“You had me at hello”

Picture this.  

You’re sitting in front of your screen, the clock ticking and your fingers glued to your keyboard. You’re pressed for time, and you need to close a job opening in the next couple of days. You receive an email with a resume, a great cover letter, and from someone who perfectly matches your candidate skill score. A couple of calls, a thread of emails, and a bunch of interviews later, your candidate is ready to be on boarded in the shortest time possible.

And then you wake up from your dream.

Being a recruiter is no easy feat—breezy days are definitely a rarity. While hiring candidates quickly is critical, hiring candidates that stick around for a long time and become a great resource for a team is the ultimate dream. That’s possible when your team resonates and echoes your vision.

Hiring managers often get so tangled up in sourcing candidates, they perhaps spend less time on building a team that ensures all the processes—from attracting candidates to acquisition—run in a smooth, guided, and a foolproof manner. And that’s the secret of most successful companies.

Let’s look at a few common myths many recruiting teams believe when it comes to hiring for their own team.

Myth #1: Teams work better when they avoid conflict

Recruiters are sometimes forced to think that being a good team player starts with agreeing to a certain process, even if they have a better alternative. It’s assumed their opinions have to be put aside to ensure there is no space for conflict.

Truth: No process or strategy has ever been improvised without a series of well-thought-out tweaks or enhancements. Conflict, when essential, ensures teams communicate, discuss, deliberate, and debate all sides of a situation, increase communication and decide upon switching to the best option on the table. Hire someone who can add more value to what you’re doing and help improvise it.

Myth #2: You can be a recruiter only if you have a degree
Efficient recruiters can be hired only if they have pursued HR and have a strong academic background into the theory of recruitment.

Truth: Recruitment as a profession is all about instinct—the ability to judge a candidate and figure out if they are a match for your job. While academic qualification does cover the theoretical aspect of it, it doesn’t necessarily make you the best recruiter—only experience does. Hire someone who has an eye for quick decision-making and who ensures the time spent on recruiting every hire decreases gradually by the day.

Myth #3: Competition amongst the team helps increase productivity

Most hiring managers have seen success and increase in productivity when they incentivize the team for their work and create a little competition. Whether money, perks, or a promotion, internal competition goes a long way in making work progress faster.

Truth: While healthy competition is okay, sometimes it creates friction in the team. The focus drifts from finding good candidates quickly to who can find the best candidate the fastest. It becomes individual-focused instead of team-focused. For teams to work best, it’s important that the strengths of every team member come into play and add up to one complete team effort. Hire someone who would fit into your chaos perfectly well.

Your clients trust you with their most important resource, and this makes recruitment all the more serious. Having a team to support your vision of finding the best candidates and building great teams is all that matters.

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This is the last post of our special series focusing on hiring lessons essential for every recruiter. In our first post, we broke down the basics of effective recruitment. We then spoke about the art of team building in the second one. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading these. Keeping the tempo up, we have loads more updates and announcements coming, and we would love to keep you notified. Stay tuned with us.