Regardless of your previous experience, you may wonder if you have the qualities that will help you succeed in this industry. During my 7 years of experience as an IT recruitment specialist and team leader, I have worked with over a hundred recruiters and sourcers. I would like to share with you a list of qualities that I believe will help you at the start of your IT recruitment career.
Open-mindedness and curiosity
Contact with other people is a daily occurrence in IT recruitment. Meeting new people (and several times a day) influences us to constantly meet different personalities and temperaments. When meeting new people, it is important to be open-minded and flexible so as not to fall into the trap of prejudice and pigeonhole before we really get to know the candidate. Curiosity is also an extremely useful trait in IT recruitment, allowing us to find out a lot more about a candidate instead of just going through the documents. Often, a candidate will omit relevant information from their CV, and by being inquisitive we can get to know them better before we make a job offer.
Empathy
Empathy is a desirable trait in IT recruitment because it helps us to empathise with the interviewee’s states and emotions, so we can adapt our communication to them. Putting ourselves in the role of the interviewee helps us to understand the other party’s needs and concerns. Recruiters often forget that a recruitment meeting is quite a stressful situation for the candidate. The more we point this out, the easier it will be to help the candidate during the meeting and to make them feel as comfortable as possible. A relaxed interviewee will give us a better impression of them and be more open and authentic. A great example is Google, which often sends questions to candidates before a recruitment meeting so that they can prepare and show their best side.
Read more on the topic of building a relationship with an IT candidate here.
Systematicity
The interview itself is only part of the recruiter’s job. Being systematic allows you to organise your daily duties well. This is extremely useful when you are recruiting at different stages. Regularity in the preparation of a daily task plan is the key to success both in building a professional image and in creating a positive experience for IT candidates. A multitude of meetings and a lack of well-prepared notes can sometimes cause embarrassment when, for example, you mix up roles and talk to a candidate about a different position 🙂
Attention to detail. All of them.
What questions you ask and what you find out about the candidate will determine whether you prepare a recommendation or hold back further steps. Inconsistencies in the CV or evasive or inaccurate answers are signs to the IT recruiter that the subject needs to be explored. Your task is to provide as much reliable information as possible to the decision-making manager so that he/she can make the best possible decision on the further fate of this candidate, and so that he/she knows which areas to pay attention to if he/she decides to continue with the recruitment. Failure to do so leads to disappointment for both employer and employee, not to mention the costs associated with onboarding and re-recruitment.
Resilience and perseverance
IT recruitment is not an easy piece of bread. You’re bound to hear ‘no’ more often, from both candidates and managers, than you expect. You will meet hundreds of candidates who will not be interested in talking to you. You will encounter long selection processes ending in the candidate rejecting the offer. You will come across long selection processes ending in a rejection of an offer from a candidate. You will come across projects being put on hold which will, in the blink of an eye, wipe out your pipeline and, at the same time, the result of several weeks of work… These situations are a normal part of an IT recruiter’s job, although they hurt almost as much each time as the first. In this industry, you have to build a tough skin and find a way not to lose your enthusiasm to keep going. Accepting the seasonality of the economy and the sine wave of successes and failures, looking for the small victories in your day-to-day work and focusing on the things you have real influence over will allow you to enjoy your career as a recruiter and prevent burnout. At the end of the day, when your candidate accepts the offer and the team congratulates you on a successful project, you’ll feel that it was worth it after all 🙂
I would like you to consider the above list only as my, subjective, experience. I know many people who, like me, had to acquire some of these qualities and then developed them with experience. With commitment and conscious work on yourself, you too will be able to achieve much success in IT recruitment!
If you feel this is your path, take a look at the join us tab, and if you’re still hesitant, take a look at this blog post where we talk more about the realities of working in internal IT recruitment and in an IT recruitment agency.