What are the skills that a good recruiter has to master today? These skills become more obvious by contrast, if we look at the evolution of the changes that the recruitment went through in time.

A great head hunter needs to know psychology

At one point, we started talking about job rotation and job enhancement, as solutions to the monotony of a small job that had to be done daily, for a lifetime. Few realized, but that was the moment when individuals began to count in the work equation and were not treated anymore as robots. Their conscious and feelings started to count and could not be neglected anymore. As labor has become less and less enslaving, the recruiter’s mission got a little more complicated. Most of the job announcements contained a phrase like “ability to work under stress conditions”, except that there was no device which could measure how much stress a candidate could tolerate. The recruiter had to learn psychology and make a difference between people, according to their abilities and personality traits. Helping someone look for LICSW jobs MA opportunities, is different than assisting someone else in a search for operations jobs in CA. A great head hunter needs to know industries and locations to help people get the best jobs available.

A great head hunter has to adapt to each generation

At a certain moment, in HR, people started talking about a new concept: job satisfaction. Specialists agreed that people should like what they do because the professional satisfaction of the employees is directly and indirectly involved in labor productivity. The new generations – Millennials and Generation Z – do not compromise on this anymore; they will resign the next day if they don’t like the job. True, they have the advantage of the new technology which allows them to work from anywhere and anytime, in forms that no longer resemble the work of the past generations.

A great head hunter needs to see the value of each candidate

At present, we talk about the commitment of the employees, which is more than satisfaction; we talk about evolution and personal development through work, and we reinterpret the work in completely new, different formulas. Going to work for 8 hours a day, having an awful boss or retiring after doing the same job your entire life are history now.

A great head hunter needs to have knowledge about building an employer brand

Nowadays, a good recruiter has to master three activities perfectly: (1) Sourcing – knowing where to find good job candidates, especially in a deficient market, (2) Attracting Talent – emphasizing the benefits offered by the employer and attracting the right candidates, especially in a competitive market (3) Selection – knowing how to identify the right candidate by looking behind appearances.

Completely new recruitment skills: marketing and sales

It takes talent more than ever, people who can make a difference, who are proactive, have innovative ideas and think differently, because what is important for today’s companies is not to come out with a standard and cheap product, but to come up with disruptive ideas, to reinvent the rules of the game. In this context, good companies are fighting for good employees, but they must know how to attract them. The recruiter’s mission is changing, and it is more difficult and challenging than ever: head hunters still need to know psychology very well, but they must learn some new recruiting skills and competences that were not in the HR field 10 years ago: to become a marketing agent and a salesman at the same time, with solid knowledge of Social Media.