Professionals known as recruitment managers oversee a team of recruiters who look for qualified applicants for open positions. In order to carry out their jobs, these experts use both technical and soft talents. As a recruitment manager, developing pertinent abilities may help you interact with candidates, comprehend business needs, and promote accomplishment. In this post, we discuss the value of recruitment manager abilities, provide a few instances, go through how to develop these skills, and look at how to emphasise these qualities during the hiring process.
Why Are Recruitment Manager Skills Important?
Recruitment manager skills are important because these skills help a manager connect employers with qualified candidates and companies. Apart from helping you hire the right candidates for an open position, these skills are important because they help:
- Create professional recruitment and training programmes
- Develop a performance management strategy
- Identify prospective job candidates using a variety of channels and platforms
- Create candidate personas for each job position
- Research into competitors and market
- Build good workplace relationships
As a recruitment manager serves in leadership roles, they oversee a team of human resource professionals. These skills help a manager implement recruiting strategies and track recruitment campaigns. Skills like team management, persuasion and communication are essential for hiring the right candidates for a job role.
Examples of Recruitment Manager Skills
To become a successful recruitment manager, you require unique skills. You can develop technical and soft skills to complete your recruiting responsibilities and ensure you hire the best talent. Here are some prominent skills you might use as a recruiting manager:
Communication
As a recruitment manager acts as a liaison between candidates and potential employers, they require excellent communication skills to interact effectively on the phone and through emails. They use their knowledge of nonverbal communication to assess a candidate’s body language and confidence and use empathy to make them feel comfortable during the interview. The ability to share information clearly and concisely is essential for this role. These skills help a recruitment manager to ask the right questions from candidates and manage group discussions.
Time management skills
Time management skills are essential for a recruiter because they work with multiple candidates and companies. A part of their workday involves attending meetings with companies, creating job descriptions, finding suitable candidates and promoting open positions. These professionals require excellent time management skills to perform their work duties efficiently. The ability to limit time for each job responsibility is crucial for workplace success.
Team management
Employers prefer managers who can efficiently lead a team while ensuring the recruitment of quality candidates. As a recruitment manager supervises a team of recruiters and their daily operations, these professionals require excellent team management skills. The ability to conduct performance reviews, set goals for the recruitment team and recommend and monitor professional development is desirable for this role.
Organisational skills
As recruitment managers keep accurate records of positions and candidate profiles and campaigns, they require excellent organisational skills. Being organised helps these professionals delegate tasks to team members and manage multiple hiring campaigns simultaneously. Knowledge of recruitment software and customer relationship management systems can help these managers stay organised.
Patience
The ability to show patience during the recruitment process is essential for a recruitment manager. As a recruiter handles and works with different companies and candidates, being patient while arranging interviews and accommodating changes becomes critical for success. To manage conflicting work schedules and attend meetings with companies to understand their requirement, these managers require patience and the ability to work calmly under stressful situations.
Persuasive skills
Persuasion is the ability of a recruitment manager to influence the candidate’s thought process and employment terms by using convincing arguments and facts. These professionals use logic and reasoning to explain the benefits of a position and negotiation to agree on an employment term. The ability to persuade employers to trust their recruitment strategies and approve their selection is desirable for this job role. This skill set can help a hiring manager fill jobs and meet recruitment goals.
Technical proficiency
To fulfil their job duties, a recruitment manager might use different levels of technology. The ability to use specialised recruitment and performance review tools allows these professionals to interact with clients, manage calendars, organise data and manage schedules. A recruitment manager often uses search engine optimisation (SEO) to target the top-talent searching for a job role. Also, employers expect these professionals to conduct research for monitoring employment trends.
Critical thinking
Critical thinking is the ability of a recruitment manager to process information, discern which pieces of information are relevant and make unbiased recruitment decisions. These skills help a manager evaluate the open job and identify the qualifications and experience a candidate might require to fulfil the company’s requirements. Critical thinking skills help these professionals make recruitment decisions based on facts instead of emotions.
How to Improve Recruitment Manager Skills
Use these steps to improve your recruitment skills:
1. Pursue higher education
If you joined the human resource (HR) department from another field or after completing your bachelor’s degree, consider pursuing an education in HR and related areas. A master’s degree in HR or business studies can equip you with the skills required for handling the hiring process. Instead of a post-graduate degree, you can enrol in online courses to learn the various recruitment techniques.
2. Create SMART goals
Use the SMART goals technique to create your goals. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based. This helps you identify skills you can develop. With a SMART goal, you create goals and ensure these goals contribute to your objectives. Also, as these goals have a deadline to achieve, it ensures that you work on them to become a better recruitment manager.
3. Join a professional association
Joining a professional human resource association can help in professional development opportunities. These groups can help you connect with other recruiters, give you access to credible training and help you stay up-to-date on current HR and recruitment trends. Depending on the organisation you want to join, membership fees might apply.
4. Attend industry events
Recruitment companies and HR platforms organise industry events for recruitment managers, recruiters and candidates. Use these events to understand how experienced professionals handle recruitment problems. Attending these events allows you to connect with like-minded people who can guide you in your career.
5. Find a mentor
Another way to improve your skills is to find an experienced mentor in the recruitment industry. Establishing a relationship with them can help you develop and improve your skills. Their feedback and suggestions can help handle the recruitment team and solve workplace challenges.
Recruitment Skills in the Workplace
Here are some ways to show your recruitment skills in the workplace:
- Lead with examples: Use your leadership skills by showing appreciation to your team members, understanding their strengths and acknowledging their concerns. Look for meaningful ways to motivate team members to complete their work and accomplish the recruitment goals.
- Build relationships: Use your relationship-building skills to form meaningful and trustworthy relationships with companies, recruiters and candidates. This skill can help in improving communication, efficiency and collaboration in the hiring process.
- Actively listen: Actively listening can help these professionals form relationships with candidates and companies. When you actively listen, you can better understand the company’s requirements and retain formation relevant to the recruitment goals.
How to Highlight Recruitment Manager Skills
Use these steps to highlight your recruitment skills:
Skills to include in a resume
Use your resume as an opportunity to highlight your most relevant recruitment skills. Before creating your resume, review the job description to understand the skills required for the job position. Include these skills in the skills section or the work experience section of your resume. Using some keywords from the job description makes your resume applicant tracking system (ATS) compliant and conveys that you have read the job description.
Skills to include in your cover letter
Use your cover letter to describe your skills and provide examples of how these skills helped you in your previous roles. For instance, if you mention persuasive skills, give an example of how your persuasion skills helped you hire top talent. Keeping these examples short can help you elaborate on why you are a suitable candidate for the job. Also, to make maximum impact, ensure to include only relevant skills in the cover letter.
Showcasing your skills in a job interview
During your job interview, show your recruitment management skills using examples from your previous job experience. Focus on explaining your strengths and what makes you a suitable candidate for the role. Prepare for commonly asked questions to answer confidently in your interview.