Which means you better be tough enough to survive. It’s a fast moving, hard industry and it takes a certain kind of person to really thrive. So if you are thinking of going into it, check you’ve got these traits before you dive in:
Banter
When we say banter we mean, the gift of the gab, great chat, capable of a good chin wag, a confident talker and all round stellar conversationalist. Recruitment is the hardest sell as it’s people selling people. If you were to sell a box of chocolates, at no point would a mars bar turn around and tell you it doesn’t want to be sold, but my oh my, your candidates will do it all the time. Being able to chat confidently and draw out all the information, even the things not being said, will be the difference between billings and bottom of the league table.
Resilience
You had better have heaps of it or you had better change your career. If you like a challenge, get spurned on by rejection and love rolling up your sleeves to a difficult task, this job is your calling. Clients will change the job requirements, candidates will pull out of the process, hiring managers change their minds and people get fired the week after you’ve hired them and you have to start the whole process all over again. It takes grit, guts and heaps of resilience.
Patience
Remember, you’re dealing with people’s lives and that will always be a sensitive task. People get nervous and worried and changing jobs is a big thing. They will be looking to you to guide them through that process. Recruitment is often the long game too. It takes time to find the right candidates, send them to interview and hear feedback. Hiring managers will often drive you crazy with their lack of feedback and you’ll have to grab every strand of patience you’ve ever had to survive it and keep your cool.
Emotionally intelligent
Because you are dealing with people’s lives, it can be emotionally heavy lifting. There will be times you have to reject your favourite candidates or even fire some of them. It will always suck and it never gets any easier, especially when you have a great personal relationship with them. In order to connect with people and manage their lives you need to be emotionally alert to feelings, nuances and subtle signs.
Listening skills
This is a big one, HUGE in fact, and if it’s not your forte then recruitment is definitely not for you. There is a general assumption that in recruitment you talk a lot, but every big biller we’ve ever met are the quiet type who talk less and listen more. Listen to your candidates and your clients. Let them do all the talking and they will lead you to all the answers. Remember, you need to listen for what they don’t say just as much.
There’s no doubt about it that recruitment can be crazy and frustrating, it will literally test your every limit, but if you’ve got the skills to survive, then the world becomes everything you want it to be.