A recruiter is a specialist involved in personnel selection through mediation between employers and applicants. He works in the human resources department of an organization or in a recruiting agency.
What does a recruiter do? Typically, a specialist in this field is engaged not only in searching for candidates for a certain position, but also in analyzing their professional characteristics, as well as studying the degree to which the skills, abilities and achievements of applicants correspond to the profile of the company’s activities in order to optimize its work.
This work involves constant interaction with a large number of people in order to identify the most suitable candidates. That is why a specialist in the field of recruiting must have a balanced character, be morally stable and, perhaps most importantly, be capable of an objective assessment. Impartiality and the ability to identify the potential in a person that the company needs is something that should be inherent in a specialist. A professional recruiter must also have the necessary knowledge in the psychology of communication and business etiquette.
There are currently no specialized faculties in Russian universities that train specialists in this profile. Training to become recruiters is usually conducted at economic faculties with specializations in “Human Resources Management”, “Marketing” or “Management”.
Also, getting a job as a recruiter is possible if you have a psychological or philological education, which helps a specialist in interacting with people.
Another option to gain the necessary knowledge in the field of recruiting is to attend recruiting courses in Moscow - directly practical classes to master the profession.
Universities in Russia where applicants can receive recruiter training:
However, basic skills in the field of personnel selection and negotiations can be obtained at specialized courses of training companies. For example, courses from the Specialist Training Center at MSTU. N.E. Bauman, Russian School of Management, SRC Business School, Leonid Krol Personnel Training Center and others.
Recruiters usually work either in human resources departments of organizations or in specialized recruiting agencies.
The activities of professional recruiters are divided into the areas of internal and external recruiting. Work in the field of internal recruiting involves selecting personnel for the needs of your own company, and external recruiting is, first of all, consultations and knowledge of the labor market.
With the development of the Internet, such a profession as an online recruiter appeared. The scope of work of an online recruiter is the search for candidates on the Internet - on the pages of specialized websites, blogs, social networks and other social media.
Recruiting to some extent has common features with the professional activities of a manager and marketer. It is not for nothing that representatives of all these professions receive higher education, as a rule, at the same or related faculties.
A manager is a specialist involved in the management of a certain structure, division in an organization, in accordance with his functional responsibilities.
A marketer is a specialist in the field of market activities, developing a strategy for promoting a product on the market and optimizing the company’s activities.
A recruiter at a staffing agency is a specialist who works for results, selecting personnel for client companies. We will analyze what a recruiter should know and be able to do in this article.
Qualification characteristics
Personnel selection through a recruitment agency is a commercial transaction in which the owner of an enterprise, more often his deputy, a personnel specialist or the head of a department, gives the task of recruiting personnel to a recruitment agency. The person who carries out the selection of personnel in a recruitment agency is a recruiter, a personnel selection manager, or a personnel selection consultant.
A recruiter is a person who recruits, evaluates, and sells the experience and abilities of a candidate. The one who offers the client organization his product called “Successful Recruitment Experience”.
What should a recruiter know?
The work of a recruiter is at the intersection of many professions. We will now analyze why this is so. The recruiter must know how to interview a candidate, the state of the labor market in the industry in which he specializes. A recruiter must know the 20-30 best companies in his market, the main personalities in this market, who holds what position, what company he works for, and what he is famous for. A recruiter must know how to efficiently “receive” an order for recruiting personnel from a client, how to behave when meeting with a client, and how to dress for a meeting with a client.
The recruiter must have a good understanding of the technology of the recruitment agency, the technology of searching for candidates and the technology of analyzing a candidate’s resume.
The recruiter must be aware of the basics of human psychology. It would be a good idea to read the book for the first courses of psychological universities “What is psychology?” Without knowing the mechanisms of how a person thinks, why he has certain motives for behavior, it is difficult to predict how a particular candidate will behave in an organization.
The recruiter must present the mechanism of existence of a business organization, a standard scheme for managing the organization, a scheme for building a structure, and the interaction of people in business structures. He must be aware of why organizations function, how they are born and die, what the people who head organizations do in order to become market leaders.
To summarize, a recruiter needs to know human psychology, issues of managing an organization, the market in which he specializes and the personalities in it, business etiquette standards, technology for searching and selecting personnel, elements of self-presentation and selling oneself and one’s experience. It seems that it turned out quite a lot. But the recruiter’s effectiveness depends on how fully this knowledge is mastered.
