Tips to Enhance Your Performance as an Executive Recruiter

Ever wondered how to become a better and successful executive recruiter? To begin with, it is never enough to just hold the position of an executive recruiter, one needs to succeed in creating stellar placements as well. The work of any executive recruiter demands much more than just reviewing resumes. Listed below are few tips that will help enhance your searching process

Be thorough with your research:

Before beginning any recruiting process, you need to first pin point and understand what exactly your current team’s strength is and where are they lacking or where their true need lies. This insight can come only when you engage with the members of the team and actively participate in team meetings and events, gathering perspectives on growth. Recruiters can learn a lot from just by listening and bringing to the table a point of view. This approach will ensure that you not only provide a more refined search as you learn the DNA of the team, but that you will also build the trust between you and your hiring managers, which is equally important.

Find qualities that raises the bar:

It is a well-known fact that placements stick when there is a culture match. Successful completion of projects and having a background of management skills are assets that many prospective candidates can bring to the table. However, what makes a candidate (and their recruiter) truly stand out to hiring managers is the ability to raise the bar. Does the candidate posse’s a vision? Will they be able to live by their values whilst at the same time fit into the company culture? These are intangible skills which are especially important in the executive search as they will be directly imparted into the entire departments or teams and have a much larger potential to shape how a company functions. The best recruiters have low turnover rates as they understand how even the best qualified candidate can fail to thrive all the time. Thus, it is important to seek out those candidates whose goals and traits fit into the company culture. 

Strengthen your decision making data:

As an executive recruiter, you should know and understand the data you collect. This means being an expert on addressable market and also know how many people actually possess the skills needed for the job. You should familiarize the talent demand of your industry and know what is motivating the candidates to move, what new technologies are being implemented by competitors and who is on the most cutting-edge ones. This is important as you need to bring in candidates with skills they not only need today but also in a year out. Knowing the data about compensation in the candidate’s location and familiarizing with the different market conditions based on geography is essential. 

The data you have should provide insight into where the largest potential for growth lies and what changes within the company and the hiring process will initiate such a growth.  Overall, possessing such information will help put you in the position to influence the decision-making process. 

Bring in touch:

Every recruiter has to provide their candidates with a great experience however, when it comes to executive recruiting, these efforts should be maximized. The best way for any recruiter to be successful is by genuinely caring about the candidates involved in the recruiting process. All great executive recruiters are conscientious and are involved on a far more personal level than in any other areas of sales. It is crucial to be able to learn to love people’s interest to excel. It is important to bring out this quality in the relationship with the candidates through frequent contact and employing personalized touch while conversing with them. You should be able to give personalized feedback to every candidate and remind them how much you appreciate their time and effort through small but thoughtful gestures, such as, goodie bag with snacks for the airport, et cetera.  

All this ensure to create an irresistible offer for the candidate, based on the company’s culture and the recruiting process.

Keep in touch even after recruiting: 

All good relationship between recruiter and candidates always extend beyond the signing of the offer. Before the start date, you should personally keep in contact with the executive candidate. Most often than not, such gestures are a great way to maintain consistent contact throughout the on boarding process and sometimes even set up continuous, more casual follow ups in months after they’ve entered the position. This approach also helps you track your new hire’s success and develop relationships for networking on future positions at the company. Actively pursuing each of these practices will help develop you into the ultimate consultative influencer, which is exactly what is expected out of executive recruiters. 

Trust above all else:

Every successful recruiting begins with trust. It is about being trusted both by companies and candidates. It is important to be honest with both sides at all times. Irrespective of who the client is, the goal is to create a pairing that is in alignment with everyone’s interest. A reputation of being trustworthy generates a loyal client base. 

Old school networking: 

In today’s day and age, everyone is fixated on LinkedIn but in reality, there is no better replacement than actually talking to people. It is the best way to build personal rapport that can get your job done very quickly. Getting out and about, tracking down candidates and doing your outreach by phone has been found to be extremely effective. This should be followed by a thorough pre-interviewing process where a candidate’s can be verified before presenting them to the client.

All these tips, overall, will help build and nurture ties to companies, candidates and the industry at large.