Become a Recruitment Consultant | Why not you ?
Article
by
Olivia Canedo
le
Are you a recruitment trainee, an employee in a Human Resources department, or looking for a career change and thinking of becoming a recruiter in a recruitment agency? But you don't know if this job is for you, and you're wondering. What exactly does a headhunter do? Is a recruitment consultant the same job? Do I have what it takes to succeed in this field? What are the hiring prospects and training requirements? Let's find out.
You're cut out to become a recruitment consultant, if ...
1. You're looking for a job with rich and varied missions
Do you tend to seek variety, avoiding repetitive activities in your daily life? As a recruitment consultant, you'll be able to combine a rich recruitment activity with an equally rich commercial mission.
As a recruiter, you support your customers throughout the recruitment process. You begin your mission by scoping out the requirements, and after identifying the needs, you draw up an advertisement and an attractive job description.
You then enter the heart of the headhunting profession through sourcing, the search for potential candidates. Your job is to find potential candidates using appropriate sourcing methods, or to select their applications. You then organize an initial exchange with your candidates during a quick telephone interview. This enables you to assess the relevance of starting a recruitment process with the candidate. You then conduct face-to-face interviews with the candidates who are the best match for your needs, and select the best profiles. To help you in your analysis and select the best candidates, you can rely on assessment tests. Personality tests, situational tests, skills tests, reasoning tests, etc. - the list goes on and on when it comes to assessing your candidates' skills and motivations.
Finally, you negotiate and advise your customers and candidates to help them find common ground. Your mission ends at the end of a successful trial period.
This rich and exciting recruitment mission is coupled with a commercial dimension if you work in a consulting firm.
As a recruitment specialist, you will work to build loyalty and develop your customer portfolio. You set up effective prospecting using multiple, diversified approaches, and negotiate your commercial contracts. You use an HR Marketing strategy to promote Inbound Recruiting within your ecosystem. An innovative, strategic and exciting facet of the job.
2. You like human relations.
As you can see, if you need to stay in your bubble until noon before accepting to be spoken to, forget about recruitment!
Your daily routine? Contact in all its forms! Publications on social networks, telephone exchanges, team meetings, video appointments for a progress report with your customer, face-to-face interviews with candidates, presence at trade fairs in your sector of activity, ambassador for the employer brand, etc.
Your interpersonal skills are a major asset, if not a prerequisite, if you are to flourish as a recruitment consultant. Of course, you could try a career change in this direction without having had any contact with the public, but it seems risky without real interpersonal skills. In your first experience, if you're a junior, your natural shyness will melt away during your many exchanges, which will be a source of satisfaction and fulfillment.
So if you like human contact, check the first box. And if you're curious and empathetic by nature, tick the second!
3. You are naturally curious and empathetic.
No, curiosity isn't a bad thing - in fact, it's one of the main qualities of any good recruiter! If you think it's your job to match a candidate with a position, you've got to have the curiosity to get to know both of them.
Getting to know a candidate means getting to know the person. Take an interest in their background, experience, skills, personality and aspirations. Your empathy will help you ask the right questions to find out if he or she is the ideal candidate. Ideal for the position in question, of course. To find out, you'll need to gather all the information you can, such as team configuration, management style, working environment, career prospects and corporate culture. And you can match the two (or not).
Finally, as a consultant, your natural curiosity will drive you to explore an entire ecosystem. You'll set out to conquer prospects and professionals in your sector, while keeping a watchful eye on your field of activity to keep the competition at bay and always one step ahead.
4. You have a flair for marketing or sales.
Work on your sales skills and increase your persuasiveness with today's marketing techniques! The 2023 recruiter's toolbox includes storytelling and copywriting.
Storytelling is the art of telling an emotionally compelling story to move the reader to action. This technique can be used, for example, to write attractive advertisements. In an ultra-competitive field, the art of presenting a job in its best light can make all the difference.
Copywriting, or persuasive writing, is a sales technique derived from marketing. It involves publishing hard-hitting content capable of convincing an identified target audience. The idea is to sell through the power of words.
Once you've mastered your approach and marketing techniques, you'll need to perfect your sales pitch. In headhunting, it's through direct approach that you build up your pool of candidates. A good negotiation is prepared in advance, and the job study phase can serve as a basis for developing your negotiation strategy.
If you don't have these skills, which are closely linked to consulting, there are many training courses available to boost your communication skills and develop your negotiation techniques.
