You want to become a successful executive recruiter? What do you need? Besides experience, educations, qualifications, you need some qualities. Do you have these qualities?
What is an executive recruiter?
An executive recruiter is a person who works to fill high-level or executive-level positions ordered by his or her client. His or her responsibilities include tasks such as posting job advertisements, searching for candidates, scanning their resumes, presenting them to the client, scheduling interviews and negociating benefit package if needed.
An executive recruiter can work on his or her own or for an executive search firm. They do not work for a specific company. Companies which want to use executive search will pay executive search firms or executive recruiters to find them talents.
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How to become an executive recruiter?
In terms of education, most executive search firms require a bachelor’s degree in human resources. However, there are executive recruiters who have bachelor’s degrees in business, language, accounting, marketing, psychology, and banking. Therefore, educational background is not too important. Some other qualities matter even more.
If you have great communication skills and a passion for finding great people to fill open positions, just move on. Even if you do not have formal human resources background, you can start developing your career today.
What are qualities of a successful executive recruiter?
You are in charge of recruiting the best of the best candidates available. You also have to become the best executive recruiter. Of course, if you want to be a successful executive recruiter, you need specific qualifications and experience. But there are some skills and habits which you can develop quickly to become better in your specialization. Let’s take a look at these 8 qualities.
1. Good communication skills
It is important for executive recruiters to be good at communication, both in direct (face-to-face meeting) and indirect (via phones, video calls, emails) ways. A successful recruiter should be able to communicate clearly and effectively with different kinds of people and adapt to various communication styles.
The recruiter is the bridge between a company and the candidates through the recruitment process as there is always a gap between them. For candidates, you should be a person with whom they can talk and share about their experience and job expectations. You should also be able to deliver bad news. In addition, some candidates are too introvert or do not believe in headhunter. In this situation, good communication can entice them to apply.
For the hiring company, you should frequenly provide useful updates and talk with them in case there are problems happening during the recruitment process. Your work is to make the both parties happy in order to get paid. And it can be said that the result relies mostly on successful communication.
2. Good networking skills
Did you know that many qualified candidates were found through personal networks and employee referrals? Your friends, your business contacts, or even your family members may present to you potential candidates. In addition, a good business always tries to go for repeat business. Also, establish good relationships with your talents so you can put them into your talent pool.
Therefore, you should be good at building and maintaining relationships. Try to contact and take care of them frequently and gain trust from them. You can always benefit from a wide network.
3. Good listening skills
Good listening skills make you a good listener. A successful executive recruiter is good at not only speaking but also listening. You can access to a lot of important information if you can listening effectively to the person you are talking to.
First, listen to the hiring company so you can know their needs and requirements. It is better to understand the role the company wants to fill before starting your research.
Good listening skills can help you get important feedbacks from candidates so you can assess if they fit the company’s culture.
One thing to remember is that good listening skills include asking searching questions to seek out needed information.
4. Strong sales skills
Executive search is basically a type of recruitment service. Firstly, executive recruiters sell their recruitment service to the clients (here mean company hire them to fill open positions), explaining why they should work with you. Secondly, executive recruiters sell the job they are recruiting to the candidates, explaining why they should take the opportunities.
No strong sales skills mean no clients, no candidates applied, no successful business and of course no money.
5. Detail-oriented
A successful executive recruiter should have a keen eye for detail. You have to be able to find key information as well as spot errors in candidates’ resumes. You also have to be able to ask questions to check if the candidate is the best match.
This quality also allows you to personalize your communication styles and emails to specific candidates better.
6. Confidence
You need to be confident in yourself and your abilities. This helps you a lot in networking and interacting with both clients and candidates.
Confidence is typically important when you are recruiting for roles that you have little experience with.
7. Multi-tasking skills
Searching for candidates, reading their resumes, assessing their abilities, scheduling interviews, tracking the recruitment process, etc.,. An executive recruiter has to complete a lot of tasks at the same time. You usually have to deal with multiple jobs at once. And sometimes, in urgent hiring, you may have to recruit the best fit in only one week, for example. If you are not good at multi-tasking, you can be stressed out and everything could become a mess.
To have strong multi-tasking skills, you also need strong time management skills and organizational skills.
8. Good at technology
Information technology skills are no longer essential skills for information tecnology positions only. A successful executive recruiter also needs to understand the basics of this field.
You should be able to use recruiting and HR softwares to find, attract, recruit candidates, and track the recruitment process. These automobile and AI tools can help you save time, make your work more productive and give you an advantage in the race to find talents.
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How to become a successful executive recruiter?
Firstly, you may want to get additional educations. If you have already had a bachelor degree in a field that is unrelated, it would be better to go for an additional bachelor degree or master degree in human resources. If you cannot spend time for class, you can also take part in some online courses.
Secondly, remember to accumulate experience during real projects. You will have chances to deal with real situations and solve real problems that may not be taught in books or lessons.
In conclusion, you need to have the passion for this job, keep learning and work hard. You can find a good executive search firm to work for in order to develop your career.
See also >>> Executive Search & Selection Services of HRchannels Group
Image sources: Internet.
Originally published at http://hrchannels.com.
