3 Essential Skills for Today’s Recruiters

As the Head of Global Talent Acquisition at Synaptics, I frequently meet with recruiters and sourcers on a regular basis - I call it “get to know” sessions. It’s a way of networking but also keeping a pulse on today’s recruitment talent. During these sessions, I often share my story about how I got started in recruitment. It was during the early 90’s while working in the disk drive industry. As a newly minted recruiter, my best friends were a “desk phone”, “classified ads” and “fax machine". These were my sourcing tools of choice that I used to engage with candidates and fill openings. When I share my story, I would usually get these type of responses or comments:

• “Why (or what’s) a fax machine?”
• “Wow, you didn’t have LinkedIn?”
• “How did you ever find candidates or fill positions without email?” 

Yes, that was a different world, before the “Internet” and “Social Network” phenomenon that we all enjoy today from the palm of our hand – our smart phones. 

There’s no doubt that the recruitment industry has undergone huge changes in the last two decades. LinkedIn is now the preferred tool for many recruiters. It provides a whole plethora of information about passive and active candidates at their fingertips. It’s a professional social network that allows you to connect with millions of potential colleagues who come together to share expertise, experience, work and/or career interests. It has become a “must have” tool for professionals (and recruiters) regardless of business sectors or industries.  

Since 2003, LinkedIn has become a game changer for many involved in the recruitment process even for dinosaurs like me. With over 530 million members in over 200 countries and more than 18 million companies are posting over 13 million jobs, it has grown dramatically and changed forever the way professionals interact. 

As powerful as LinkedIn is as a recruiting platform, I do believe that there are other key qualities that are essential to be an effective recruiter besides knowing how to leverage LinkedIn for candidate searches. Here are my top 3 skills (in no ranking order) that I look for when talking to recruiters or sourcers.

Data-driven Skills: Data, Data, Data. What separates mediocre recruiters from great recruiters is the ability to analyze, extract and interpret data. It’s great that recruiters have good soft skills but are they comfortable with analytical information to use as a competitive advantage by interpreting data and turning it into actionable recommendations. For example, they could use data to….

• understand the organization’s pain points and problem areas of an organization. 
• discover where opportunities lie to network and locate new passive or active candidates. 
• measure key performance metrics and identify critical trends within their business or local markets.

Having data-driven mindset gives recruiters insights to many opportunities and actions. These insights come from many various resources such as blogs, publications, discussions, surveys, etc. This kind of information can be very powerful as a strategic asset in talent acquisition, which allows recruiters to influence with supportive data and business arguments where they could act or implement proactive recruitment strategies to stay ahead of the curve. This can mean the difference between success and failure in the changing world of talent acquisition today.

Hunting Skills: With today’s abundance of sites, networks, tools, and platforms, there are many ways to find talent that makes a recruiter’s life easier. Regardless of tools, it all starts with the mentality of the individual. Great recruiters tend to be curious by nature and use their sourcing skills to find and uncover talent – it is part of their DNA. It’s more than just sending emails to people’s inboxes about job opportunities. They use their hunting skills to make cold calls, talk to strangers or meet with potential leads in order to find the strongest and most-qualified talent. 

Whether it’s using LinkedIn, applicant tracking system (ATS), tech conferences, meetups or other social events, recruiters must have a mindset to hunt and tap into a variety of channels to find the right candidate for their positions. 

Consulting Skills: Recruiting is more than just pushing or sending resumes to hiring managers. Recruiters work under tremendous amount of pressure and interfaces with all levels of management. They are not “yes people" or just follow directions. Having strong a consultancy mindset is a required skill set that is exercised every day in the life of a recruiter.

Effective recruiters have the ability to advise and push back on their hiring managers and/or candidates, if necessary. They are viewed as trusted partners and strategic thinkers rather than just a provider of resumes. They are able to provide “big picture” advice to business leaders on longer-term recruiting issues like employer brand and talent pipeline building.

Being able to coach, guide and influence hiring managers through the entire selection process make recruiters indispensable to their client groups’ talent strategy as they hire and attract top talent. These characteristics include professionalism, reputation, good listening, judgment, multi-tasking and effective communication (I’m sure there are more but these stand out with me).

Summary: Recruiting is an extremely rewarding and challenging career but there is no such thing as a perfect recruiter. The role can be difficult and demanding. Every search is unique and it is often a combination of skills that help recruiters be effective in their roles. 

Whether you are just learning to become a recruiter or have over 25 years of recruitment experience (like me ), continue to develop and hone your skills and knowledge so you can add value to an organization’s hiring efforts. Although today’s sourcing tools like LinkedIn are rapidly evolving and changing the world of recruiting, I do believe these 3 skills remain essential and are top-of-mind for successful recruiters. 

What are key traits or skills that you see as essential for today's recruiters? I'd love to hear it, please share below.

Good luck and happy job hunting!

Edward Avila is the Head of Global Talent Acquisition at Synaptics, the pioneer and leader of the human interface revolution. To learn more about our global job opportunities like nowhere else, please click here www.synaptics.com/careers.