IT Recruiter – What You Should Know at the Beginning of Your Career

I have had the pleasure of working in IT recruitment for more than a year. I say pleasure because I really like my job and I enjoy it! 🙂 This is undoubtedly thanks to the people with whom I have the opportunity to work every day, but also daily tasks are something I like to do. If you are thinking of becoming an IT recruiter, find out some lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Is this how I imagined my job as an IT Recruiter? I think that yes, but a few things have surprised me and even more situations have shown me how much I still have to learn, which I feel is extra motivating because I have something to work towards. What would I have said to myself a year ago, facing the choice of this path? What is really worth knowing about this role?

Firstly, find out about the responsibilities of an IT recruiter 

There are plenty of articles, webinars or presentations, and videos (ex. talentplace.pl or hireez.com) on what the daily duties and responsibilities of an IT recruiter look like. What tasks he or she has to deal with on a daily basis and what the job entails? 

Find out what is involved in recruiting in the IT industry because the recruitment of programmers is not easy and not everyone may like this job. You can simply not find yourself in it, so it is worth finding out at the beginning how less/more the work of a recruiter looks like.

You have to like people and want to talk to them

You work with people, you have to encourage them to work in your company. You have to get them interested in the new place and, what's more, you have to be willing to get to know the new person. You have to approach everyone individually. Conversations, whether on LinkedIn, by email, by phone, are a daily occurrence. 

You have to be patient (oh, how I lacked patience at the very beginning 😉)

You have to be aware that you can send hundreds of messages and get very little response. Keep in the back of your mind that a moment before reading our message, the candidate probably hasn't even considered changing job and may not write back.

Be prepared to ask lots of questions

To know you have to ask. First, ask the manager about the new person:

• who we are looking for, 
• what kind of person they should be, 
• what to pay attention to. 

The next step is to do the screening. You have to ask a candidate a lot of questions to know:

• what experience he/she has, 
• what he/she is looking for, 
• what his/her expectations are, 
• and what he/she pays attention to. 

This is the only way we can check whether there is a positive flow between the recruiter and the candidate to start cooperation. 

Be prepared to answer many questions

You will be the first line of contact, you will be a visual representation of the company. Most often, you will also be the first person to provide information about the role, organization and project, of the team to encourage the candidate. Candidates have many questions, are uncertain, and have doubts – this is normal. Be prepared to answer many of their questions as accurately and honestly as possible. 🙂

Candidates also have many questions for the technical recruiters. So, during the interview, the technical recruiters must also be ready to answer the candidates’ questions. 🙂

Be transparent

In your communication, tell it like it is, don't colour or add anything. Present the offer and working conditions exactly as they are. This is the only way to recruit candidates who will later be happy with the change and where they are.

You need to be organized

There will be a lot of people you are communicating with at the same time, each candidate will be at a different stage, and each will have different questions and different issues to resolve. Without good organization, you may just get lost. The tools which help me in daily work are Google Calendar: events, tasks, reminders, Trello, and to-do lists. 

How do I deal with it?

Setting priorities helps me the most in the daily organization of my work so I start my day with an e-mail inbox to check and respond to candidates' messages. Then I create a to-do list, where at the top I write down the most urgent things and from those things I start work. 🙂 I think it is also important to keep the tables and files in order. I update all our files, and recruitment tables on a regular basis, so as not to miss or confuse any candidate status. 🙂

Be up to date

IT is an extremely dynamic industry. We, as recruiters, should also keep track of developments and changes in the industry, e.g. in terms of recruitment methods and processes, key changes as well as trends.

Get inspired and gain knowledge from the best

There are many sources and people you can learn from to be a better recruiter ex. Maja Gojtowska, Zyta Machnicka, Rekruter z Brodą, podcast Owocowe Wtorki, blogs No Fluff Jobs and Just Join IT or HR Events - HRlityczny.

Summary

In my opinion, the role of an IT recruiter is really interesting but also really responsible. People who want to be a recruiter have to remember that the most important aspect is the desire to get to know another person. If you don't like it, probably it is not the path for you. 🙂