Top 10 Lessons I learnt as a Recruiter
When people create their CVs they usually list a series of tasks that they performed in their jobs. Smart jobseekers also know about the power of including their main achievements in their CV. Would it not be great if there would be also a section in which candidates would actually share the lessons that they learned at various stages in their career? Or why do people actually not include “Lessons learnt” in their Linkedin details? In this blog post I would like to share my personal lessons I learnt as a Recruiter/Resourcer some years ago in Italy as well as the UK.
# 1 — You will never be able to satisfy everyone.
Whether you are working as an agency recruiter or in-house corporate recruiter you will always have a higher number of jobseekers and much smaller number of job offers. As a consultant you will first focus on “placing people” for companies and then “finding jobs” for people, no matter how many great candidates you have lined up.
# 2 — You need to be quick.
Recruitment is a fast paced industry and neither companies nor candidates just rely on one source when they are looking for a candidate or a job. If you come across a good candidate for an open vacancy don’t wait too long to forward or invite the person for an interview and make a job offer. If you hear about a company’s hiring needs don’t waste any time and present your best candidates as soon as possible. There are plenty of other job applicants and agencies who are waiting for the same great opportunity. If you don’t act quickly, someone else will do it, remember! Nowadays competition is tough.
# 3 — Not everyone is reliable.
Being a matchmaker (connecting jobseekers with companies) will make you realise that once in a while one of them will let you down in the last minute. Companies might tell you that they already found a candidate. Occasionally it also happens that candidates will inform you that they already found a job, or they are not interested in the job anymore or simply don’t turn up to their interview. If this happens then it also reflects negative on your company. Clients might not approach you next time when they are looking for new hires due to this episode. You might feel like having wasted a lot of time for nothing. Being resilient and efficient is therefore particularly important in this job. (What other scenarios you can expect in the recruitment industry are described in another blog post, check it out here: http://www.therecruitmentprofessional.com/2014/11/10-scenarios-that-every-recruitment.html
# 4 — Meet the candidate more than once, in different environments.
Every time I presented a good candidate to a client I wanted to make sure that I met the person more than once and that possibly at different places. The benefit from this experience was that it allowed me to meet the person one or two more times in a different environment, which helped me to get to know the person in a different way. I must say that often it was a quite revealing, eye-opening experience which I can only recommend. I used to take out candidates for lunch, for a coffee at a Cafe or for a walk in a nearby park. Sometimes I came across candidates who made a great first impression at the first interview in our corporate office but who were not consistent at the following series of interviews. They did not look, act and present themselves the same way as they did the first time. Some candidates had the tendency to act less professional, to dress down, to be rude to waiting staff, to talk about their personal problems or to take phone calls while the interview was going on. These were the reasons why sometimes I did not put certain candidates forward to any other interviews. I learnt that if I would have conducted the interview just in an office environment I would have never found out about certain personality traits of my candidates.
# 5 — It teaches you important things about life.
Dealing with people can teach you a lot about life too. The recruitment business is a people business, therefore you get to know quite a lot about peoples’ situations and lives. Sometimes you will get to know the problems they are facing and tough times that they are going through. One episode that is still fresh in my mind was a candidate that we found for one of our clients. He was a carpenter, coming from Poland and trying to get some work in Italy. I knew that Polish people are considered ad hardworking and reliable. I never imagined that one day we would have a candidate who — due to his poor financial situation — had to ask us for a cash advance prior to his first working day. That experience made me really feel happier about my own life and the job I had at that time. I learnt to be more considerate of other peoples personal circumstances. Another episode was were we hired two twin brothers to work in the same company. They made both initially a brilliant impression when we hired them but after one month we were quite shocked when one day we had to learn from the newspaper that one of them got arrested because of sexual harassment.
# 6 — It’s a target driven environment.
Another memorable experience was when a Manager from the Head Office in Milan came to visit our agency. I still remember the very first question that our team got asked. It was not the one you would expect, such as “How are you doing?” but “How many candidates were you able to find last week?” It made us all one more time aware that we are in the target-oriented peoples’ business in which figures (and thus revenues) matter first.
# 7 — Ask yourself the 4 crucial questions to find the perfect match.
Turning up on time for an interview, being well-mannered, well presented and best prepared is nothing special anymore, it will simply be expected from a good job candidate. One has therefore to offer more than that. In my hiring process I always focused on the following four questions: 1) Is the person able to do the job? 2) Is the person motivated to do the job? 3) Is the person manageable? 4) Does the person fit in the corporate team?
I learnt that a person can be able to do the job but might lack of motivation and not perform his tasks to its full potential. A candidate might be highly motivated but might not have the skills or the required knowledge in order to do the job properly. A person might feel so senior and experienced that it might become difficult for him to follow another supervisor’s instructions and therefore be less manageable. And last but not least, a professional might be able to do the job, be motivated and manageable but might not fit in the company for various reasons. The best hires I made in the past were always those that answered my 4 questions with a YES.
# 8 — Involve others when deciding
When I was working as a corporate recruiter and had to fill some internal vacancies it always proved to be an effective method to conduct panel interviews as a second or third interview. Listening to other colleagues’ opinions helped me to look at a candidate in different ways. They sometimes made me aware of things I was not aware of. Furthermore, allowing a candidate to meet his future team members and giving them an opportunity to interact with each other will give everyone the chance to find out whether the chemistry between them is good or bad.
# 9 — Don’t forget the “PASSION” Factor
I remember an episode where I had to hire a Chef de rang for a 4-star-hotel in Italy and there were two equally good qualified candidates. It was not an easy decision because they had very similar educational backgrounds, the same qualifications and almost the same number of years of work experiences. What made me decide for Candidate 2 over candidate 1 was “The PASSION Factor”. He had a special spark in his eyes that did not need any further explanations to describe his excitement for that job. I would always choose the more passionate person if all the other requirements are equal. I am a strong believer that someone who is passionate does not need to be motivated and is a self starter and that can give a person a very powerful edge. (I consider myself as one :-)
# 10 — What about the Jobseeker’s questions?
I always judged a candidate not just by how well s/he answered the interview questions but also by the number and quality of questions asked by the person. Answering questions well during an interview is a crucial part of the hiring process but listening to the jobseeker’s questions can also tell you a lot about the person. I used to assess my candidates by asking myself: Did the person have any questions at all? If so, how many questions? How much research did a candidate make to come up with really smart questions?
Nowadays there are many resources available about recruitment from which one can learn, but I do believe that often you need to make your own personal experiences in order to find out what method works best for you. I would like to add that checking a candidate’s social media online presence is something that I would surely add. It gives you insights into a person that you would otherwise never find out!
Last but not least, I would like to say that there are two moments that I found always highly rewarding and satisfying in this job: 1) when you find a company who wants you to find great talent for their vacancies and 2) a job candidate who gets a job offer due to your coaching and recommendation. It is definitely worth a try and earnings can be great if targets are being met or even exceeded!
(Original source of my article: https://skillmeter.com/blog/top-6-lessons-i-learnt-as-a-recruiter)
