As an HR professional, you know just how crucial it is to source, recruit, and retain top talent continually.
These highly qualified and trainable individuals don’t just help you run the company. They’re also instrumental in advancing your organization’s position beyond what it is right now.
Thus, it’s critical to have a competent recruiting team to make the best hiring choices for your company.
Without good recruiters, a company simply can’t get the best possible talent for their troubles.
Skill is what makes a good recruiter great, so you must know the best recruitment skills for people in this industry. That’s what we’re going to talk about in this article.
What are Recruitment Skills?
Recruitment skills are learned abilities that help recruiters make the right hiring choice.
Recruiters perform various things to ascertain that a job applicant has what it takes to be a fully-functioning employee. The sourcing process, reviewing candidate CVs, keeping track of files, interviews – all of these have to be performed in the best way to bring out the applicant’s abilities, personality, and character.
Thus, they also need the right abilities to perform everything their job requires.
Otherwise, your recruiters can’t make the possible judgments and end up harming the organization in the long run.
In that sense, here are the top 10 recruitments skills that recruiters need to have this 2022.
Top 10 Recruitment Skills to Have in 2022
In determining which skills your recruiter needs to have to make the optimal hiring decisions, you need to recognize different skills types. The two major skill categories that we will focus on in this article will be soft recruitment skills and hard recruitment skills.
The Best Soft Skills for Recruiting
Soft skills are generalistic skills that underpin actions and behaviors.
While they can’t be as quickly defined as hard skills, soft skills are crucial in creating a well-rounded recruiter because they deal with personality-linked traits. Here are the top five best soft recruitment skills to have in a recruiter’s arsenal.
1. Communication
Communication is a process where two parties transmit or exchange understandable information.
Thus, having good communication skills can be more accurately defined as making another party understand your message effectively and perceive the meaning of a message correctly.
This sounds like a simple concept, but the truth is that communication has many different aspects. Let’s go over three of the main elements briefly.
- Body language. Communication doesn’t just occur with spoken words; there are also many meanings to be gleaned from unspoken cues – also called body language. Effective communicators harness their body language well to enhance the purpose of their words.
- Listening. Communication is a two-way street, so good communicators should also be expert listeners. When you know how to listen, you actively pay attention to what is being said, encouraging them to talk further and gleaning detailed meaning from their words.
- Written. Meanings can also be transmitted through written words. Good communicators know how to leverage this written form to say what they mean without wasting time.
Excellent communication skills are critical in recruiting scenarios because it’s the primary means of getting to know the applicant.
Thus, recruiters with good communication skills are in high demand, not just because they can carry a conversation but also because they can accurately gauge essential details about the person through communication.
2. Confidence
The hiring process is highly dynamic and uncertain. After all, you’re dealing with complex individuals with their worldviews, assertions, and character quirks.
Recruiters who doubt themselves and their abilities won’t be able to make full use of this chance to evaluate these individuals. This is because it takes a massive helping of confidence to put another individual under a microscope.
A recruiter needs to prod into potentially-sensitive topics, such as salaries, ambitions, characters, habits, and more. They also need the confidence to lead a conversation where they believe it will be most helpful.
Without a certain measure of confidence in their abilities, recruiters won’t ask the right questions and defend their hiring decisions.
Due to these, confidence is certainly at the top of our list of recruitment skills that every professional in this industry needs.
3. Attention to detail
Never is the saying “The devil is in the details” more accurate than dealing with people looking for a job.
Attention to detail is an important trait of any employee, but its effects have never been more critical when dealing with employees whose primary output is your workforce. A 2020 survey reveals that managers believe low attention to detail decreases product quality, productivity, morale, and customer service.
If your recruiter lacks attention to detail, they are much more likely to overlook red flags in an applicant, and you could end up being saddled with a bad hire for years.
4. Diversity and Inclusion
Granted, diversity and inclusion aren’t often described as a “skill,” but in the corporate world, where these aspects are often overlooked, it pays to have someone who has D&I skills and background.
The recruitment stage is crucial because it’s one of the few places where diversity can be implemented.
Recruiters are responsible for making sure that their selections are not biased and are compliant with local laws about D&I. Thus recruiters should be diversity-minded from the start and have the skills and training to back it up.
5. Networking
Networking is the ability to create and sustain mutually-beneficial business relationships with peers, partners, customers, or clients.
This skill has different components as well. Networking is a complex soft skill that comprises other sets of skills to master. The parts of being good at networking are the following traits.
- People skills. The best networkers effortlessly make people connect with them by being open, courteous, and friendly.
- Helpfulness. To maintain a functioning business network, you need to have something to contribute. Being naturally helpful and accommodating makes you an appealing business connection because your contacts can reliably expect quid-pro-quo.
This skill is essential for recruiters; it provides a network of valuable individuals you can tap into for mentorship, assistance, or advice.
The Best Hard Skills for Recruiting
In contrast to soft skills, hard skills have rigid definitions and are usually picked up through school and experience.
When looking for a recruiter for your company or cataloging your existing team’s skills, you must pay attention to these five hard skills every recruiter needs to have this year.
