Aug 17, 2017
It’s all that you need..
5 years into recruitment and talent acquisition, I have been fortunate enough to meet few set of extra-ordinary people. I have met Mr. Shankar Gopalakrishnan, who taught me to basically “How to be a recruiter”? Why we should consider the role and job important and treat our self as important cog in the wheel. I am also quite lucky to meet my current Co-founders, Ashish Toshniwal and Sumit Mehra who always understand the importance of talent. For them, it’s talent and culture that builds a strong organisation.
I have been fortunate enough to learn these things but have noticed few things I had done wrong during early stages of my career, maybe this post will make few of you to realise this mistake earlier.
- You are as good as you think: All learning and talent stops here. The moment you think that you are too good to learn something new or the moment you think that what you know right now is enough, the growth stops. You stagnate and while you can give multiple reasons behind it. The most important factor will always be you.
- Believe the vision or change your job: For recruiters, it is most important to believe in your org’s vision. You maybe an agency recruiter or in some company but you must believe the vision of the organisation you represent. If you cannot do that believe me you will always do your job but never make a difference and neither will you stand out.
- Don’t possess a weapon, own the Arsenal: A recruiter uses multiple tool and as humans we tend to get bias towards few and start ignoring the other set. That is plain “WRONG”. You need to be good at everything, from job boards, angellist, Linkedin, X-raying, chrome extensions and even cold calling. These all weapons enable us to win the war and if ignore few, you are at loss.
- Believe in the difference you are making: People might not tell, people will never tell you but you have to believe in the difference you are making or the impact you are creating. Talk to Co-founders and you will come to know how difficult it is to hire and retain talent. More so if you have very less to offer apart from interesting work. Hiring right set of people takes more than an email and much more than a phone call, you don’t need to explain it to anyone but have a firm belief on what you do.
- Be better than Yesterday: Always try to be better than what you were yesterday. These can be small things but remember that, these small things make a big difference. Try to write a better email, try reading about technology trends, read/write blogs. Follow leaders who inspire you. But, always remember to do something you did not do yesterday and very soon you will notice the change it brings along.
- Do it for yourself, don’t fake it: This is most important thing to remember. Never fake it. The moment you start faking you will loose all the respect. Don’t know anything just be honest about it. If you are not working and decided to waste sometime so be it. The more you fake the harder it becomes to be credible. Always be honest with yourself and people around you.
Hope this piece helps all my fellow recruiters…