What qualities should a recruiter have?
Focus on results
Of course, this is the main quality of a modern recruiter. It is important to distribute your own time and technological resources in such a way that this results in the candidate joining the client’s company. Everyone is happy: the client and the head of the recruitment agency and the recruiter, who received a monetary fee, gratitude from the client, manager, candidate, and the approval of colleagues at the agency. Really, a lot? What if the result is zero? I hope this is not the case for you.
Willingness to work long hours
The recruiter must be prepared for the fact that sometimes he has to work in the evenings, sometimes even late. Some candidates can only arrive for interviews early in the morning or late in the evening, so you can forget about a standard day.
Fast reaction
The recruiter needs a quick response. The desired, “golden” candidate always inopportunely goes for interviews at your colleagues’ agencies, so only a few hours are left to prepare a high-quality resume.
Flair
This is the kind of thing when a recruiter, out of five or six, almost similar ones, selects the two or three very best and successfully closes the project. This is where knowledge of the psychology of communication and the client’s corporate culture comes in handy.
Excerpt
It is needed in order not to “break down” in front of the client in some cases, but to insist on what seems really right to you. But you can only make a mistake once, otherwise the client “leave” forever.
Impartiality
If a recruiter treats candidates coming to the agency with respect, does not mock them as individuals, having received instant power, this speaks of his maturity and respect for people. A candidate for a vacancy - he either fits or does not fit the client’s requirements. Of course, different people come to you, but you have no right to judge anyone. This is a different job.
Stress resistance
Don't predict people's behavior; they always give you surprises. A successful recruiter wins more often than not, but sometimes he doesn't. When he doesn’t, his colleague from another recruitment agency rubs his hands with joy. In such a situation, it is important not to “break down” but to take a philosophical approach - today is not fate.
General requirements
Both men and women are in demand in personnel selection. At this stage of recruitment development, knowledge of English is increasingly required; at least the first twenty recruitment agencies are closed to you if you do not speak it. Higher education.
The ability to communicate with people, to be a pleasant conversationalist and listener, to be, as they say, aimed at communication, to be modern and adequate. As a plus for a recruiter, in addition to all of the above, it is good to have a balanced sense of humor, the ability to maintain distance from people, as well as a sense of self-esteem.
Education and training
What kind of education do you have to become a recruiter?
Most often these are psychologists, graduates of the department of personnel management, management, teachers, and less often graduates of technical and economic universities. The predominant people are, as they say, humanists. Although no one has made exact calculations, it is obvious that it is easier for people in the humanities than in technical professions to communicate with people. As far as I know, there are no pure specializations in recruitment at universities yet; there are specializations in the field of human resources and a personnel selection block has already been allocated there. But the recruitment market is growing rapidly, almost doubling every year. The hour is not far off when a specialist with a recruiter diploma will work in a recruitment agency.
How to learn recruiting?
The easiest way is to go to work in a recruitment agency as an assistant or assistant recruitment consultant. After gaining experience for six months or a year, if you successfully understand the essence of this business, you have a direct path to becoming a recruiter. Assistants receive a salary of 100-200 dollars and a minimum percentage of a closed project, as well as enormous and almost free work experience and the opportunity to learn a new profession.
Another way is to buy a bunch of books on personnel selection, cover yourself with them and memorize by heart what a recruiter should know and be able to do, what pitfalls are encountered on his way, etc. By the way, this is exactly the path that led me to my first recruitment agency as a recruiter. Now it occupies a leading position. I came for an interview and said that I had no experience as a recruiter, but I knew everything about recruiting and really wanted to select personnel. I was thoroughly “interrogated” and then put on a probationary period, which I successfully completed.
Training in a professional environment through forums and meetings. There are several Internet resources where recruiters communicate, for example, such as www.e-xecutive.ru www.hrm.ru where you have the opportunity to ask yourself and read what others have asked. Therefore, the information that you can glean there is priceless, because... it comes from the experience of those people who have walked this path before you.
Where to learn recruiting?