5. You work with organization and perseverance.
It would be wrong to think that the headhunting profession is without its difficulties. But if you're organized and persistent, you've got everything you need to succeed.
In your day-to-day work, you'll have to deal with the vagaries of the trade, as you work with the agendas of others: rescheduling appointments, delays, modifications, cancellations. You can count on all the virtual assistants on the market to optimize your organization. Job boards, collaborative tools, various software and smartphones will all be invaluable.
And if, despite your best efforts, some assignments don't come to fruition, be patient and persistent. You're not immune to ghosting - the disappearance of your best candidate, who vanished without a trace. Or your customer readjusting the requirement at the very end of the process. But your taste for a challenge will enable you to complete even the most difficult recruitment assignments!
6. You're ready for training and development.
So how do you become a recruitment consultant? Most recruitment consultants come from business schools (Ecole de Commerce, IAE etc.) or Human Resources Management backgrounds, from Bac +3 to Bac +5. Others have studied psychology, social sciences, management or opt for training offers. But as we've seen, soft skills are essential. So, if you have a sociable and curious nature, a taste for challenge and good communication skills, you could make an excellent recruitment consultant - go for it!
All the more so as the prospects are numerous. Faced with a shortage of talent in a number of sectors, recruitment agencies are favored by many companies for their expertise and efficiency. By specializing in IT and Tech, for example, you'll potentially be working for start-ups or innovative companies with a strong societal impact, and you'll be able to work on highly specialized expert recruitment - for example, positions in cyber security, supply chain, etc.
As a senior consultant, you'll also be able to broaden the scope of what's possible for your customers by recruiting talent internationally. Last but not least, you'll be able to move into other professions in this environment: C-Level recruitment, executive search, RPO, HR consulting and even recruitment training for HR and TA teams within companies! Whatever your final choice, you won't be disappointed!
So if you're dreaming of a constantly evolving job that challenges you and matches your curious, sociable personality, come and join us!
Take a look at our job offers to get an idea of the positions you could be managing!
Here is the job description of a recruitment consultant:
Recruitment consultants manage a client portfolio of companies for whom they carry out recruitment activities. Their main task is to seek out and select the best profiles, whether employees or executives, to fill pre-defined positions. Recruitment consultants work closely with their clients to define the ideal function and profile for the position to be filled.
He is then responsible for organizing all the recruitment phases, so as to be able to propose the most suitable candidates. This includes drafting job advertisements and distributing them in the media of his choice, with the customer's agreement. He can also canvass social networks and CV libraries to directly contact professionals matching the criteria.
After an in-depth study of the applications, the recruitment consultant makes an initial selection and sets up individual interviews to assess the suitability of each profile for the position. Following this pre-selection, the consultant is responsible for proposing one or more candidates to the company. He or she may also take part in the recruitment interview between the candidate and the client. He/she may also accompany the candidate during his/her induction to ensure successful integration into the company.
In addition to recruitment assignments, recruitment consultants are also involved in sales and marketing, prospecting for new customers and developing the loyalty of companies they already work with.
The tasks of a recruitment consultant are quite varied. On a day-to-day basis, his or her main activities are as follows:
- Identify customer needs ;
- Determine the ideal candidate profile according to the job description, missions, skills required, etc. ;
- Search for candidates by publishing an offer or directly via professional social networks and other digital tools. This is the sourcing phase;
- Review applications and respond to applicants (positive or negative responses) ;
- Pre-selecting candidates: the profile is generally assessed during an initial telephone interview;
- Select the best profiles and propose them to the customer with reports on his selection;
- Support them as they take up their new positions...
The benefits:
- The human factor plays a major role in this profession. Recruitment consultants not only need to have good interpersonal skills, they also need to genuinely enjoy human contact. He or she is at the service of both clients and candidates.
- There's no such thing as routine for recruitment consultants, as they meet different people every day and work for different companies.
- The average salary of a recruitment consultant varies according to experience, but is generally attractive.
Disadvantages:
- Depending on the company and the type of position, pressure can sometimes be high at recruitment time.
- Disappointment can occur when the selected candidate is not up to the job's requirements.
- Decisions made by recruitment consultants are sometimes difficult on a human level.
Recruitment consultants generally work for recruitment agencies, human resources consultancies or temporary employment agencies. It is also possible to work as a freelancer. Working conditions will, of course, vary from one environment to another.
As far as career development is concerned, after a few years, a recruitment consultant can progress to HR development manager or consultant, recruitment manager or human resources director.