Top 3 skills for IT recruiters

The IT field has been developing rapidly, and the demand for experts doesn’t seem to be decreasing. Yet, tech professionals are not the only ones whom IT companies need. As a specific and diverse field, information technology requires skilled recruiters. They help to find not only technically educated, but also reliable and trustworthy candidates.

Today, IT recruitment companies thrive and have good prospects for the near future. So, if you want to deal with IT recruiting, you will need to take it a step further to succeed. This list is not going to dwell on such skills as communication, friendliness, and tactfulness. Those are obvious ones and are a must for any recruiter.

Instead, let’s go through the more specific points that will help you stay competitive.

Decision Making

If you were hired to find suitable employees, it can be harder than working internally as an HR manager. As a recruiter, you will have to put the employer’s needs first. In the end, that’s what you’re paid for – getting your client the experts that share the company’s values and can perform the duties the employer or manager will assign them.

So, you will have to make tough decisions that may not be in the candidates’ favor or in line with your own opinion.

Also, when you can only hire one person and there are several options, it may not be easy to choose one candidate over another. What if they are equally skilled and professional? What if there is a person who has great potential but few chances of getting hired somewhere else? Whether you’re an external or internal recruiter, you will need to decide and prioritize, or even take risks.

Imagine you’ve interviewed a candidate with extraordinary hard skills the company will benefit from. And your client is the one who puts the hard skills first. But what if you think that this candidate’s soft skills are so weak that it will stand in the way? Teamwork in IT is of utmost importance, and not a single hard skill can compensate for a set of soft ones.

At some point, you will have to decide who to give preference to, and it can be tough. Sure, the experience matters a lot as well. It’s actually mainly about your experience. But, to start off as an IT recruiter, you have to be ready. In order to practice or at least pay attention to this skill, consider the following:

• Observe your everyday life and the way you make routine decisions;
• Try to recollect how you acted in tangled situations where you had to choose one thing over another;
• If you have made bad choices, think about what you can learn from this experience and what can be different if the situation happens again;
• If you remember some good choices of yours, think about what ideas and values have driven you, use them as guiding points in the future.

Discernment

You’re going to hire specialists in one of the most popular and high-paid areas. So, be prepared that there will be people trying to deceive you and the employer. Everything starts with the resumes and CVs you will have to scan through.

If there’s information that basically can’t reflect reality and you notice it, you won’t have to waste your (or someone else’s) time. Of course, it’s not all about liars. Sometimes, people tend to exaggerate their abilities unconsciously.

You also need to be able to ask precise questions that will give you a clearer picture of the candidate’s skills. For example, to find out whether the job seeker is a team player, ask them whether they have had experience with team projects.

If they haven’t and you’re ready to hire them even without this experience, you still need to make sure they will be able to cope with a specific activity. So, you will need to give an example of a situation and ask the interviewee what they would do, how they would act and so on. This can show you how adequate a candidate is and whether you can expect proper reaction and behavior from them.

Basic Knowledge of the IT Field

Although information technology recruiters shouldn’t know the tech side of the subject perfectly, they still need to be aware of the basics. That is what will help you succeed with the previous point on the list. You can’t rely on your intuition purely.

You need to be able to track down when a job seeker you’re interviewing starts saying things that don’t make sense. Sometimes, if a candidate sees you don’t have an idea of what they’re talking about, there is a risk of being showered with quite many details just to impress you.

Also, to ask the questions as recommended previously, you must know how to customize them. There is no sense to cram and pose them to the interviewee as if you’re a bot. Finally, that’s something that can scare off really good specialists. So, get to know the basics. You don’t need to be able to set up a computer or be an expert at cybersecurity or coding.

Communicate with the current employees or observe their working processes. You need to keep abreast of the trends, typical situations in such a specific workplace, and the working process.

The Takeaway

Being a good recruiter in general may secure you a place at a small IT company. Yet, if the organization doesn’t grow for a while and you want to build your career, you will have to pursue bigger goals. That’s where you will need to deal with much more serious companies and job responsibilities.

The latter will demand from you the skills and abilities that will be more specific than the general qualities of a recruiter. So, to be ready for the requirements, you’d better start right now. You can take some courses, participate in workshops or simply observe the way things are operated in your current workplace. Good luck!