What qualities do we look for in a technical recruitment consultant? Whether you’re looking to hire a recruiter to work with your company, or if you want to become a recruiter yourself, here we share the top qualities our successful technical recruiters share.

Whether you’re looking to work with a technical recruitment consultant, or if you want to become one, here are the key qualities that successful technical recruiters share!

Get in touch with our team if you need support recruiting technical candidates. Or if you want to join the Energi dream team, send your CV and a cover letter to [email protected]

What makes a great technical recruitment consultant?

Here at Energi we like to think that our team of technical recruiters are not your stereotypical recruitment consultants. We focus on helping candidates progress in their career, and helping clients achieve their business objectives with a strategic approach to hiring. We’re in it for the long term, both with candidates and clients. So although recruitment is traditional a sales role, we’re not only driven by money and hitting targets.

The difference this makes is that we’re committed to finding the right people for the right role, and this reduces employee churn for our clients and helps our candidates find rewarding technical jobs.

Here’s what I believe are the most important attributes for a successful technical recruitment consultant:

Ability and desire to learn

It’s vital that our technical recruiters understand the fields they recruit for. They don’t have to come from a technical background themselves (although it can help), but they do need to be prepared to immerse themselves into the disciplines they recruit for.

With this understanding they’re in the best position to match candidates with the right job, based on aptitude and fit as well as skills, qualifications and experience.

Self-motivated and focused

Technical recruiters need to be driven and able to focus in a sometimes challenging environment. Recruitment is competitive, with many recruiters chasing both candidates and clients for work. And a busy recruitment agency is a bit like any other sales environment – noisy and high energy.

Recruiters therefore need to be strong minded and able to focus on what they’ve got to achieve; blocking out everyone else and also prepared to compete for the candidates and clients they want.

Resilience

Recruiters take knock-backs every day and no more so than in technical recruitment where a fluctuating market means dealing with highs and lows. That might mean not earning your commission when you have loads of candidates and no roles, so you need to be resilient and keep putting the work in.

Adaptable

New technologies have changed the recruitment sector and recruiters need to adapt. While many digital tools such as social media are second nature to young people joining the industry, older recruiters (and candidates and clients) need to embrace them too. AI is set to become the ‘next big thing’ in recruitment and HR, so technical recruiters need to be highly adaptable to changing ways of working as well as using more traditional methods (like getting on the phone).

Great communicators (and listeners)

Technical recruitment consultants need to talk a lot! It’s a job that involves relationship building – especially in agencies like Energi where our focus is on long term relationship with clients and candidates. As well as being good communicators, recruiters also need to be good at listening. It’s important to get an in depth understanding of what candidates and clients want and need so you can find candidates with a good fit to the job and company, so listening is a key skill to have.

Integrity

Recruitment should be a job that involves helping other people. Helping candidates progress their career, attain job satisfaction and get rewarded for their skills and expertise; helping clients achieve business objectives and build on their values and culture with the right hires. That requires recruitment consultants to be honest about the candidates and roles they have.

We don’t want recruiters to try to fit square pegs in round holes. Instead if they don’t have the right job for a candidate or the right candidate for a role, they need to go back out there to try harder and find the right match. While some recruiters (in other agencies) will try to sell a job or a candidate with the wrong fit, that’s not what we want at Energi. That’s because we want candidates and clients to work with us long term; to come back to us when they’re ready to take the next step in their career or to fill new roles when a client wins new business or expands.

If you think you have the right qualities to be a great technical recruitment consultant, please get in touch. Our team is growing so we would be interested in hearing from anyone who thinks they’re a good fit for Energi.

In the first instance, email [email protected] with your CV and covering letter telling us why we should meet you in person.