Recruiters need to get soft (skills)

Like most Bloggers, my inspirations come from three places: My gut, my Frustrations or a conversation I have during the day. Over the past 5 years I’ve bought into the world of social media and leveraging technology to recruit. I’m like you, I love to spend time on podcasts and video, chat and twitter, but when does all of this become too much?

We all talk about strategy and web 2.0, social recruiting and mobile recruiting, Cloud Recruiting and Whatever I can do to not realize that it all comes back to my grass roots recruiting. Today’s post comes with a bit of frustration towards a conversation I had early today with a colleague. Before any rumors get started, he and I are on the same page and share the same view. We were speaking about the recent article written by Kevin Wheeler and posted on ERE.

Kevin says that “Being a modern recruiter is, in some ways, easy. It’s about treating candidates as you would like to be treated. It’s about knowing who you are and what you believe so that you can quickly know when the direction you are headed is wrong.” This is where the frustration comes in. Not with Kevin because I happen to full heartedly agree with him. “It’s about knowing who you are and what you believe so that you can quickly know when the direction you are headed is wrong” I find that most recruiters today, simply lack this skill. They talk about transparency and authenticity, but there is really no substance behind their motivations. It frustrating to me because I see too many “social only” recruiters with no plan that rely solely technology to find candidates but in the end simply cannot close the deal.

The fact is that we are in the information gathering business. Our business requires us to posses a uniquely weird DNA that most people do not have. We’ve got to be social (in real life), we make friends for a living. So where did all of the “soft skills” go? We are challenged with uncovering some of the most incredibly hidden pieces of information, connecting with the source of that information and ultimately convert this information or prospect to a candidate and eventually a hire. The job is incredibly energizing to me, but it leaves me to wonder, if we took away tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook how would we recruit?

By the way, Kevin Spacey is on Jay Leno right now and he is sending a Tweet live telling everyone that he is talking to Jay Leno…Coincidence? Maybe Twitter is the new soft skill we need.

Connect with me @ryanleary or at CruiterTalk.com

By Noel Cocca

CEO/Founder RecruitingDaily and avid skier, coach and avid father of two trying to keep up with my altruistic wife. Producing at the sweet spot talent acquisition to create great content for the living breathing human beings in recruiting and hiring. I try to ease the biggest to smallest problems from start-ups to enterprise. Founder of RecruitingDaily and our merry band of rabble-rousers.