Anyone that works in recruitment knows you need many different skills to be successful. 🔥
Juggling candidates and clients is like being a sales development representative and marketer all-in-one.
Candidate objections and ghosting can all be a part of the day-to-day. Which is why having a positive attitude is key.
2023 looks like it'll be competitive, with economic uncertainty looming. Quality candidates will be snatched up quickly.
Let's look at what it takes to have a modern recruiter mindset.
Jump ahead or scroll at your own pace. 👇
Why a growth mindset is key for recruiters
People with a growth mindset look at change as something positive. They see it as an opportunity to learn something new and develop their skills.
It's a way of thinking needed for tougher environments. 🪴
Shabri Lakhani, Brand Ambassador & Subject Matter Expert at Kaspr, identifies that there are three core components to developing a mindset like this:
- Self-belief. “I can do this well.”
- Candidate belief. “This is a great candidate.”
- Preparation. “This is what I can do to hit my targets.”
So how can you develop a growth mindset? Let’s take a look.
Identify areas for self-development
All recruiters have strengths and weaknesses. Look at your successes to understand what’s going well and where you could improve.
Chris Hatfield, Founder & Coach at Sales Psyche says:
“You need to humanize other people in your team. Especially going into situations like a recession. Otherwise, you’ll feel other people have traits you could never possess.”
“It’s about sharing how you got there. Not all superheroes were born with it. They acquired their skills and nurtured them over time.”
You might decide that you really want to improve your personal brand on LinkedIn. You’ll need to make a focused effort to incorporate this into your day.
See who’s already doing recruiter personal branding well on your team and block out some time with them. This way, you can learn what works well.
Make a conscious effort to highlight positive moments. Like when a candidate gets through to the next stage of an interview process.
Chris suggests having ‘weekly wins’, where you spend 10-15 minutes every Friday writing down what went well. This could be work-related or personal, like getting out for a walk every day.
Build the habits to become a top biller
To successfully source and place the top talent, you need to have goals. But first, you need to break your goals down into manageable chunks.
Habits are tangible inputs that do this for you. They also keep you focused on things you can control.
Remember, you can’t control things like…
- Out-of-office replies.
- Candidates ghosting you.
- The external environment.
However you can control…
- How many new connections you’re making.
- How often you’re engaging with current contacts.
- How proactive you’ve been in looking for new ways to reach candidates.
Chris says:
“There’s an over-reliance on goals and not enough on [building] habits. If you’re going hit double your target this year, what do you need to change to get there?”
Motivation and energy management
It’s unrealistic to think that you’ll feel motivated every day.
Life is full of ups and downs. The same goes for our professional lives.
Chris says there’s a better way of manifesting motivation, and you need to break it down.
- Aspiration - Where you want to be.
- Inspiration - How you can get there.
- Motivation - Why you’re doing it in the first place.
As a recruiter, you also need to think of your energy as a currency. Every time you invest it, you drain it. That’s why it’s important to invest in tasks that will bring you returns.
Chris explains more about how to use your energy as currency in the clip below. 🎬
Not fearing AI
ChatGPT has taken 2023 LinkedIn newsfeeds by storm so far.
In case you missed it. Chat GPT is a breakthrough interactive chatbot that can fulfill tasks for its user. Whether that’s typing a simple short text response or an entire long-form blog post.
This technology is going to transform every single industry.
We all know that early adopters win.
So recruiters with the right mindset will embrace ChatGPT and use it to their advantage. Specifically to help speed-up processes at different stages of the recruitment process.
Here’s what ChatGPT came up with for a job description. 👇
Pretty neat, hey?
Here are some more use cases for the modern recruiter to use this chatbot:
- Job descriptions - Create compelling job descriptions quickly and efficiently with key qualifications and requirements listed.
- Interview stages - Generate advanced interview questions for areas of recruitment you might not be familiar with.
- Candidate experiences - Create customized outreach messages based on profile data.
- Create target lists - Automate the process of creating a company list based on location, industry, etc.
- Candidate sourcing - Testing boolean search strings, prompting AI to generate alternatives using advanced operators.
💡 Boolean search strings are structured searches that allow the user to insert phrases like AND, OR, and NOT to broaden or narrow the results.
Recruiters using this AI in the right way will know that it’s not here to replace them. 💯
It’s all about automating mundane tasks and making processes quicker.
Morgan J Ingram, Creative Advisor & Content Creator at Cognism explains more in this clip. 🎬
As Morgan says, it's also about your ability to get the best output from AI.
Seeing the bigger picture
Sometimes, you just need to ditch the numbers.
The phrase: ‘if in doubt, zoom out’ comes to mind.
Shabri says:
“As you approach times like the end of a quarter, people will be judging themselves by their quota. There are going to be those who have overachieved, and there’s going to be people that have missed their quota.”
“One of the worst phrases is: ‘you’re only as good as your quota’. That’s nonsense.”
Recruitment is similar to sales in that there are lots of ups and downs. So it can help to look at things with a “surfer’s mentality”.
- Surfers keep pursuing big waves. Even if the last one passed them by, they know there will be another. The same goes for lost candidates.
- Catch on early. Surfers need to plan ahead. They check the weather forecast, so they don’t miss out on the momentum. Similarly, a recruiter needs to recognize how to prepare their candidate best. For example, by prepping any potential interview questions.
- The guts to keep going. Surfers commit to the wave; there’s no room for fear or doubt. Recruiters need to believe in themselves to have a growth mindset.
- Practice, practice, practice. Surfers don’t develop their skills overnight. They practice!. Recruiters need to hone their skills to find out what works best for them.
Watch the podcast
Get into that winning recruiter mindset with our podcast episode.
Shabri and Chris talk through key pointers. Including balancing being your biggest fan vs. biggest critic and what you can learn from the All Blacks with the way they analyze their wins.
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