A Day In The Life Of A Recruiter

A recruiter is a valuable resource for employers and job seekers. They help businesses fill vacancies, and help job seekers find jobs that align with their schedule, skill, and interests. But how exactly do they do it? A day in the life of a recruiter requires multitasking, communication, careful planning, strategizing, and building interpersonal relationships to grow and maintain the local labor force.

The day to day responsibilities of a recruiter vary by industry (a Construction Recruiter and an Accounting Recruiter will be looking for different things, for example) but generally, a day in the life of a recruiter may look something like this:

A Recruiter Works On Email Correspondence and Paperwork

A recruiter typically starts their day responding to emails wrapping up details from the previous day. This email correspondence could be between business owners or job seekers, or sending resumes to/from candidates, or connecting with candidates weeks and months after their initial placement. Recruiters check and respond to emails throughout the day, in between team meetings, client interviews, and communication with clients.

A Recruiter Is Great At Networking

One of the most powerful tools a recruiter has is his/her network. Recruiters know people, and they often serve as the link between two parties who could benefit from each other. Recruiters spend time at networking events, attending hiring fairs, and connecting with people in the labor force.

Recruiters Mine Candidate Identification and Contact Info

A significant part of a recruiter's job is to connect qualified candidates with open positions. This requires seeking out candidates for specific jobs. They may use LinkedIn or other social media platforms to find the right candidate for the open position and then connect with them. This initial contact sets the stage for the rest of the recruitment process.

Conducting Interviews

A lot of our recruiter's job is reading resumes. A good recruiter will utilize tactics that will help them read through resumes quickly and carefully and find candidates that have both the hard and soft skills that their clients are looking for. Once they've narrowed down the resumes to a few qualified candidates, they'll do a telephone or in-person interview.

This initial interview process is crucial because it allows the recruiter to determine if a candidate has the skills that the candidate needs. Skipping this process and presenting the candidate to a client strictly based on their resume could result in picking the wrong candidate for the job and costing the client time and money.

Presenting Candidates To Client Companies

Once a recruiter has found an ideal candidate, it’s their job to present their findings to client companies. This requires putting together a presentation that showcases the candidate’s strengths and skill sets and providing background information. This unbiased information gives companies all of the information they need about a candidate before hiring them. Many businesses cite this as one of the most valuable services a recruiter can offer. This aspect of recruiting presents business owners with a qualified candidate without having to invest all the time and money to find them.

A Recruiter Designs Job Descriptions

Employers hire recruiters to save them time, and one way recruiters do this is by designing job descriptions. This is an important but time-consuming part of the hiring process, and recruiters take over this responsibility so employers can spend their day doing other things. Many professional recruiters have perfected the job description writing process, and can effectively write a description that attracts qualified candidates.

A medical recruiter will be looking for a different type of candidate than an accounting recruiter, of course. But many of their strategies and processes are the same. The main goal is to listen carefully to the type of employee a candidate needs and then use their extensive network and pool and qualified candidates to find the right match. The key qualities of high performing recruiters include multitasking, time management, expert communicators, and team players.

If you have a small or medium-size business in the Los Angeles area, or if you’re a job seeker trying to get your foot in the door of some of the area’s most prominent industries, a staffing agency could be the missing link you’ve been looking for. Click here to learn more.