It’s been over 6 years I have been a recruiter. I constantly battle this love-hate relation between me and the job I do, yet 6 years passed by and I still love what I do. I often wonder, what is it that keeps me motivated to work in recruitment? I started my career far away from the field of HR or Recruitment, yet somehow today this is my bread and butter (as the cliché goes). Why?
The question of why I continue to work in this field is what prompted me to dig deep and think about why I am a recruiter, but that’s a story for another day. Today, I thought it would be best to share some of my learning’s along the way. I choose the top 6 learnings I would like to share for each of the years in this field. Working with multiple people with different experiences/ background, I was fortunate to work with some of the most wonderful people, who continue to inspire me. So here goes, if you like it or have any comments I would love to hear about it. They say knowledge is power and sharing is caring, so please care to share your knowledge with me
Research
“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose” – Zora Neale Hurston
The basis of being successful at anything you do, is to have full knowledge of it. For example, if you are buying a car you do a lot of research on the car, the cost, the engine, the features of the car and if it fits your budget. Similarly, if you apply for a company, you complete your due diligence before your either apply or accept an offer. The same principle applies to recruitment, as a recruiter we all know that we are the first point of contact to any potential employee, which could help build your employer brand, from that first contact. Hence it is important to research on multiple fronts. Firstly, when you have been assigned a role or you take up the contract to fill a role you need to do research on the role. That would entail understanding what the hiring manager is looking for, the skill sets required for the role, the KPI’s and minimum requirements. In addition to this, it is important to understand the human element, what is the management style of the manager? How is the current team shaped? Why did the previous employee leave (if it’s a replacement)? What is the exact impact this role will have? What are the key skills required for the job? Which markets these profiles are available in? etc. The research can be endless. You could also research on the competitors who have similar roles, the average pay across companies and across markets. The information generated and collected is always useful. The other aspect is researching about the candidate, by asking for business referrals, researching if the experience stated in the resume is legitimate. In the articles to come, we can discuss further on research. However, the lesson learnt is doing research has helped me be efficient in my time to hire and be a subject matter expert to the stakeholders.
Customer Service and Goodwill
”Establishing credibility among clients, candidates and the team, by having right attitude and addressing issues in a timely manner.” – Ingrid Botelho
Think about the last time you called a customer service number with an issue (It’s mostly because of an issue), how were you dealt with, did you enjoy the experience? Did you feel that you were heard out and a resolution provided? Many times, I have experienced where nothing has been resolved on the call, yet it turns out to be an excellent experience. This builds the brand loyalty, it makes me trust them more and leaves me with goodwill for the company. Goodwill is an intangible asset that cannot be seen or touched, yet it is important in the valuation of your business. Well that’s more of an accounting definition but can apply to your work, in other terms, you can use the goodwill earned like a credit card, you don’t have the cash for the product but still get to buy it as the bank has secured it for you, but does everyone get a credit card with a good credit line? You can improve your credit line with time and by maintaining healthy accounts, increasing your income and improving your spending patterns, this prompts the bank to pump up your credit line, helping you buy more and more. Let’s apply the same logic or example to our stakeholders/clients/candidate’s. The more they trust you and your work, the more buy in you have. They will trust your opinions and your ideas. To emphasis this skill set or attitude, you need to have the attitude of a good Customer Service Rep, where the intent is to have a first call resolution by providing a positive experience. So, every interaction with any stakeholder should be where they feel they have been heard and more importantly understood. This helps you in providing a resolution and eventually building your goodwill.
Communication and Stakeholder Management
“Positivity resides in humans much stronger than negativity, thus your arsenal is your smile” – Jasser Al Hilaly
In the business world, some say no noise is good noise and some believe in the opposite. Whatever you believe in, my learning is to have proper a channel of communication, which is the most important aspect of being a respected professional. I am sure you have always worked with that one manager or colleague who never responds to your calls or emails, how do you feel being a stakeholder or customer to that person? When the answer is not good or you feel that your request is not important you feel frustrated, you start to form an opinion about that person with time and it becomes difficult for you to change your opinion. This is the same learning, I have applied to my work to help build my credibility. It helps me in managing my stakeholders well. Timely, precise and accurate communication helps build and maintain a healthy working relationship with your stakeholders. Hence to me stakeholder management and communication goes hand in hand. If you manage your stakeholders well with continuous channels of communication, you eliminate the element of surprise when there is a sudden escalation or withdrawal of contract or work. From an agency point of view communication is an integral part of stakeholder management. This has also helped build my talent pool as my hires or even unsuccessful candidates have enjoyed their interaction with me and they don’t hesitate to refer others to me.
