn more about starting a recruitment career with us.
Communication
Whether this is a short-term trend or a long-term change to the industry is hard to say, but we’ve certainly noticed that younger recruits in particular expect a high level of communication with recruiters.
There are a lot of opportunities available at the moment and it’s important to keep recruits engaged to ensure they aren’t scooped up by another business before they start, especially if they are working a long notice period.
So, regular communication and engagement with candidates is vital. You want to stay near the forefront of your new recruit’s mind to help them remember what it was that drew them to your company. This also means that when they start, they’ll feel like you’re in their corner and if there are any problems with the placement, they can come to you. Building these kinds of relationships with candidates is key to long-term success in recruitment.
Sales
There are lots of areas in recruitment where sales skills will serve you well. Especially now, when many industries are facing shortages of personnel, you might need to make a hard sell to attract talented candidates to your opportunity instead of someone else’s.
This goes both ways: you might also need to sell your own expertise to potential clients, as well as candidates. Clients may not understand the value that a recruiter can bring to the process, or feel that automatic CV screening tools can do the same job, so knowing both your job and the jobs you’re recruiting for well enough to sell them is fundamental.
Social media
Developing social media skills is crucial to success as a recruiter. It’s valuable for communication, as it’s often much easier to stay in touch with candidates via social media than by email, but it’s also a vital tool for proactively identifying and reaching out to potential recruits.
A social media profile (especially on platforms like LinkedIn that are oriented towards jobseekers) can act as a CV, tell you about a candidate’s interests, tell you whether they’re actively looking for a job, and then enable you to reach out and invite them to apply. In many cases, you can also list jobs and advertise through these platforms, so recruiters should be familiar with how these tools function in order to make the best use of them. In our view, this will become an even larger part of the industry in the near future.
Data analysis
This is a skillset that is quickly developing and growing in demand. Data analysis will form a much greater part of recruitment over the next few years, and developing these skills now could give you more career opportunities in the future, or help you to incorporate cutting- edge technological approaches into your work.
Already, many companies are using applicant tracking systems that can automatically screen CVs or produce reports. These can’t compete with the skills of a human recruiter, but it’s important to understand how they function and whether you can benefit from them in your own work.
The internet has transformed the hiring process, and over the ten years that we’ve been in business we’ve seen the number of applications for each role grow significantly. These tools could filter out a great many irrelevant or low-quality applications, but this will require recruiters with talent and experience in this area to hone the process.
Empathy
As a recruiter, it goes without saying that you should be empathetic to candidates. You need to understand their needs, their career goals and their talents. The best way is to listen well and properly engage with candidates. Think of them as people, rather than solutions to capacity gaps.
However, you have to balance your empathy, because you also have to listen to the needs of the business you are recruiting for. Matching the right person to the right job by understanding the needs of both sides is the alchemy of recruitment.
At The People Pod, we pride ourselves on our empathy and our investment in people. We believe that one of the most important things when pairing a candidate with a company is culture and personality fit. As recruiters, that means we need to understand clients and applicants on more than just a technical level.
If you think you have the skills for a career in recruitment, or you’re an experienced recruiter looking for a change of scenery, contact The People Pod today to learn how we can help you.