There are proprietary recruiting seminars, but here, as always, you need to know who to go to. Someone who can really convey their real experience to you, rather than give you a lecture on management. The author's seminars are valuable only for those people who themselves have worked in recruiting for 5 years or more and continue to work to this day. Teachers and trainers are unlikely to teach you about personnel selection, because... To teach this, you need to live it, and not study it from textbooks.
Priorities in the work of a recruiter
Focus on results
It doesn’t matter whether a recruiter works in a recruitment agency or as an internal recruiter in a company, he must be result-oriented. Its activity is providing its client with a specified number of highly qualified specialists. Otherwise, the whole point of being a recruiter is lost. A recruiter for a client is a tool for finding people who will take the organization to a higher level of competitiveness.
Ability to prioritize projects
An important thing, especially when the recruiter works in a recruitment agency. The success of both the department in which he works and the recruitment agency itself will depend on how he prioritizes his projects and how he adjusts the sequence of actions for a particular project.
Self-improvement, new approaches to work
If a recruiter does not improve, does not learn something new, does not add new knowledge and skills to his recruiting treasury, he risks being left out of work, since life does not stand still and younger, more educated, more out-of-the-box recruiters appear on the market . There are those who catch every new trend in the profession, who learn more from their colleagues, who read more professional literature, who attend seminars of visiting overseas recruitment gurus, etc. The ability to catch and string successful moves and successful strategies onto your recruiting experience allows you not to fall out of the loop, but to be a leader in your community.
Establishing connections with clients and candidates
A recruiter, of course, needs a system for establishing and maintaining connections with clients and candidates. What does not always appear quickly in newspapers and on the Internet, market trends, can only be obtained from experts who work in a particular business. Therefore, a recruiter must constantly create a database of his candidates and agents of influence, to whom he can turn for advice, consultation and recommendations for this or that person, and receive a response to an event that has occurred in the business environment.
Recruiter payment
The recruiter's payment consists of a salary part, usually small from 200-500 dollars and a percentage part, which plays the main component in the recruiter's earnings, approximately 15-25% of the project amount and a bonus part or payment for the results of a particular department or the entire personnel agencies. There are also social benefits, such as payment for food, travel, mobile phone, etc. In different recruitment agencies, a recruiter’s earnings may vary, but on average it is $1000-2000, including salary, interest on closed projects and bonus payments. A recruiter who doesn’t catch stars from the sky can easily earn from 600-1000 dollars a month in an average recruitment agency, and a “star recruiter” who works competently and technologically, as they say, without unnecessary movements, can earn a month from 2000-5000 thousand dollars.
Client
The main thing for a recruiter when working with a client is to understand what kind of specialist is needed, what tasks he is hired to do in the company, what results he must achieve, and by what deadline. If these points are correctly understood, the work on the project goes easier and clearer. In our opinion, it is always the recruiter’s problem, not the customer’s, that he did not “pull out” from the client the key criteria by which to look for a candidate and did not record this in the description of the selection task.
Customer service
I would especially like to note the client service that should be provided by the recruiter while working on the project. Its level speaks volumes about the class of both the recruiter himself and the recruitment agency. The level of service provided to the client must be as complete and high quality as possible. This could include assistance in job descriptions, clarification of the salary situation for specialists in the client’s market, organizing meetings with candidates, checking references for represented specialists, trends in personnel management in the client’s market, and much more. The ability to retain a client depends on how the client service is formed in a recruitment agency.
The client is almost always right. Let’s discard cases when the client is unconstructive or wants to “take a ride” for free at the expense of several recruiting companies, placing his order in 5-10 recruitment agencies. If he is truly ready for a partnership, the recruiter needs to constantly remember who he thrives on. Those who understand this stop spending extra money on attracting new clients.
Path of the Hunter
Of course, the recruitment market is still far from mature and streamlined. But a great contribution to the civilized development of recruiting is made by various professional communities, such as the association of personnel selection consultants, some leading agencies and personnel clubs. They organize thematic conferences and meetings on pressing issues of personnel selection.
The attractiveness of working as a recruiter in a recruitment agency compared to working as a recruiter in a large company is a large degree of freedom and a fair amount of creativity. Here a person can create his own product called “the experience of selecting people” and the experience he gains for himself will determine his standard of living and well-being.
It may seem that we have described the work of a recruiter in sufficient detail. We have not yet told you much of what worries every recruiter in his profession and what makes them come back there.
