Professional Recruiter
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The Role of a Professional Recruiter
What does a professional recruiter do?
Have you ever received a LinkedIn Message, phone call, or an e-mail from someone trying to get you interested in a job opportunity? Chances are, you’ve interacted with a professional recruiter at some point in your life whether you wanted to or not. A professional recruiter’s job description is to search for qualified candidates that are suitable for a specific role. This means that they will reach out to those seeking a new opportunity, and those that aren’t (because they appear to be a good fit). These types of candidates are referred to as active and passive candidates, respectively.
Not all professional recruiters will recruit for their own company. In fact, a lot of recruiting is outsourced. Companies will hire recruiters from a staffing/recruiting agency to find candidates to fill open positions.
A recruiter job description might vary with industry and company, but the general picture of a recruiter is a professional who sells job opportunities to qualified candidates for the purpose of placing them in that opportunity.
Different services that professional recruiters can offer:
• Direct hire / Permanent placement – directly placing a candidate on another company’s payroll
• Staffing / Temporary Placement / Labor Leasing – finding employees to put on the recruiting company’s payroll that they can lend to those who have temporary staff needs
• Temp-to-Hire – finding employees that will start on the recruiting company’s payroll for a trial period and then be “hired over” directly after a defined period
• Recruitment process outsourcing – completing any necessary parts (sometimes, all) of the recruiting process on behalf of another company.
Role of a Recruiter in an Organization
There are two very different pictures of the role of a recruiter in an organization: one who is acquiring talent as a part of a recruitment firm or staffing agency on behalf of another company, or one who focuses on internal talent acquisition—bringing talent into its own organization. An internal recruiter job description can be quite different than the role of a recruiter at a staffing/recruiting agency; however, the levels of responsibility may be similar. Let’s compare the different roles.
Internal Recruiting / Talent Acquisition
Entry level recruiter job description: Sourcing, vetting, coordinating interviews, and submitting candidates to internal hiring managers for job opportunities available within the organization. No more than 0-2 years of experience are required for this job.
Senior recruiter job description: A senior recruiter might have anywhere from 4-7 years of experience in their craft. They usually don’t manage others but may act as a mentor or guide for junior recruiters in their department. Most senior recruiters can work independently but collaborate with other members of their team. They have perfected their full cycle recruiting process and are capable of higher volume work.
Contract Recruiting
Entry level recruiter job description: Responsible for sourcing, vetting, referring, interviewing, and placing active and passive candidates to job opportunities they have been assigned to fill for a client. Utilizes industry knowledge and understanding of the workforce climate to strategically build their talent pipeline. Maintains a pipeline of talent that can be leveraged as new orders come in from customers. No more than 0-2 years of experience are required for this job.
Senior recruiter job description: A senior recruiter might have anywhere from 4-7 years of experience in their craft. They usually don’t manage others but may act as a mentor or guide for junior recruiters in their department. Most senior recruiters can work independently but collaborate with other members of their team. They have perfected their full cycle recruiting process and are capable of higher volume work.
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Recruiting Connection to Talent Pool
One of the most important roles of a recruiter is pipeline management. The talent pipeline is the recruiter’s pool of candidates that are qualified, interested, and have potential to fill a role either now or at a future date. The recruiting connection to the current talent pool is essential in successfully filling opportunities. When recruiters are connected to their talent pool or pipeline, they can quickly recall candidates that would be the perfect fit for an opportunity when it comes.
It is advantageous for job seekers to connect with recruiters for these reasons. Job seekers usually start out applying for jobs on their own, only seeing opportunities that are posted. Candidates have better chances of getting a job through a recruiter. A job that they want. Recruiters have insight and knowledge of opportunities that sometimes never get posted. They also have special insight on what customers are looking for and can help guide candidates through their search for a new career or a different path.
The recruiting connection is a special asset for companies and candidates alike. A liaison between candidate and company can manage expectations on both ends and provide additional insight because of their experience with other job seekers and hiring managers.
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Recruiter Salary
Recruiting can be a very lucrative career path. It’s viewed as a form of sales; thus, it typically incentivizes production through a performance-based commission in addition to a base salary. But some companies do not offer a base salary. A professional recruiter salary has levels based on experience and industry, but overall, it is a promising career path and doesn’t always require a college degree. Below, you can see the compensation growth as experience and responsibility increase over time. The bonus target also increases with added responsibilities.
