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How to Get Into Recruitment With No Experience

When I tell people I’m a recruiter, one of the first questions they ask is usually about how to get into recruitment… and for those who are interesting in changing careers –  becoming a recruiter with no experience is most certainly possible.

How to get into recruitment

The truth is that very few recruiters actually plan to get into recruitment. It usually just happens and if  you ask most recruiters their story, it will include starting out in another career altogether and then transitioning into becoming a recruiter.

You’ll come across engineers, software developers and marketers (to name a few) who have made their way into the world of recruitment.

The most common degrees recruiters have:

There is no such thing as majoring in recruitment.

LinkedIn conducted a search of 100,000 recruiters and found that the top degrees that most recruiters have, happen to have into five fields – Psychology, Business, Marketing, Human Resources and Sociology.

Mine (economics) isn’t even in there. In fact, I’ve worked with recruiters who have backgrounds in engineering, computer science and marketing. I’ve even worked with a recruiter who had just passed the bar and decided he didn’t really want to be a lawyer.

How do recruiters get started?

Before they got into recruitment, most recruiters usually start their careers elsewhere. The best job to prepare you to is, hands down, sales.

To my corporate recruiter friends who believe only agency recruiters need to know how to sell, I will respectfully tell you you’re wrong disagree. Whether you’re in agency or in-house, knowing how to sell is the number one skill you need to have to do well in recruitment.

If you really strip recruitment down, it is essentially a sales role – you are selling opportunities using a company’s employer brand to people and selling your candidates’ skills/experience to companies. You are matchmaking through sales.

Having said that though, people who come from different careers do exceptionally well in recruitment. One of the best recruiters I’ve ever worked with was a Software Developer who decided to get into recruitment and found that he was incredibly good it. He knew the software development world so well, that he could easily sell to passive candidates and clients.

The most important skill of a modern recruiter

So we know that sales expertise is an essential skill to have, but today’s recruiter needs much more to be successful. The common misconception is that recruiters post jobs, wait for candidates to apply, interview them and close the deal.

And there are recruiter who do this, but they’re often referred to as the “Dinosaur Recruiter” and on their way out. We no longer live in an age where this post and pray strategy works. Today, recruiters are faced with a shortage of good talent where they have to take a more proactive approach.

The modern recruiter lives in the space where art meets science.

The Artist is a:

• Marketer who uses the company’s employer brand to attract hard-to-find talent.
• Project manager who not only kicks off a search the right way, but conducts each search efficiently.
• Relationship builder, they act as an advisor to hiring managers while building relationships with candidates. They are obsessed with ensuring a positive candidate experience

The Scientist is:

• Data obsessed who pays special attention to recruitment metrics in order to improve their trade and identify trends.
• Technology enthusiast who is not only tech savvy, but knows how to use social media to recruit passive candidates. They also know how to automate parts of the recruitment process so they can use their time wisely. Advanced recruiters will start focusing on SEO for recruitment.
• Researcher guide their sourcers who not only learns everything they can about the industry for which they recruit, but knows the jobs they recruit for inside out and has build candidate personas to help them find (or ) the right candidate.

The job of a recruiter is not easy. Corporate recruiters often juggle countless requisitions and hiring manager expectations. Agency recruiters work in an increasingly competitive environment where targets are more challenging to meet.

However, being a recruiter also comes with its perks — one of them being the rewarding feeling of knowing that through your efforts,  a star candidate has been matched to an exceptional company. This is absolutely the best part!

How to get into recruitment when with no experience

1. Look for transferable skills

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you have no skills to bring to a career as a recruiter.

Whether you’re in sales, customer service or in software development, you likely have transferrable skills. Even if all you have to tap into is a part-time job you had while in college, dig into that job and highlight the skills you learned that you can bring along as a recruiter.

2. Create a kick-ass LinkedIn profile

I can’t stress the importance of having a LinkedIn profile if you want to get into recruitment.

Whether or not you have much experience, other recruiters have to be able to find you and LinkedIn is the best way to get found. Believe it or not, there are recruiters who specialize solely in recruiting other recruiters (sounds weird) so you want to create a LinkedIn profile that brings out your transferable skills.

You’ll also learn a ton from other recruiters on LinkedIn. Follow recruitment-related content (like this) on LinkedIn so you can learn as much as you can about the industry.

Finally, connect with recruiters in the industry and let them know that you’re eager to learn everything you can.

3. Sell yourself

Becoming a recruiter was an active decision I made. I had no experience but had recruiter friends whose work lives I found interesting. I took a day off from my job at the time, printed out a list of recruiting agencies in my area (I’m aging myself here) in alphabetical order and cold-called each one to sell myself and ask for a brief meeting with a branch manager. By the time I got to J, I had four interviews scheduled.

