The technical recruiter need not only to have the ability to realistically source, screen, and present qualified candidates but the confidence to communicate unrealistic technical requirements goals to hiring managers. This is the technical recruiter’s profile description.
Areas of responsibility for the technical recruiter include:
- Review. Successfully review job descriptions to understand the needs of the hiring manager as well as to ask questions that’ll help you identify the right candidate(s). This is by far the most important skill a technical recruiter needs.
- Understand technology, technical roles, and technical skills. Learn and evaluate your technical skills
- Identify. Sourcing and uncovering candidates
- Screen. Ascertaining the competence of candidates against a technical job description
- Interview. Meeting candidates in person, by telephone, or video conference, etc to assess their qualifications
- Following up. Keep your candidates in the loop. This goes a long way to build your credibility and keep your candidates either coming back to you or sending referrals to you. Read my article on following up with candidates and also why candidates are rude to their recruiters
- Present. Showing or offering candidate resumes to hiring managers to scrutinize or consider
The end result needs to be the presentation of employ-able and qualified candidates for technical positions in various industries and for job roles such as in software development, systems administration, database, architecture, business processes etc.
To carry out these tasks, the technical recruiter needs:
- Technology knowledge – Ability to understand the technology and to keep abreast of technology trends at the client company.
- Confidence – The ability to be comfortable with who one is. If you don’t know the know it, learn it and do not try to fake it. It may be off-putting to your candidate when you try to fake technical knowledge.
- Maturity – Recruiter level needs to equal to or above that of the candidate ( an example is a new recruiter with about 6 months experience trying to recruit a Director of IT). That being said, nothing is impossible. Technical knowledge, confidence, and maturity make up for the lack of specific recruiter experience.
- Inquisitiveness – Being able to ask questions of your sales/account managers (agency recruiters), clients (hiring managers), and your candidates
- Relationship Building – Start every conversation with the intent to build, develop and maintain relationships with your candidates.
To be effective, the Technical Recruiter should:
- Continue in an area of strength: An individual technical recruiter may work best when recruiting efforts are focused on job titles with similar levels and expertise. For instance, a technical recruiter who is comfortable with recruiting system administrators, desktop support engineers, and other job roles in similar categories may not be as effective if required to recruit at higher (lower) levels and job roles – this is often a requirement in technical recruiter job descriptions. Patience becomes a great virtue for a recruiter who after working with software developers for a number of years is now required to recruit desktop support engineers. This is in no way disparaging either the recruiter or the candidate but only highlights the fact that recruiters, just like any other working professional have areas of strength that should be harnessed.
- It takes time to learn and understand the lingo and requirements of different technical job roles in order to become effective. A technical recruiter familiar with candidates at a certain level may require meaningful on-the-job-training time to gain the confidence required to start recruiting senior-level IT professionals. The expectation that recruiters should be able to recruit candidates at all levels of IT is a recipe for failure. Technical recruiters may attempt to recruit at all levels, but may not produce great results. Some recruiters are better suited in entry-level jobs, others in consulting, others in business process systems, executive levels, etc.
Duties of the Technical Recruiter (for a Job Description)
The job of a technical recruiter is to be able to identify/screen/qualify candidates for IT positions; the recruiter also reviews, reformats, and presents resumes to hiring managers. These are some of the duties and requirements of a technical recruiter.
- Source, screen, interview, and evaluate candidates
- Foster long-term relationships with candidates
- Review and understand technical job requirement requirements
- Review applicants to verify if position requirements are met
- Format resumes meeting client expectations
- Research new technologies
- Create detailed job descriptions
- Follow up with candidates
Requirements for Technical Recruiting
- Ability to build strong relationships
- Ability to learn technical information
- Self-confidence and self-starter
- Office automation tools (MS Office etc) for proofreading, editing, and formatting
- Good written and verbal communication skills
