Number one trait of a good recruiter

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This question was asked in a discussion group on LinkedIn by Jorg Stegemann.  Here is how I answered it.

Like the question. I have been asking it for 30 years. I do not believe there is a number one trait. There are several traits that come together in a perfect storm. For some recruiters one trait stands out and for others another stands out. So here is my recipe of traits. Ability to engage with people and communicate your sincere interest, organization, higher than normal confidence in yourself the ability to get up and keep going after defeat with a strong work ethic in your sails.As I said I do not believe there is a priority to any of these traits. I have worked with successful recruiters who demonstrate these skills in different order, but they must all be there.

Stupid Interview Questions

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Great article by John Zapp at ERE "Odd ball interview questions".  I did respond with this comment on interview questions.

"Hi John, We haven’t spoken in a while but I flagged this article last week because it caught my attention.  So, good job in getting my attention :)  I think everyone is drawn to stupid interview questions.  I think a standup comic could make a good living on just this single theme.  But the truth is that we have them because the interview concept gets flawed when we have the wrong person doing the interviewing. The person doing the interviewing with questions like these seems to me to get a little too much enjoyment out of surprising or embarrassing the candidate. I personally could never ask such a question and I am not known to be timid or shy.  It is just a matter of respect for another human being."

Recruiters are not spiders

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Most recruiters seem to have a vague understanding that connections are important. So they sign up for every networking page they can get their hands on.

Then like a spider who built a beautiful web they sit and wait for a customer to fall in. Recruiters are not spiders.

LinkedIn is paid to be a headhunter-recruiter

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LinkedIn is different from Twitter and Facebook, very different.

LinkedIn is a network of primarily business contacts therefore I do not believe it can be called a social network. Some say that LinkedIn is overvalued; this may also be true because of the suspected rumor that it has a very low percentage of active users. But if you are a recruiter then why should you care? If you can find potential clients or applicants based on a few demographics like job title, location, industry and skills then this is a recruiter's heaven. LinkedIn provides huge short cuts to those endless phone calls of who knows who from were. Where it used to take weeks to find one qualified non-passive candidate, it can now be done in minutes.

 
Most of the naysayers are not looking at the LinkedIn’s value based on the recruiter’s perspective and they have very good points.  See Krista Bradford and Seeking Alpha
 

I really like these articles because they are both reality checks on what LinkedIn’s value actually is and where it may be heading. I believe LinkedIn’s natural evolution is in the job and sales business. I think it would be silly for it to try to compete with FaceBook, Twitter and now Google plus for the pure social part of networking which is usually a ‘boy meets girl’ kind of deal.  

The future of LinkedIn lies in job boards like Monster, Career Builder and Dice and contact management systems like Sales Force. It can be a big player in these areas but does not stand a chance in true social networks. This is a good thing for both recruiters and LinkedIn. LinkedIn is branded and so it should use its brand and not try to be something it is not. They should capitalize on their true value.

If you want a quick fact sheet on LinkedIn so you can figure out if you can make it work for you, it comes down to these bullets:

• LinkedIn is planning to offer an ATS/CRM system. Since I make my living selling ATS systems I will be watching. Up until now I have always described LinkedIn as an excellent sourcing tool but that it is only the first step in the work of a successful recruiter and the entry point of a recruiting software.
• Only 1% of the LinkedIn members visit more than once a month. I say “so what”, as long as they have a profile with a title?
• LinkedIn is a sourcing tool not a recruiting system
• It has been reported for some time that the majority of the traffic on their website has been from Recruiters
• There seems to be a consensus that the use of InMail responses is gradually declining but it is still better than emails
• LinkedIn and any other Social Networking sites used by recruiters can get the recruiter and the candidate ‘Over Branded’ like yesterday’s news. Some of the comments below can help me explain this point a little better.

• Ted Moore “…looks like a European CV and the candidate has 50 recommendations and 500 connections, the brand suffers a hit in the minds of those clients…””
• Krista Bradford “…A lot of us on this thread specialize in finding candidates that are not so obvious ...”
• Geoff Peterson ”…so, just because we can find them on LinkedIn doesn’t necessarily mean the value of that candidate should be any less…”
• Jim Sullivan “…LinkedIn is a tool, it will never do your job for you, you still have to “follow the yellow brick road” to get what you need…”
• Gordon Frutiger “…And the reality that LinkedIn is nothing more than a marketing and recruiting site is shocking because?...”

Recruiter Burn-Out

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Good article on recruiter burn out. I did comment on it that there is another factor causing recruiters to burn-out.

One is the “dark matter”. Where do new recruiters come from? 99% of the time they come from their professional niche and make the leap to recruiting because they are tired of looking for a job or just tired of their job. Therefore the pipeline for recruiters is defective to begin with because these people are not necessarily equipped with the sales skills needed to withstand this brutal assault on their egos.

However after writing the comment I remembered another factor that contributes to recruiter burnout. Recruiting is one of the toughest sales jobs in the world, because it is one of the few sales positions where the product (Candidate) can actually say “no”. I cannot imagine if our recruiting products could be able to say “I do not want work with that client”.

The human element to the product can be devastating to the recruiter not only because applicants have a free will but also because the recruiter knows they are effecting a life changing decision for the applicant. Some recruiters can shut this thought down caveat emptor style. Some can’t and the pressure of it eventually kills the enthusiasm for the job, because the product has a voice and a history forever after. There will be no peace for a recruiter who feels guilty because things did not work out for the applicant. It is time to change professions.

Attention recruiters - Overused resume words

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I was watching CNN the other day and they had an interesting survey on resume words.  They said that ‘creative’, ‘organizational’, ‘effective’, ‘extensive experience’ and ‘track record’ are overused in resumes and that you should find other words to use. We use resume parsers in our recruiting software and and have most likely parsed over 10 million resumes in the last 20 years.  It would be interesting to see how many of our customers use these words as key words.
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Death of Recruiting Databases? I don't think so.

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Yesterday there was an article that caught my attention by Peter Cosgrove. The article is about his straightforward experience with the last 20 placements with a very large recruiting agency.  Low and behold more than 50% came from their own internal recruiting database.  The comment by Stephen Harrington made the most sense from this discovery. "…While your competitors also have access to LinkedIn, only your organization has access to your own Database!"

Chicken or Egg question for recruiters in 2012

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A chicken or egg question for 2012 Outlook - Do we need to break the political gridlock to move the economy? Or do we need to move the economy to break the political gridlock?