I got quite a few who flat out said no, but I was surprised at how receptive most were. Today, I understand that having the ability to cold-call is what they were most impressed with. Yet I was so green, I didn’t even know what cold-calling was much less that I was doing it.

The moral of the story – don’t be afraid to sell yourself and your transferrable skills.

4. Network, network, network

Networking is probably the best way to get a job in recruitment or any other industry. Chances are, you probably already know someone in the industry. If you’re on LinkedIn, you are likely already connected to a few.

The key here is not to ask them for a job, but to learn more about the industry from them. Every once in a while, I get a message on LinkedIn from someone who’s interested in breaking into the industry and they’re not asking me for a job, but rather asking if I have tips, reading material, etc. and I’m always happy to share.

Network with both agency and corporate recruiters as well sourcers, who will be able to share a wealth of knowledge, not to mention that you will be on their radar the next time they’re searching for a recruiter or sourcer.

5. Agency or corporate recruitment – decide on the right path

There’s a clear difference in the lives of agency recruiters and corporate recruiters. I talked at length about my transition from agency to corporate recruitment. I learned the true difference between those worlds as an insider.

Do some research to decide which career path is best for you.

I know a few brave souls who choose to start their own recruiting agencies right off the bat, which is an option for someone who likes learning on their own, but has the network they can tap into.

In fact, I know someone who started their own agency with no experience and has a thriving business years later.

6. Always be better

This one is a bonus tip – once you get into recruitment, don’t be the type of recruiter who settles for being average. Here are five ridiculously easy steps to making sure you’re a successful recruiter.

If you’re wondering what will happen with the recruitment industry in the next year, read this.

Get a head start

Download the recruitment intake form so that you know what an intake meeting should look like and the right questions you should ask.

I also share a ton of recruiting tips on Instagram, so swing by there if you haven’t already!

How to Become a Recruiter with No Experience?

A job in a recruitment sector is challenging and at the same time it is a satisfying job too. Wondering, why? Here is the answer to that, challenging because you will have to talk to strangers and convince them about the job offer you have and satisfying because you are actually making someone’s life.

In today’s scenario, where finding the right kind of job is a big issue, the call of a recruiter seems to be the much awaited call for all the job seekers out there.

There are some who genuinely enjoy the work of a recruiter and there are some who believes that the job of a recruiter will earn them gold every day.

Yes, it is true, that the job provides a huge opportunity to earn good amount of incentive when your candidates gets selected for the job position, but that is not all, in fact you will have to work really hard for getting to that position. But can you get recruited as a recruiter with no experience required?

If you have the sales skills, then you can make use of it in recruitment and with a bit of hard work you will surely make it to the top one day.

The best part of recruitment is that you can start as an employee and ten years down the line you can yourself become an employer by setting up your own recruitment business.

So, it all depends on you, whether you want to capitalize on the recruitment and grasp as much knowledge you can or you just want to make it a stop gap career.

Don’t go in there thinking that you will be earning huge, instead step in here to explore a world filled with challenges. Moreover, depending on the size of the business your remuneration will be fixed.

How to Become a Recruiter for a Company with no Experience Required:

1. It’s like a blind date:

Now, you will say that you don’t have any prior experience in recruiting, but have you ever done match making in college, then it is somewhat like that.

Here also you will have to be a matchmaker where you have to look into the qualification of the candidate and the requirements of that job position.

If both of them matches, then you can go ahead with your conversation, else tell them that you will contact them when there is a suitable job offer for the candidates.

2. Show off your emotional side:

In here, you are not dealing with numbers; instead you are talking to real people with real emotions.

When you are going for the recruitment job, then it is important that you carry your emotional baggage with you because you will need to show empathy and be sensitive towards the feeling of the candidate.  These interpersonal skills are very much required for the job of a recruiter.

3. Working in a team:

You will have to be a team member all throughout. When you are working in a team you will have all kinds of people hovering around you, so you must have the ability to work in a team very well.

Your communication skill will be put to test here when you are working with numbers of people out there. If you are not flexible enough, then you will get into trouble more often and the flexibility must be in terms of time and work.

There must not be an issue for you to handle different kinds of work along with the recruitment job, in case you are working in a small firm.

4. Time management skill is a must:

When you are in the recruiting job, it is very important that you know how to manage everything within the stipulated time period.

If you are supposed to call up someone during the specified time, then you have to make sure that you follow that.