6. Data analysis
Recruitment is becoming more and more data-centric, which means that more and more companies are using data to make their hiring decisions. Relying on hard data is more convenient efficient and even avoids costly errors that humans tend to make.
This year, recruiters should be more data-centric than ever. They should know the role of data in their occupation and know where and how to get that information.
In that respect, recruiters must.
- Know how to operate essential statistical tools and functions.
- Are experienced in data gathering methods for research, feedback, etc.
- Be informed about the latest trends in your industry.
7. Being tech-savvy
In this day and age, technology plays a huge part in recruiting because the practice occurs mainly in virtual spaces.
Driven by the pandemic, the digital revolution has taken hold of the way we work, and recruitment – from sourcing candidates to sorting through resumes and finally to the interviews and deliberation – already happens online.
As a result, recruiters need to adapt to these changes first and foremost because their company’s future success will depend on how they can master this skill.
Being tech-savvy in the following areas
- Social media. Glassdoor has revealed that 79% of the job seekers they surveyed already use social to look for jobs, and about 84% of the respondent organizations already recruit workers with these platforms.
- Productivity tools. Social media aren’t the only solutions you can find online. For general admin work, tons of third-party solutions make time management, accounting, online collaboration, etc., easier.
- Recruitment platforms. Platforms such as Hirenest are designed to enhance the quality and decrease your recruitment costs. Knowing what Hirenest can offer expertise in running this platform for your company will surely boost your productivity.
8. Brand awareness
Your employer brand is becoming more and more critical in the recruitment scene. Various studies have already documented the effects of your brand in the hiring process.
A 2017 publication by IBM specifically recommended that you focus on enhancing your brand because a positive brand identity attracts new job applicants. And even if they don’t get the position, a good brand will make them more likely to apply again.
A 2018 research by Banerjee et al. has also revealed that corporate brand directly affects the intent of job seekers to apply for your company. Simply put, having a positive brand will make applying to your company more appealing for job seekers.
Therefore, having a recruiter who intimately knows your brand is a must.
Recruiters need to look for individuals that align with the company’s values, principles, and work ethic. In short, they need someone who fits the company brand – whatever that may be.
More than that, your recruiters should also learn how to keep your employer brand positive by avoiding damage – which means enhancing the candidate experience. The previous IBM study has documented the far-ranging impact of negative candidate experience, so you need recruiters who will prioritize candidate satisfaction and not harm your brand.
9. Project management
Project management is a complex set of skills that the best recruiters have. The best project managers accomplish a given project with the set time and budget and deliver the best quality available under the circumstances.
Projects can be complex or straightforward, but in technical terms, projects are time-limited, one-off tasks that the company doesn’t perform routinely.
Some examples of project management as applied to recruiting are:
- Updating the company’s career website to attract more applicants.
- Implementing new D&I measures in the company’s recruitment strategy.
- Managing a job fare, hiring drive, or seasonal hiring sprees.
- Creating compliance or year-end reports.
- Onboarding your team to a new recruitment platform or ATS.
As you can see, recruiters should be skilled in the art and science of managing all of these moving parts. Recruitment, and all its accompanying tasks, is a serious undertaking that should only be performed by those who know how to manage their time, money, and team.
10. Technical Writing
Technical writing is distinct from simply communicating with writing.
Whereas simply being clear, concise, and understandable is a good communication skill, technical writing specifically deals with official papers, such as memos and reports.
Being a recruiter, you need to be a great technical writer; you will deal with plenty of communication, reports, and more. Thus, you need to know how to write formally, according to your company’s guidelines and regulations.
To be an excellent technical writer means being intimately familiar with different types of writing that you’re expected to do in a corporate setting in the capacity of a recruiter.
- Presentations. You might be often called on to make a report on how your company’s recruitment activities are doing.
- Memos and official communication. Recruiters make plenty of formal announcements to peers, supervisors, and candidates.
- Policies. When drafting new rules and regulations, recruiters will often be consulted about the issue and be asked to make a formal recommendation about the procedures.
Recruitment Skills FAQs
What are recruitment skills?
Recruitment skills are essential abilities that recruiters need to perform their job in their maximum capacities. These critical skills are usually broken down into hard skills and soft skills.
What qualities make a good recruiter?
A good recruiter isn’t necessarily someone who displays all of the characteristics in this list. Instead, they should be someone whose current recruitment skills align best with their responsibilities and roles in the company.
What skills matter most to recruiters?
People skills and computer literacy is especially critical in today’s climate – but the rest of the recruitment skills we listed on the list above are not far behind in terms of importance.
Defining Recruitment Skills: Wrap-Up
Recruitment is a critical process for companies to thrive, which is why recruiters must have the right recruitment skills to perform their jobs to the fullest. This article has examined the ten most important recruitment skills that a recruiter needs.
One of the best ways to ensure that your recruiters are skilled and competent is by freeing up their time and training them.
With Hirenest, you can access recruitment tools that will save you time and money, which you can then use to level up your recruiter’s skills.
If you want to improve your recruiting process immediately, start using Hirenest now!