These salary averages are not specific to any one industry and may not reflect the wages of a specific geographic location.
Entry level corporate recruiter salary (average): $58,500 base salary
Bonus target: 5.6%
Average total cash compensation: $60,700
Years of experience: 0-2
Senior Recruiter Salary (average):
Bonus target: 8.5%
Average total cash compensation: $116,300
Years of experience: 4-7
Recruiting Manager Salary:
Bonus target: 13.1%
Average total cash compensation: $131,500
Years of experience: 5+ and 1-3 years of supervisory experience
As you can see, the salary for a recruiter with 2 years’ experience is quite different than that of a recruiting manager. Just 3 years more of experience can mean a lot more in compensation. Experience is worth much more than an undergraduate degree in human resources or sales when it comes to recruiting.
The salary averages provided above come from Salary.com’s CompAnalyst tool.
How to Become a Recruiter
As previously mentioned, recruiting doesn’t always require any type of degree. It may be advantageous to have an educational background in sales or human resources, but sales/recruiting techniques can be learned on the job. If you don’t have any experience or a background in sales, the most important qualities for success are a will to win and thick skin. Almost all other qualities of a good recruiter come with practice and proper training.
Experience in sales or any function of human resources might be a natural bridge into recruiting. Depending on unique experience and industry exposure, these qualifications are sometimes preferred to recruiting experience because the recruiter won’t start off with any bad habits or pre-conceived notions about the process.
There is no one path that tells you how to become a recruiter. It is up to you to decide what motivates you and excites you. If you are passionate enough, you will likely be successful. If you don’t have experience in recruiting or sales, the best way to get started is by searching for entry-level opportunities, preferably with smaller companies. They tend to be more flexible with educational requirements and experience.
Recruiting Agencies
Recruiters can be found in a lot of large companies that continually hire new talent, or you can find them at recruiting agencies (or staffing firms). Recruiting agencies offer the same benefits of any other third-party agency. They specialize in a particular skill or service and have invested in the best tools and resources available to succeed. Most companies cannot afford to invest equally in every aspect of their business, so they will outsource the parts that they are least skilled with. Talent acquisition is a popular one.
Recruiting agencies possess tools like LinkedIn Recruiter, job boards (Monster, CareerBuilder, ZipRecruiter, etc.), talent databases, and mass communication systems that give them power to reach people quickly and efficiently. The success of the recruiting agency is built on the assumption that it is more affordable to outsource hiring than it would be to acquire resources capable of mimicking what an agency can do.
Companies that do not outsource their recruiting are usually large companies that have in-house recruiters that focus solely on that: recruiting. Mid-size companies and smaller firms struggle to invest resources in internal recruiters or third-party agencies and suffer through the inefficiency of wearing too many hats at once.
Internal Recruiting / Talent Acquisition
Entry level recruiter job description: Sourcing, vetting, coordinating interviews, and submitting candidates to internal hiring managers for job opportunities available within the organization. No more than 0-2 years of experience are required for this job.
Senior recruiter job description: A senior recruiter might have anywhere from 4-7 years of experience in their craft. They usually don’t manage others but may act as a mentor or guide for junior recruiters in their department. Most senior recruiters can work independently but collaborate with other members of their team. They have perfected their full cycle recruiting process and are capable of higher volume work.
Contract Recruiting
Entry level recruiter job description: Responsible for sourcing, vetting, referring, interviewing, and placing active and passive candidates to job opportunities they have been assigned to fill for a client. Utilizes industry knowledge and understanding of the workforce climate to strategically build their talent pipeline. Maintains a pipeline of talent that can be leveraged as new orders come in from customers. No more than 0-2 years of experience are required for this job.
Senior recruiter job description: A senior recruiter might have anywhere from 4-7 years of experience in their craft. They usually don’t manage others but may act as a mentor or guide for junior recruiters in their department. Most senior recruiters can work independently but collaborate with other members of their team. They have perfected their full cycle recruiting process and are capable of higher volume work.
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