You cannot disturb the person after that time. As a recruiter, you will have to handle calls and ask them certain questions, therefore it becomes a necessity to estimate the time that will be invested in the whole thing. This will help you in managing your time accordingly.

5. Interview questions:

Now that you have decided that you will go for the recruitment job, you must be worried about the questions that will be asked in the interview.

The interview questions are mainly prepared in a way to figure out how good you are at working in a team and also how your interpersonal skills are.

So, you must hone these skills and when you have no experience, you can relate some incidents from your college where you played the perfect team member.

In this recruitment job you will rarely find any formal assessment, therefore you can relax a bit. If you are good at sales, then it will be a huge benefit for you as recruitment is a kind of sales after all.

6. Knowing the job well:

Before you go for the recruitment job interview you must have an idea about the whole process of recruitment.

You must be aware of the fact that recruitment is not only about finding potential candidates, but it is also about writing job description, holding interviews, issuing contracts, analysis applications etc. So, you have to do your research well about the field and know what kind of job responsibility you can expect.

7. Improve your communication skills:

If you are the one who can make the world spin with your communication, then you can make the most of it in the recruitment field.

Sometimes, what happens is that you might end up calling the same person whom your other colleagues have called up earlier. You can very well guess what your condition will be when you introduce yourself as a recruiter.

Therefore, you will have to take the help of your communication skill to calm the candidate down and make him listen to you. You have to build up relationship with others in the market as it is one of the most important factors in any kinds of sales job and recruitment being one of its kind, so you will have to do that here also.

8. Tech savvy recruiter:

It is important that you know how to make use of computer technology because in recruitment there are certain job responsibilities that will require you to use the format painter along with some other technologies as well.

There is a job board and other online networking things that you have to accomplish on the internet. Therefore, if you are not that tech savvy, then it will be hard for you to keep up with the job requirements and sophisticated way of work.

There are portal systems and even social networking sites are also used in the recruitment process, therefore, you are required to have complete knowledge of the computer so that you can use it for the tracking of candidates online as well.

9. Kind of a sales job:

You must keep in mind one thing and that is, recruitment is a kind of sales job. Looking for the vacancy and finding the right candidate for the job and then finally recruiting the candidate is almost like the three cycles of any sales job.

Therefore, if you want to start working as a recruiter, then you will have to enhance your sales skills and sell ice to the Eskimo.

10. Stay positive:

Though it sounds really simple and it seems that all you have to do is find the right candidate for the vacant position but in reality it is not that simple at all.

You will have to stay positive because no matter how good you are in sales and how good your communication skill is you will have to face rejection and that too in huge numbers.

Therefore, if you are not a very positive person and lose heart soon, then you will not be able to sustain the immense pressure that is part of this recruitment job.

11. Know the pay structure:

Before starting off your job, you must know how you will be paid. If it is a small firm, then most likely the basic salary will be low, but the commission will be high, but in case you are working with a big company, then you will find a completely different scenario.

In the big companies the basic salary is high, but the commission is not that much. Moreover, you must also have a clear idea about how much the commission will be?

Will you be able to keep the full percentage, or will you have to share it with others as well! It is an important factor to know before you accept the job offer and when you ask these questions, then even the interviewer will know that you have an idea about the recruitment job.

12. Look for the perfect match:

When you are looking for recruitment job, it might happen that you got selected for your very first outing, but you have to ensure that you understand the policies of the firm well, else you will not be able to perform well.

Even when you are new in the field, you must not accept a job offer just because it will help you gain a foothold there.

Instead, you must start the job with conviction and that will only be possible when you understand and agree with the transparent company policy.

13. Contact ex–employees:

Before you appear for an interview with any company, if possible, contact with ex – employees to know why they left the company and how the work environment is. You can also dig in some information about the management, the culture of the company and also whether they provide enough training or not.

Training is an important factor when you are completely new in the business otherwise you will be standing in the middle of nowhere. Another important thing is that whether there is any agreement that you have to sign or not.

All this information will help you prepare for the interview and will help you in deciding whether you want to join the company as a recruiter or not.

14. No easy money:

You need to work hard before you see some money entering your bank account. Therefore, you must not think that it is easy money here.

You will have to digest a lot of harsh words before you can even start talking, so it requires a lot of nerves to keep your calm in a situation like this and then talk sense.

15. Hard work has no alternatives:

This is one phrase that you will see most recruiters use. If you want to dig in the gold, then you have to work really hard.

You have to keep on dialing the numbers; get to talk to the candidates and arrange an interview, so that the right candidate can be selected for the vacant job position.

If you want to climb the ladder of success, then you will have to work hard as there is no shortcut to get to the top.