7 Traits of a Good Recruitment Resourcer
Even despite the coronavirus pandemic, the IT recruitment sector is booming. What’s more, the rate at which technology is advancing means that jobs in the IT sector of the recruitment industry look safe for years to come. With such a bright outlook and massive earning potential, there has never been a better time to embark on a career in recruitment. However, if you want to become a successful Recruitment Consultant, you must first learn how to be a good Recruitment Resourcer. This article explains all you need to know about resourcing and how to become good at it.
What is a Recruitment Resourcer?
A Recruitment Consultant’s job covers the entire 360° recruitment process. That includes everything from sourcing candidates to client management. Recruitment Resourcers work with consultants but focus mainly on the candidate side.
Individual job descriptions can vary from one recruitment agency to another. However, more experienced consultants commonly focus on business development and finding job vacancies for resourcing staff to work on. Meanwhile, it is the resourcers job to find suitable candidates to fill those vacancies. Their day to day tasks include:
- Sourcing suitable candidates on LinkedIn and other social media channels
- Reaching out and building relationships with candidates
- Obtaining and shortlisting CVs
- Telephone screening candidates
- Arranging telephone and face to face interviews
- Handling any administration related to booking interviews
- Taking queries from clients and candidates
In the early days of your resourcing career, don’t be surprised if a more experienced consultant takes over once candidates start doing well. This can often appear to resourcers that the consultants are taking all the glory for your hard work. In fact, they are doing you a massive favour!
The reason we say that is this: Once candidates progress through the interview process and clients begin discussing job offers, a consultant’s job becomes more about negotiation and overcoming objections. These are skills that only come with experience and are vital in securing the candidate placement.
Is Recruitment Resourcing a Good Job?
Many agencies require no previous experience or qualifications to become a Recruitment Resourcer. That said, the salaries often start pretty low but offer commission and bonuses on top of your basic salary. So, where the starting salaries can seem unattractive, the earning potential is often uncapped. Therefore, if you’re good at resourcing, you are in charge of how much you earn.
To put it into perspective, the basic starting salary for a Recruitment Resourcer in the North West of England in 2021 is around £20,00 per year. However, with only 1–2 years of experience, it’s not unrealistic to be earning over £30,000 with the commission. Most would agree that’s not bad for a job that requires no qualifications or experience!
What Skills do you Need to be Good at Resourcing?
Just because it’s possible, it doesn’t mean it’s easy, and whether or not you enjoy resourcing comes purely down to personal preference. That said, there are seven personality traits, or soft skills, that will help you succeed in a career in recruitment.
1 — Focus
Recruitment agencies are well known for being busy, noisy environments with several people talking on the phone at once. Therefore it helps to be a good multitasker who can focus in a fast-paced environment.
2 — Confidence
Some might argue that confidence comes with experience in recruitment. However, one of the biggest challenges most resourcers face is getting over their initial nervousness when talking on the phone.
3 — Initiative
Every day is a school day in recruitment. Even after years of working on the job, candidates will occasionally ask questions on the phone for which you don’t know the answer. Therefore the ability to think on your feet is a must.
4 — Organisation
Resourcers will often find themselves juggling several phone calls and administration tasks at once. Of course, this makes for an exciting job where time flies and no two days are the same. However, you do need excellent organisation skills to keep on top of your workload.
5 — Technology
In the olden days of recruitment, everything was done by pen, paper and fax machine. These days, we have some marvellous recruitment technology that automates some of our tasks and makes others much easier to manage. While this is a huge bonus, it does require resourcers to be tech-savvy.
6 — Honesty
There is so much to juggle in recruitment that occasionally, we drop one of our spinning plates. It happens to the best of us, and nobody will think less of you for it. The important thing is that you can be humble enough to own up to your mistakes as soon as you realise you’ve made them.
7 — Persistence
You will often see job adverts for Recruitment Resourcers that include words like resilience, determination to succeed, ambition or persistence. Whatever you call it, like with any job, we all have bad days in recruitment. The ability to dust yourself off, get back on your horse, and ride will see you go a long way.
A Few Final Thoughts on Becoming a Good Recruitment Resourcer
Recruitment Resourcing is not for everyone, and sometimes it’s only through trial and error that people find out whether they enjoy it or not. That said, sometimes people start resourcing with one agency where they’re just not happy. However, their experience with another might be very different. Some people take to it like a duck to water, whereas others just need to find their niche.
We are always on the lookout for Recruitment Resourcers who are keen to learn. If you’d like to find out more about what it’s like to work in recruitment, you can find out what our team loves about their jobs.
We hope you found this article useful. If you did, please share it on social media where others can find out more about this exciting career choice!
