Career Trends: 6 Soft skills a recruiter must have!

Edition: January 10th, 2022
Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS

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• Excerpts from article by Tatiana Melnichuk, published on Forbes

Soft skills are a set of skills that relate to personal qualities. Many soft skills are quite important in professional activities, especially for top management positions. That is why in recent years employers have been paying quite a lot of attention to soft skills. 

Unlike hard skills, which are rather a set of technical characteristics necessary to perform a particular job, soft skills can still be characterised as socio-psychological skills of a person that are not related to a specific profession.

The profession of a recruiter includes at least nine different jobs: copywriter/journalist, Social Media Marketing manager, sales manager, psychologist, analyst, negotiator, linguist, detective and project manager. Which is why it is important for a recruiter to have developed soft skills in order to interact with clients and candidates effectively. 

Here are 6 soft skills that are important for a recruiter to have-

1. Clear Communication

• Recruiters communicate a lot; they call up with customers, conduct interviews with candidates, write emails to specialists and contact them.
• Therefore, the ability to express thoughts clearly is especially vital for a recruiter.
• To achieve effective results, you need to be able to communicate competently. 

2. Ability to Solve Conflicts

• Recruiters often find themselves between two fires — the client and the candidate.
• It is important to be able to resolve conflicts and misunderstandings, quickly find possible ways out of the situation and build a strategy of behavior so that ultimately both sides do not suffer.
• Recruiting, due to its specifics, is a very stressful profession.
• Difficult situations take place here and a recruiter needs to know how to behave in a particular situation to solve it in the right way.

3. Ability to Meet Deadlines & Stand High Pressure

• This is an integral part of the recruiter’s job.
• They always have urgent vacancies to fill, so they need to act quickly and survive the pressure of many factors at the same time.
• The IT market, for instance, loves speed — everything changes very quickly here, and in order to keep up with these changes, you must act quickly.
• In addition, there is an acute shortage of personnel and the struggle for each candidate is serious.
• Often one specialist communicates with several recruiting agencies at once. 
• It is vital for a recruiter to be able to maintain a busy work rhythm and not let it affect the results. 

4. Teamwork Skills

• A team means working together, finding a compromise, listening to each other and understanding that the end result depends on your well-coordinated actions.
• The same principle applies in recruiting, and the ability to work in a team will help the recruiter to build effective communication, especially with their colleagues. 

5. Assertiveness & Flexibility

• Despite the seemingly polar value, these skills (at least in recruiting) cannot work without each other.
• It is important for a recruiter to be able to stand their ground, clearly know what they want, and be assertive.
• Again, without the ability to show firmness in time, it can be difficult to withstand the high tension that you face almost every day in recruiting. 
• However, if a recruiter can’t be flexible, it may be difficult for them to build effective interaction with people and conduct negotiations.
• You need to be able to show flexibility to reach a successful conclusion of negotiations.

6. Critical Thinking

• A recruiter often needs to make decisions while working with a lot of information.
• Critical thinking helps you to objectively look at a particular issue, weigh all the pros and cons, and make a deliberate, balanced decision.
• The developed skill of thinking critically allows you to always make your point of view, without falling into being easily persuaded one way or the other by another person or the media.
• Again, in combination with assertiveness and flexibility, critical thinking helps you to negotiate effectively, as well as build competent behavior and communication strategies with both clients and candidates. 

However, while developing soft skills, it is important not to forget about hard skills as well, because they will bring only tangible results together, complementing each other. If a recruiter demonstrates good hard skills, then the use of soft skills can further contribute to their professional growth and bring about new opportunities. 

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(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)

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