A consequence of the increasing specialization of labor is the emergence of new professions. The names of many of them are borrowed from foreign languages and are therefore difficult to pronounce: recruiter, promoter, supervisor, coach, merchandiser. These terms are part of professional jargon, and upon closer examination their meaning turns out to be quite obvious: for example, a recruiter is a person who, on behalf of an employer, searches and selects suitable people for.
This word in Russian is an animate noun of the general gender, which, like many names of professions (engineer, doctor, baker) is consistent with other parts of speech, both feminine and masculine (depending on what gender the specialist about whom belongs) in question).
How to pronounce the word recruiter? Even linguists have difficulties in this regard. Since the Russian analogue is a tracing paper from English. recruiter, there is no uniformity in the oral form. At the time of its appearance in everyday life, the word sounded with the letter “E”, and it was the letter “E” that was emphasized – recruiter. The authors of a specialized dictionary published in 2004 suggested that TV presenters and radio announcers use the term in this way.
Today, the more commonly used form is the one with the letter “E” and an emphasis on “U”: recruiter, recruiting agency. The category in question has not yet received regulation in the literary language, so you can use any form you like. The main thing here is not to confuse the recruiter and the recruit (a person hired or recruited for a specific purpose, for example, a recruit soldier).
What is a recruiter? She is a certified HR specialist with excellent communication skills and knowledge of psychology. Acts as an intermediary between job seekers and employers. Everyone and their specialists are customer-oriented. And this is their fundamental difference from recruitment agencies, whose services are often paid for by the applicant.
What does a recruiter do? The algorithm of its work is as follows:
To the question “Who is a recruiter?” you can always answer - a person involved in recruiting. However, this rule does not work the other way around. Recruiting is an activity not only of recruiters, but also of employers themselves (their personnel officers, HR managers), and recruitment agencies.
The verb recruit in English denotes a series of homogeneous actions: to recruit, to involve in participation, to recruit. Recruiting may involve recruiting personnel and finding the right person for a vacant position, both within the company and from external sources. Wherein:
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The name “recruiter” itself comes from the word “recruit,” which used to be used to describe people who voluntarily go to serve in the army. Therefore, the recruiter is the one who selects such people. Currently, recruiters are specialists whose field of activity includes personnel selection. And the activity itself is called recruiting. A recruiter is a specialist whose activities are aimed at recruiting personnel for client companies. By selecting personnel through a recruitment agency, the recruiter makes a commercial transaction and at the same time carries out the instructions of the customer in the person of the owner of the enterprise.
The activities of recruiters are focused on working in agencies (recruiting, personnel) and are associated with mediation between employers and applicants of all kinds. The activities of external and internal recruiters are distinguished. The activities of external recruiters are aimed at consultations and knowledge of the labor market. The activities of internal recruiters are aimed at selecting personnel for the needs of their own company.
average for Russia:Moscow average:average for St. Petersburg:
The recruiter selects personnel by searching for orders. Together with the customer, he plans what qualities an employee should have and conducts an examination of vacancies. Consults the customer on the preparation of application forms in order to effectively select candidates. Concludes an agreement with the customer for the provision of consulting services on personnel selection issues. Uses information bases of the labor market, the media and the Internet in searching for the required candidates. Assists candidates in drawing up resumes, familiarizes them with working conditions and necessary requirements at the customer’s enterprise. Engaged in compiling a database of vacancies. Provides consulting services to the customer: solving personnel problems, personnel management problems, conducting trainings, and personnel certification. Contributes to the career development of applied applicants by providing them with new opportunities.
The main contingent for the position of recruiter are young people who are just starting to make a career in the personnel field. This has its own difficulties. Young specialists do not adequately assess their own capabilities and have a somewhat distorted idea of real work. The turnover of recruiters indicates poor career growth opportunities.
The modern recruiter must have a real flair for finding valuable employees. Personal qualities include restraint and impartiality. After all, often the people with whom the recruiter will have to work may not be liked personally. This should not influence his professional choice. The main quality of a recruiter is the ability to find in a person the potential that the company needs. It is necessary to distribute your own time and technological resources in such a way that this results in the candidate joining the client’s company. What is special here is the recruiter’s readiness for irregular working hours.
