How can someone become a recruiter?
To help you know how you could become a recruiter, we asked CEOs and experienced recruiters this question for their best ideas. From getting certifications to starting with jobs in sales, there are several steps you may take to help you start a career as a recruiter.
Here are seven ways to become a recruiter:
- Get Certification
- Start a Temporary Recruiting Service
- Emphasize Your Transferable Skills To Employers
- Apply for Internal Recruitment or HR Jobs
- Learn The Recruiting System
- Demonstrate Communication and People Skills
- Start With Jobs in Sales
Get Certification
If you want to become a hiring manager or recruiter, you should have adequate certifications. A wide array of recruiter certification programs are available that can help thrive your recruitment career. However, some certifications might also be substitutes for your bachelor’s degree. Your potential employer might need a certification, and that’s why you might either obtain certifications online or in person. You can choose from LinkedIn recruiter certification, American Staffing Association Certification, AIRS Recruiting certification, and Certified Personnel Consultant certification. You may opt for any of these certifications to kick-start your recruitment career. Also, you might decide to work toward it after securing a hiring position.
Caroline Lee, CocoSign
Start a Temporary Recruiting Service
One way to become a job recruiter is to start out working as a recruiter for a temporary company. Temp services are in high demand now as industries and businesses are looking for employees and are turning to these services. It takes little to no experience to start at a temporary service. Once you learn the ropes and do well there, you can apply for a higher-salaried headhunter job at another agency.
Baruch Labunski, Rank Secure
Emphasize Your Transferable Skills To Employers
Those that choose to take the path of becoming a recruiter usually have great transferable skills that they got from other jobs or industries. For example, maybe you worked at a restaurant. Working in a restaurant as a hostess or as a server could mean that you could be great at communication and that you’re amazing at reading people. Both of those are amazing tools that could work as a recruiter. That said, highlighting your transferable skills could work to add more substance to your resume. From there, selling yourself to different employers could be a seamless task.
Kate Lipman, embrace Scar Therapy
Apply for Internal Recruitment or HR Jobs
Apply for internal recruitment or human resources jobs to gain a fuller understanding of the role. For example, HR assistants and business partners often have recruitment activities as a part of the job. In this working environment, you can improve your skills with software and platforms used regularly in the recruitment process as well as get experience interacting and interviewing candidates. In industries where turnover is high, starting out in an internal recruitment role means more opportunities will be available as your performance improves over time, allowing a smoother transition when it is time to step out as a full-time recruiter.
Benjamin Meskin, Cabrella
Learn The Recruiting System
Spend time watching free videos on the Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) of the most popular platforms. The videos will provide you with a good step-by-step overview of the recruiting process. You will also be able to share with a potential employer that you are familiar with some specific recruiting platforms.
Scott Baker, Stage 3 Leadership
Demonstrate Communication and People Skills
Recruiters should be comfortable and well versed in facilitating conversations over the phone. People skills and deal making abilities are key for any recruiter. The medium that recruiters use to deploy these strategic qualities is often over the phone. Those who are interested in becoming a recruiter should practice having conversations over the phone if this is something that they are not already accustomed to. Whether a recruiter is having a scheduled meeting with a candidate or even talking with a client in an agency setting, they should feel comfortable engaging on the phone. This will be a marketable skill that employers will be looking for when they need to hire a recruiter.
Liza Kirsh, DYMAPAK
Start With Jobs in Sales
The best preparation for becoming a recruiter is becoming a salesperson. There are sales jobs everywhere. Land one of them and learn. Prove to yourself that you can sell and then start making inroads into the recruiting field. At its core, a recruitment job is a sales job. You are both selling a company’s brand and culture to a candidate and you’re also selling a candidate to a company. Additionally, salespeople know how important it is to hustle. You won’t win any candidates if you simply post a job and wait for qualified people to apply for it. You have to go find the best candidates and boldly and bravely ask gainfully employed people whether they’d be interested in something else. A recruiter needs to be unafraid and must work hard. All that sounds familiar to any successful salesperson.
Trevor Ford, Yotta
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