And how you can be in the cool kids club too....(don't worry, I'm not going to ask you to smoke cigarettes...unless you want to.....)
Rightey-ho, you unspeakably savage and curiously attractive people pirates! I have directly managed 40+ recruiters over 13+ years. Of those 40, 5 of them are now Heads of Talent Acquisition for scaling tech companies.
Want to know what connects them all? Do ya? DO YA?!?!....well good...it's down there just scroll....chill.
They were great recruiters.
Insanely obvious I know, but they were all high achieving recruiters.
Some excelled in the candidate journey, some with stakeholder engagement, others with learning new domains.
But I never had to worry that they couldn’t meet the number of hires to which they committed.
This creates trust with leadership from day one and is re-enforced every day.You can see why they may be considered for promotions and how that effects a recruiter’s career over ten years.
Luke's Sweet Nuggets
Track your own personal delivery rate for the next quarter. Use your ATS or a simple spreadsheet to monitor:
- Screens booked & conversion First skills test/review & conversion Offers made Offers accepted
Find your offer-to-screen ratio. That’s your baseline. Once you’ve got it, set a target to improve it by 10% and work backwards to adjust sourcing or qualification accordingly.
They had a plan for their day.
They were all able to manage their workload, and organise their time exceptionally well.
This means that they could be trusted to take on more responsibility and I know they will be able to manage it.
Conversely, they know when they are overworked and can tell me.
Time management is an ever evolving skill for leaders as they gain more and more responsibility, so you can see why recruiters with excellent time management skills would rise into leadership roles more consistently.
Luke's Sweet Nuggets
Start to develop a time management methodology of your own. Could be core hours, Deep/Shallow work, Pomodorro, or a mix. just make sure it accommodates buckets for :
- Sourcing Screening Stakeholder updates Admin/follow-up
Then review your calendar on Friday and ask: Did I protect this time or let meetings eat it? Takes 3 minutes and makes a huge difference in staying proactive.
One more thing on this, and this is a Luke pinky promise. You WILL hit a ceiling in your career if you can't manage your time. so put real proactive effort into it. You're like a really technical boxer who doesn't do cardio. doesn't matter how technical you are if you are human flan by round two.
They had no ego.
This is a HUGE blocker for some recruiters.
Recruiters are sometimes pitched as ‘experts’ and ‘SMEs’, and ‘Consultants’ even when they are in entry level roles. This can lead to a ‘fake it till you make it’ attitude.
The problem with acting like you are the most knowledgeable person on a subject, is it stops you from asking for help, or asking questions, or even showing that you want to learn.
The best recruiters I have managed, and I’ll say this so you can read it at the back ASKED QUESTIONS….ALL…THE….TIME.!!
If they saw that someone had a great manner on the phone, or had a really interesting sourcing method, they were all over that person asking for help.
Luke's Sweet Nugs
Pick one recruiter you admire and send them a message:
“Hey, I really liked how you handled X. Would you mind if I shadowed you next time you do it? I’d love to learn how you approach it.”
Then take notes, apply it once, and tell them how it went. Repeat monthly.
I take NO credit for anyone else’s career progression, they WOULD have done it without me. I just want to share what I personally have learned from the incredible people I have worked with over the years.
Well I'm back from a super cool trip to San Fransisco. I got to see all Ashbys new toys, hang out with the incredible TeamOhana after their super successful seed round. I'm really massively bullish on TeamOhana. And I got to chat all things AI with Steve Bartel in the Gem offices.
I'm a really terrible influencer so I only took a few pics of my big melon head.