What makes a great corporate recruiter?

I’m wondering exactly what traits, personality, skills, and experiences would make a great corporate recruiter. Some of the key things that come to mind are customer service mentality, excellent organizational skills, great at working with people, exceptional at assessing people, smart, strong administrative skills, hard and smart worker, inquisitive, perceptive, business oriented, more extraverted than introverted, and technically savvy. Any other ideas?

Tags: characteristics, corporate, experience, great, personality, recruiter, skills, traits

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Permalink Reply by Claudia J. Samuelson on July 12, 2009 at 8:00pm

I believe that a good corporate recruiter has to be willing to accept and embrace the concept of not being able to control anything.

What I mean by this, is that this role is a complete role of advisor but not decision maker. All recruiters need to be comfortable relinquishing control and embracing servitude. Recruiters must recognize that they are like seeing eye dogs to help guide a process. The ability to nudge and not be pushy, counsel without reward, recommend but not decide - are all challenges for all people. But the ability to do this effectively to be seen as someone who's opinions matter, rather than someone who has to be in charge, is a great gift.

While being competitive certainly isn't a bad trait, the desire to outperform an agency versus work strategically together doing research, sourcing or other types of unbundled search is what I believe makes a good corporate recruiter. If the focus is too much on beating out an agency, your mindset isn't truly serving your customer, it's winning or control.

The additional traits of flexibility, creative thought, hard working, ability to multi-task (ADD comes in handy - also known to me as "the shiny ball" syndrome), listening skills, deductive reasoning, compassionate, ability to spot ability versus only looking at skills are also key characteristics of being a good corporate recruiter.

I think this is a great topic when taking our value for granted, thinking "anyone can do this" and it's easy. For those of us who love it, it is hard and also easy. Luck, skill and raw ability are what it takes to be successful and highly regarded.