Perhaps this post should have appeared first, but a blog differs from a book in that it does not have a clear structure, and the narrative is told in separate notes. Today it’s interesting for me to think and remember this.
In my first post, I already wrote why I chose the profession of recruiter and HR, each subsequent one also contained hints about the reasons for my choice. Today I would like to write in more detail about who a recruiter is, what kind of profession it is, and to trace the career path of a specialist. Of course, everyone who comes to this profession has their own reasons, but I think that over time everyone notes common favorite traits. I would also like to understand the terminology, what types of recruiters there are and how they differ from each other. Fighters for the purity of speech will support me and will not confuse the concepts of source and recruiter, executive search and “direct search”. I hope readers will find my comments interesting.
A recruiter is a specialist who selects personnel for a company. It's simple. However, if you start to understand, you can get confused. LinkedIn has hundreds of spelling variations for what seems like one job title. In the spring, our designer and I drew a picture-memo “What types of recruiters are there?”, it describes popular names and indicates how one differs from another.
A small comment on point “3”: only in Russia a researcher is perceived as an assistant, assistant; in the West this position is rather closer to the position of a source. Victor Soroka already has a related articleDistribution of roles and responsibilities in modern recruiting , which describes in detail the positions and compositions of the work. Perhaps, everything is according to the terminology of the profession. In the comments it will be interesting to see other options for the name of the recruiter’s position.
At one time, after graduating from university, I identified several areas in which I would be interested in starting a career - PR, marketing and HR (at that time I didn’t even know this abbreviation). I chose one of the directions. What attracted me to the field? Then I thought about recruitment as about working with people, the opportunity to search, analyze and, of course, not the least was the desire to simply try and learn new things. Over time, such touches as drive and competitive spirit, teamwork on large projects, joy for a successful placement, and resentment when the final candidate does not show up for the job were added to the portrait of the profession. A lot of everything.
If you look at the profiles of recruiters in professional networks, you can immediately see that this was the first profession for most of them. However, there are also unusual ways in which specialists come into recruitment.
The first position in a recruitment company (or recruiting agency - as one likes) is often an Intern, a junior recruitment consultant or an assistant consultant, in which a young specialist learns to search, look and see people under the watchful gaze of senior colleagues. During this period, the beginner can decide on the area of selection - practice. Practice is the basis of future professionalism. Universality leads to limitation; a specialist must specialize in one or two industries. And the division depends on the companies in which you started working: there are companies divided by industry practices (the specialist knows companies in the client’s field of work), there are companies divided by functional practices (the specialist knows the professions that he selects for the client). Industry specialization can often be found in headhunting companies, functional specialization in companies engaged in classic recruitment; both have their own advantages. Somehow I came up with the idea that for a senior student, working as a recruiter is an excellent chance to learn more about work in general and about some specific professions in particular. If you try your hand here while studying, then by the time you graduate you can know exactly what you really want to do.
Specialists who began their professional careers in other areas are of particular interest to recruitment companies and are more likely to immediately find themselves in the position of a full-fledged personnel selection consultant. Junior consultants can reach this level quite quickly - after just six months of work. This is the main staffing unit of any agency. In this position, the recruiter's knowledge and skills are polished through interaction with the client, endless telephone and personal interviews, searching for candidates and sources of candidates.
Over time, the consultant expands his expertise and new development opportunities may open up for him. As a rule, even in medium-sized recruitment companies there are areas of work in addition to classic personnel selection. The most popular are executive search practice, outstaffing, labor market research, outplacement, training, career counseling and others. The selection consultant may try to adjust the career direction.
At the level of project leader, practice manager, the career of a manager begins. The manager’s task, first of all, is to organize the work of selection consultants and work with the company’s clients. A characteristic difference between recruiting agencies and companies in other areas is the ability of the manager to retain the function of project execution. More diverse non-routine tasks are the basis of interesting work.
At the top of the career ladder in a staffing company is the position of partner. Let more competent people talk about it.
At any time while working in a personnel company, there is an alternative to a horizontal transition to internal HR - to the positions of both a recruiting manager and an HR generalist, responsible for several functions related to the functionality of the HR department. The career ladder of an internal recruiter is a completely different story, which can be talked about for a long time. It contains new opportunities, new knowledge, tasks and peaks.
