Mistakes made by headhunters - how to avoid them?

When conducting the recruitment process, a professional recruiter should demonstrate good interpersonal skills in contact with potential employees of his client. Sometimes this professionalism is drowned out by the desire to quickly close the "deal", which translates into a lack of proper care for the candidate. What exactly are we talking about? We are talking about the mistakes made by "professional" recruiters and how they can easily be avoided.

1. First: understanding

A good recruiter and part psychologist. A person in this position must be understanding and empathetic towards the candidate. For example, every professional headhunter understands how difficult it is to be available for phone calls for a candidate who, in addition to looking for new challenges, must systematically fulfill the tasks set by the current employer. In such situations, the headhunter should show professionalism and leave a text message asking for a call back. Obsession in the form of calling dozens of times a day to the candidate as if he were a "goods" for sale will not only increase the likelihood of failure, but will leave a mark on the recruiter's reputation for the next years of his career.

2. Second: respect your time

An unprepared recruiter is able to waste a lot of valuable time both for himself and the candidate he is trying to recruit. An example would be a situation where a candidate experiences being interviewed from his/her CV. The recruiter then asks a stack of information-related questions that he should know the answer to after reading the application. What's the purpose? He wants to show that he knows about technologies if he says the word Java? The recruiter then wastes not only his valuable time, which he could use for subsequent verifications of candidates, but also puts himself and the client for whom he conducts the recruitment process in a bad light. Candidates send their CVs so that recruiters don't have to ask what they already know the answer to. Careful reading of submitted CVs is crucial. The telephone conversation is only intended to provide the missing information necessary for the entire process.

3. Lack of substantive preparation

Probably the worst situation is when the recruiter does not know what the position for which he is looking for candidates is related to. Lack of knowledge (even in theory) of the employees used in a given position, ignorance of the terms of cooperation, lack of specific information regarding the so-called wage range makes it virtually impossible to find the right person. Each potential employee should receive specific information about the position they are recruiting for, what the recruitment process looks like, what the future employer will expect from them, what tasks they will face and what remuneration they can count on.

4. No feedback

There is a lot of talk in the headhunting industry and employment agencies in general about feedback to candidates who have not progressed to the next recruitment stage. This is said for a reason, because it is an extremely important part of the whole process. A candidate is not a commodity for sale. This is a person who devotes his precious time to let the recruiter help him out of looking for a new job on his own. Therefore, each candidate must receive not only a positive message, if it occurs, but also a negative one, if for some reason they are not selected by the potential employer. In addition, the candidate should also receive a constructive message allowing him to find out what went wrong that his candidacy was negatively considered. Thanks to this, he has a chance to learn a lesson and learn something about himself.

5. Professional behavior

A bad recruiter is one who, without knowing the candidate, assumes in advance that he will want to be friends with him and switch to "You" from the very beginning of the interview. However, not everyone is ready or willing to do so. The professionalism of the recruiter is about being serious when talking to potential candidates. The first message should therefore take a formal form using the words "Mr.", "Ms.". An example of "Hello John" may be received badly, especially if the candidate sees the recruiter or his profile on a given portal for the first time. The correspondence itself and the exchange of sentences with the candidate should be free of stylistic and spelling errors and should not contain vulgar or offensive words, even if they do not directly strike at the candidate's dignity. After all, the recruiter represents not only himself, but also the company for which he is recruiting.