The ultimate war for talent. What makes a great recruiter?

The competition for hiring is fierce, and hiring the right recruiter can make all the difference. How do you know if the recruiter has the right qualities to be successful? Find out as we reveal our framework for assessing and training recruiters.

What: Over the course of the next 8 weeks, TechRec Academy will document our 4x4 Framework of 4 Traits and 4 Skills that we use to assess and train Tech Recruiters at various levels of their careers.

Who: If you are a founder interested in hiring a recruiter at your company, a recruiting leader building a team of recruiters, or a recruiter wondering how you level-up your career, this series is for you. Follow us here!

Why: As we have documented, Tech Recruiting is a profession that has come into vogue relatively recently. Thus the processes for learning to become a tech recruiter and for assessing, hiring, and training tech recruiters are all relatively undeveloped. Given the importance of recruiting (great recruiters hire great people, and great people build great companies), these processes must evolve to fit today’s needs.

Through our conversations with startup founders and recruiting leaders, there is a common theme — identifying a great technical recruiter is difficult, but critical to a company’s success. For now, most companies rely on a combination of directly relevant past experience and gut feel. With the shortage of experienced recruiters meeting the growing demand, this creates a problem, and the current methods of hiring recruiters are insufficient.

How: Throughout the course of this series, we will bring science to the art of recruiting recruiters. Fortunately for you, we have had the opportunity to test our ”what makes a great recruiter” theories across the hundreds of recruiters.

Since 2011, the leadership team at TechRec Academy was responsible for hiring and training technical recruiters for RockIT Recruiting and Riviera Partners, two of the top recruiting agencies in Silicon Valley. We hired and trained recruiters and recruiting leaders who have gone on to build teams for companies like: Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Amazon, Salesforce, Twitter, Uber, Oculus, Reddit, LinkedIn, Instagram, SnapChat, Docker, Fitbit, and many more.

From our many trials of vetting recruiters and testing hypotheses, we came to realize that there are certain Traits that predict success as a recruiter. The common misconception is that a recruiter needs to be an extroverted “people person,” blessed with the gift of gab, and we see many people consider recruiting jobs because they enjoy talking with people. Liking people and being well-practiced in communication is helpful, it’s only one piece of the puzzle. In order to better evaluate recruiters, we need to understand the key Traits and Skills of successful recruiters.

So what are these Traits & Skills?

Traits

1. Drive + Curiosity
2. Strategic Mindset
3. Communication/ EQ
4. Understanding Recruiter Value

Skills

1. Candidate Lead Generation
2. Candidate Management
3. Employer Marketing
4. Hiring Manager Partnership

Over the course of the next 8 weeks, we will document the 4 Traits and 4 Skills of our 4x4 Framework. In each series, we will: define the Trait/ Skill, explain how the Trait/ Skill appears at different levels of recruiting, and provide some suggestions on how to assess for this Trait/ Skill. By the end of the series, you should be well-equipped to identify and assess if a recruiter has what it takes to be successful.

Make sure to follow us as we dive into our 4x4 Framework of Assessing and Training Recruiters!