[avatar user=”Anil Kumar” size=”thumbnail” align=”left” /] Anil Ethanur |

Dear Recruiter…Are you Evolving?

I was excited when I first heard about driverless cars. As a full-time user of Uber, I thought I will have a uniform ride experience. Also, I wouldn’t have to go through the anxiety sometimes the drivers put me through. But, then this Automation, AI, ML, Bots linked disruptions went beyond the cars to other areas. When the speculations about recruiter ‘s future started to make rounds I thought I should reflect on it more closely. After all, I have earned my bread and butter in the Recruitment Industry for the last 2 decades. Furthermore I have now become an entrepreneur in the same space.

The recent global growth numbers of the recruiting industry clearly demonstrates buoyancy and healthy growth rates. This suggests that any predicted disruption by the bots have not hit home yet. So, let’s examine the skills and competencies of a new age recruiter. How does a recruiter navigate this possible identity attack to stay relevant and thrive? For now let me leave out out personality traits that are required to stay in business. Let’s look at the dimensions that recruiters need to focus on. This is by no means exhaustive and it’s also impossible for every recruiter to gain mastery in all aspects. I believe that recruiting is a science and not much of an art and with practice, one can definitely get good at it.

Savvy Social Recruiter

It’s a no-brainer to state the obvious that the most significant facet of tomorrow’s recruiter is Social Media savviness. Much of recruiting has already moved to social platforms away from traditional job-boards. It has become imperative for recruiters to don the role of a savvy marketer and a magnet appealing to talent communities with opportunities. This, of course, requires discipline and hard work. Mere presence on social media is grossly insufficient. Recruiter brand happens slowly and painstakingly with smart and relevant content to engage talent network. Although this doesn’t cost anything at all, it’s surprising to see the low adoption of this medium for branding.

Technology Integrator

The connect between social media and technology adoption is very significant. There are efficient tools available for every step of the recruiting process which the recruiters can greatly benefit from. There is really no need to get wedded to any specific tool or a platform. The openness to harness the best in class tool available at the time makes all the difference. From sourcing to on-boarding there are multiple tools going around. There is still no silver bullet still. But, some of them can become a game changer to reduce recruiter time on mundane activities. Being on top of this can ensure the recruiter productivity becomes the game changer than the efficiency of the tool.

The Specialist

An ace recruiter is a subject matter expert in a few industries or functions. This paradigm hasn’t changed from what was expected of a traditional recruiter and continues to hold significance. This is very most critical to earn the respect of clients and candidates and to build a successful recruitment career. Yet we find recruiters skimming the surface of their domains and short on depth. The future shall be biased towards specialists.

Supply Chain Manager

When it comes to talent, recruiter needs to understand the supply, demand and cost paradigms in a given domain. This helps the recruiter advise clients, talent and offer viable solutions. This comes handy particularly when a recruiter is mandated with high scale, complex multi-locational hiring projects. The supply chain know-how though related to the sector expertise is a specialised aspect of the recruitment life cycle.

Interviewer

Last but not the least, a good recruiter is also an ace interviewer. I know this sounds very basic. But, an good interviewer has a deep sense of relatedness to the talent he or she is assessing. Aided by research and preparation, a good interviewer is skilled in probing and has the ability to deep dive without intimidating or putting-off the candidate. Often the real answer is embedded in the later stage of questioning. Therefore a good recruiter is able to stay on course and cannot be distracted. Probably, we can learn this trait from some of the good journalists we see around us. Needless to say, a the recruiter needs to keep his /her hunches/ bias/ideas/feelings aside. This will allow the recruiter to engage in a conversation to seek evidence to back the claim the candidate (and sometimes client) in the making.

The bots, analytics, AI will come into play in enabling multiple steps in a recruitment process. We know from sourcing to joining there are numerous complex steps which though defined do not work like a clock. The judgement, resilience and skill of a human mind is required to assess, convince and manage talent till he or she joins.
Yes, it’s a world of notifications, but when you have to trust someone with your career, you will need the connection of a human being. But, that human needs to be a skilled interviewer, Sector specialist, savvy in technology and social media to hold the edge over the machine. That shouldn’t be very hard!