Photo by Sebastian Herrmann on Unsplash
What’s the number one trait you want in a recruiter? To be dependable. You want them to bring you great candidates every time, and this doesn’t happen accidentally. It happens through thorough recruiter training. This training is about more than teaching recruiters where to look, but it teaches them what you are looking for so they perform at the top of their game.
Here are the ten best practices for effective recruiter training.
Your company has two brands–the brand that consumers know you by and the employer brand that job candidates know you by. One of the most important things for recruiters to understand is who your company is now and where your company is headed. This is a big part of your employer brand.
And it’s about more than just benefits. Potential employees are looking for corporate responsibility, a healthy culture that promotes a good work-life balance, and a commitment to diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI). It’s important that your recruiters understand where your company stands in these areas and that they convey them effectively in their recruiting message.
Role-playing is a key part of recruiter training. It helps you understand how the recruiter interacts with potential candidates and it helps them understand your expectations. But these interactions are rarely just in person. They often begin in a message or email, over the phone, or on a video call.
Essentially, if it is a communication method your company uses with candidates, the recruiter should practice those interactions. There are some people who don’t do well over the phone or through email, and others who are better through messages or texting. Work to the strengths of each recruiter but be sure that they know how to effectively use each method even if it’s not their favorite.
Candidates will have their own preferences, and it is a recruiter’s job to adapt when needed.
It seems like a no-brainer, but sometimes, HR teams neglect this step if the recruiter seems knowledgeable or comes from another company. However, they may not know where to find the best candidates for your company, where you are the most successful, and even your company relationships or preferences.
Even if you hire a seasoned recruiter, be sure to take them through this step so they understand how your company works. They could suggest and even make changes later, but you want them to learn your system first.
One way to ensure that the recruiter integrates well into your company and culture and that they understand how your recruiting currently works is through mentorship. Take the recruiters who best emulate what you want and partner them with the new recruiter to teach them the ropes.
Note that the best mentor is not always the recruiter who has been with your company the longest. Choose mentors based on ability and cultural fit rather than seniority.
This often-neglected technique is important because the recruiter will be seeking candidates for more than one department. It’s important that they not only know how that department works and what the job titles and requirements are but the culture of that department as well.
Who is working there now? Who leads the team? What traits and skills are they looking for in a new hire? The more your recruiters know rather than making assumptions, the more dependable their candidates will be.
The more open-ended questions your recruiters ask and the more actively they listen to the responses, the better candidates they will hire. You’ll often learn more from how a candidate answers and things they might say during that answer than you will from closed questions with yes or no answers.
In what they say, candidates will reveal whether or not they fit your company culture and align with your company values. By using active listening, recruiters will produce higher quality and more dependable results.
Recruiters are often encouraged to “take good notes” during an interview, but it is important to define what those notes are. It’s also important that you have a “notes vocabulary” that everyone uses. This ensures data is uniform and understandable. Well-defined terms, using Rich Skills Descriptors (RSD) and keywords make candidate data indexable and searchable. Using this data, recruiters can detect patterns and filter candidates by past successes and failures.
Teaching recruiters to create and submit good data will improve decision-making across the board. It’s key to moving your recruiting efforts to the next level.
One of the most important things about your employer brand is what happens after the interview, which is where constructive feedback comes in. Even if the candidate was not successful, give them the opportunity to learn what they did right, what they could do better, and whether they're just not a fit for this current role.
For successful candidates, understanding why they got the job will help tailor their onboarding and their confidence in what they are doing. Letting them know what they could have done better will improve their chances of being hired for another position internally, which is a huge part of employee retention.
How does your recruiter know if they are successful? They might lose track of a candidate in the hiring process or not know how long they stay with the company and if there are issues later on. However, if create a system for tracking success, you can easily share all these things with recruiters.
This is not just about showing them who they’ve hired, who has done well, and who hasn’t. It’s about helping them understand the traits of those candidates so they can work to recruit others who share them. Success breeds success, and the more your recruiters know what makes them successful, the more successful they will be going forward.
Finally, offer on-demand ongoing education. Your recruiters will get better as they learn more, and it’s your job to provide them with that opportunity. Continuing education is a favorite benefit among other employees as well, so make it a part of what you offer recruiters, and you’ll have happier recruiters who work for you longer.
Every effective recruiter training program will look a little different. But if you follow these 10 best practices, you’ll find success in your program that will benefit everyone in your organization. Finding the best candidate for the job is no accident, and when you put a system in place to find them, everyone wins.