Recruiter Meaning: What It Is Meant To Be A Recruiter? What comes to mind first, Who are recruiters? A recruiter is a person who is responsible to close an open position in an organization through his or her recruitment skill, by applying different recruitment tools. Now the question may arise which are the recruitment tools & skills. As a recruiter a person should have a good network, convincing power & screening of an applicant, these are some of the skills of recruiters.
Likewise, job portals and networking on social media platforms are some of the tools of a recruiter. As a recruiter is responsible for the end-to-end talent acquisition of any candidate he/she is responsible one to understand the tenacity or efficiency of any candidate. There are a few key responsibilities for any recruiter which are as follows:
- Manpower Planning: Its objective is to ensure the optimum use of Human Resources currently employed. Manpower planning is the process of projecting the number of people required with different skill sets, according to vacant job roles.
- The next key responsibility is the attract and sourcing candidates: Recruitment sourcing is mainly of 2 types.
Internal sourcing:
External sourcing :
Internal Sourcing generally takes place within the organization.
this is mainly of 2-types, a)Transfers, b) Promotion, or c)Re-Employment of ex-employees.
For External Sourcing: applicants & candidates are sourced. This consumes enough time & money. Tools over here are Different portals, Advertisements, RPOs / Staffing Agencies, Educational institutes, Recommendations, etc. - Selection: This step is inclusive of a few more steps like;
Screening of Resume,
Root Cause Analysis (RCA) - Shortlisting of Candidates: It is a vital step where a recruiter needs to pool out the right candidate out of a chunk of applicants, matching the criteria of the open vacancy.
- Background Verification: After shortlisting candidates, the next important step is to verify his / her background.
The objective of doing this step is to check whether the organization is recruiting the right candidate. Whether the candidates have done any false claims. - As a brand representative: It is important to convey all vital and important points of Policies to the applicants.
- Rolling Offer: After making a list of good shortlisted candidates next step is to roll an offer, if the candidate is accepting the offer, the next step is to be on board.
- On-Boarding: Now we are almost at the end of the entire process which is known as the onboarding of a candidate. Where, as a brand representative on that day HR needs to introduce the brand & to other team members.
Table of Contents
Do recruiters finally join candidates?
Recruiters do not make hiring decisions. Which is taken by the Hiring manager or head of the department, of a particular Company. So, it’s a clear picture that recruiters are not working for candidates, but for organizations. In other words, they help the companies to fill the vacancy and not find a job for any candidate.
Recruitment as a career opportunity
Meaning of recruiters and life in recruitment can not be summed in one or two sentence. Recruitment is a very good career option, to start as an HR. Recruiters are very different by nature. They are more ambitious, assertive, confident, keen observers, creative and self-motivated. Some recruiters work for companies directly known as Corporate recruiters and some of them work for RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing).
As you gain experience, you can advance to more senior positions such as team leader, manager, or director. You may also be able to specialize in a specific industry or function, which can increase your value to organizations and make your work more satisfying.
Corporate recruiters
These recruiters recruit candidates or manpower for the company they are working for. Their role is to create and publish job ads, interacting with candidates, and explore more candidates. To be successful in this field one should know the entire recruitment cycle & good communication skills.
RPO Recruiters
Recruitment Process Outsourcing which is also known as job consultancy, sources candidates from different portals and networks to hire them for permanent or temporary jobs for their client company.
A good recruiter must have qualities
‘Good Communication skills’, which helps to attract any candidate not only that it also helps to understand the exact requirement of the job vacancy. ‘Strong Networking’, helps to get noticed by the right candidate easily. ‘Marketing Skill’ helps to generate a candidate pipeline and connect the right candidate.
“Loyalty” or ‘Honesty’ towards one’s own work responsibility. ‘Problem-Solving’ a recruiter should have the capability of thinking critically & solving the issue. ‘Know-How’ is a problem-solving quality a recruiter must have another quality to know to get the work done.
Recruiter VS Hiring Manager
Although it seems so simple but but meaning of HR recruiter can be a bit tricky at times for few. For example, a recruiter or Hiring manager both works for the same opening, but recruiters are the front liners, and hiring officers/managers are the main reporting managers or team leaders for any hired employee.
The recruiter is the first & single point of contact, they are the one who keeps the interview process going smoothly and ongoing. Once a candidate applied for a given job post, the recruiter will first reach out to the applicant and screen them for the further interview process.
Whereas, a hiring manager plays the key role in the final selection & joining of a new employee. Hiring managers are the ones who will be the future immediate reporting manager for the newly hired employee. Hiring managers & Recruiters work as a team, they supervise the recruiters regarding the required qualification and skills for open positions.
Some of the key responsibilities of Hiring Managers;
- Setting a strategy for the Hiring team.
- Supervising the Hiring team, throughout the recruitment process.
- Setting a target for the deadline.
- Declaring the new job vacancy within the organization & asking for employee referrals from peers & colleagues.
- Selecting the final applicant from the group of shortlisted applicants.
- Making the ultimate decision of hiring any applicant.
- Rolling out the job Offer & negotiating the terms & conditions with the chosen applicant.
Challenges faced by recruiters
Lack of skilled candidates: Every company has some required skill set for the open position. Naturally, every employer is looking for the best candidate from the market. It’s found to be quite a challenge for HR & recruiters to find the best one. Often recruiters cannot source quality candidates. Even sometimes, employers need to adjust. As recruiters fail to bring the right candidate. This is due to the lack of good quality available. Thus, it’s become quite challenging to find the right candidate with good quality.
Reaching the Quality Candidate: The Job portals have started promoting themselves so much that, not only quality candidates but also less quality or below quality candidates are also available on the portal. As a result, it becomes quite difficult to select the right applicant.
On other hand, a number of companies are posting job openings. Opportunities are more & quality is less, naturally good quality is getting attracted to only lucrative offers. It’s become competitive for similar companies when they are looking for the same openings.
Pools Of CVs: It seems now the number of applicants is more, whereas it’s very difficult to understand how many of them are relevant. It becomes a disheartening job for recruiters to scan those resumes one by one, to find out the relevant, more relevant & most relevant finally the best one. In fact, HR may miss out on the right one. And that is exactly why for both HR & candidates it is important to keep an eye on different factors & mistakes to avoid in a resume very carefully.
Recruitment of Freshers: Many companies hire fresher candidates. Who has a different kind of challenge, a non-appropriate written cv? Recruiters have to connect them one by one, for initial screening. Which is the time taken to work.
Sourcing candidates with the correct balancing of technical skills & experience: Every CV is speaking about the applicant. Education, primary skills, secondary skills. Experience relevancy etc., So, it’s quite easy to select the right candidate after screening the CV. Although it’s truly challenging to find someone who has both the right experience & technical skills.
Although recruitment is always a challenging task, nowadays recruiters are getting more platforms to find the right candidates. There is a lot of software to find out a streamlined candidate.
If we stick to the same thing, naturally the result will be the same. So, methods should be more updated and different than previous ones to get better results.
Things we need to remember, technology is our friend, and social media can increase our network and reach beyond the imagination. If implemented correctly can change the system of recruitment.
Would love to get your opinions as well regarding recruitment & recruiters. Keep on reading to know more about how to make your campus recruitment drives a great success.