Percipience
The word is self-explanatory where I am going with this point. If you have gone through the above learning’s of mine, you would gauge that all of them, are founded over a period of time, sometimes the hard way. As each working hour passes you become more and more equipped to handle issues which soon seem to be petty trifles. My understanding is that age and experience does not impair your percipience, however being insightful or perceptive is not necessarily or directly linked with tenure or years of experience. Nevertheless, is an important tool. You either naturally possess it and enhance it and utilize it, or your experiences help you in being more insightful. Whichever way you look at it, this is what your stakeholders want. What is your insight or perception? What is your knowledge, your understanding, your intuition? Many a times you come across a candidate that meets all your requirements in terms of skill sets, experience and matches your budget. Yet, you have the perception or intuition that something does not add up or you have that gut feeling that somethings doesn’t fit. You may think why should I talk about it, why share or inquire further into it? My experience says the contrary, you need to dig into it and understand what’s missing or what does not seem to fit, secondly you should share this with the Hiring manager and you will realize in most cases that you share the same thought, but just did not want to say anything about it. This has led to many amazing discoveries for me in the past. I am not saying that it is right all the time, sometimes the Hiring manager may disagree with your opinion or may explain something, that you did not pick on. Whichever way the momentum flows, addressing this, has made me trust my instincts more and also made me comfortable to share with my stakeholders.
Empathy
“An emotional resonation between humans such as feeling what another person feels, that is true empathy” – Jasser Al Hilaly
What place does the word empathy have in a business environment? Decisions are made by calculating finances and looking at Org-structures and it’s impact on the PnL. That’s where you come in, being a branch of HR, yes, the financial world must tie in with the softer element of things. However, this skill is important to be good as an HR. Today we have operationally, financially strong leaders driving HR teams displaying a good show on the PnL but ranking low in employee satisfaction or employee retention. Remember that every employee was a candidate first, including you. Don’t forget the feeling or the process and use it to your advantage. Understand what it means for the candidate to leave the current work place, move to new locations or come in for a role with less benefits. So, it is important as mentioned in communications point above that you mention everything to the candidate. Just as how you would prefer to know everything about your new work place, as a recruiter it is our duty to inform your candidate as well, so that they can make an informed decision. A candidate with all the right information will not feel like he’s walked into a trap or feel surprised. It also reduces the attrition levels, as candidates are well informed and better prepared for the new environment. The best approach is to think of all the surprises you had when you joined the new place, things that you wished someone told you before joining. These bits of information correlate to policies, benefits or local government regulations, which someone would not be aware of specially if they are moving from different countries. So, use this personal tool of yours to define your success as a holistic recruiter rather than an administrator, who ensures an employee id is created for a vacant chair that needed to be filled.
Perception Vs Reality
A further extension and bit of contradiction to point number 4 of mine. However, if you read on a little more of my ramblings, it would make some sense. Perception in business or personal life cannot be ignored. You always have a certain opinion or perception formed based on your knowledge and experience. However, we live in a dynamic world where we have constant changes occurring around us so frequent that we cannot keep tabs on it. It is important that we do not get stuck up in this opinion of ours or preconditioned perception of ours and should always evaluate the current situation or reality. Let me give you a small example, my father worked for one organization for over 30 years and he was considered the ideal candidate, Loyal, trustworthy with “good stability” and yes this was all desired, but 30 years back. Back then there were a lot of things different, like this forum of the internet was not available to the mass public, such as social media, there were no cell phones, digital cameras or MP3’s. The jobs also differed, some of the jobs such as a blogger, Web Analyst, Information security analyst, Well-being Coach, etc. did not even exist. The freedom to move into different roles was not as much as we have today. The concept of HR and best practices has been for centuries but the content keeps changing to keep in sync with today’s culture and society. Hence, it is more important that we understand the current market. In the field of IT, technologies come and go like clothes collections at H&M. Something things/technologies you learned even a year back could be redundant. The trend is now to hire project oriented staff who work on short term goals and move to other projects either within the organization or move to new opportunities. This does not mean the work stability of this candidate is bad as he keeps hoping jobs. We need to look at where we can find good quality of people to fill the roles. India at a point of time was booming with the rise of BPO’s, KPO’s and RPO’s, soon however larger companies found it’s better to diversify and utilize the markets better. This meant a lot of the voice processes moved to countries like Philippines, Romania, while IT solution companies moved to China and other south east Asian markets. So, to be successful you need to constantly check the realities of today and not rely on outdated trends.
When I started out in recruitment I felt that maybe it will fun, then as time passed I thought of it as repetitive. The truth is this field is exciting, as every day you can interact with a new person. It gives you the ability to shape someone’s career. You have the opportunity to influence someone’s decision and make a brand of your work. I still talk to some of my recruits in previous companies and they say, ‘Thank you’, “If you did not give me a call that day, I would not have found my passion, or my path”. Well I was just doing my job, but indirectly influenced the candidate’s life. To be honest, the earlier days I have received the opposite feedback where people would say “WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GET ME”. That motivated me never to hear that from anyone I placed, probably that’s from where I learnt the above.
Hope you enjoyed reading a few of my thoughts, I would look forward to your comments and your learning as I said sharing is caring.
