Reason to become an executive recruiter #8: It’s challenging!
Previous posts in series:
- Reasons to become an executive recruiter: Introduction
- Reason to become an executive recruiter #1: You control your level of compensation
- Reason to become an executive recruiter #2: You always know your value to the company
- Reason to become an executive recruiter #3: You don’t have to be a road warrior
- Reason to become an executive recruiter #4: You can work reasonable hours
- Reason to become an executive recruiter #5: You can spend more time with your family
- Reason to become an executive recruiter #6: You can dress comfortably
- Reason to become an executive recruiter #7: It’s fun!
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The tagline of the board game Othello is, “A minute to learn… a lifetime to master!” Much the same thing can be said about being an executive recruiter. Learning to do the basics takes a month or two, but you never stop learning and growing. After all, even our founders and managing partners Dave and Jeff started Key Corporate Services to be a different kind of recruiting company, and their current challenge is to grow the firm and change the industry (which makes it a great time to join the team, but I digress…).
In my last post in the series, I provided a list of the tasks that we perform on a regular basis. Here it is again:
- Talking to hiring managers and seeing what kind of talent they need.
- Discussing with hiring managers the particulars of a position and helping them develop metrics to assess progress.
- Checking in with hiring managers to confirm their satisfaction with candidates we’ve introduced.
- Talking to candidates or potential candidates to see what kinds of jobs and career they’re interested in.
- Checking in with candidates (whether we’ve found their job or not) to see how they are doing and get their take on their industry.
- Keeping clients and candidates apprised about search progress.
- All of the above fall under “building relationships”–the most important thing we do.
- Looking at resumes, seeing who might be ideal for a job order.
- Conducting job interviews (particularly behavioral job interviews) and preparing the questions for these interviews.
Taking a look at these tasks will probably give you an idea of why it’s easy to start your career as an executive recruiter yet hard to achieve mastery right away. Aside from behavioral interviewing, which requires special training, none of these tasks is impossible for a beginner. In fact, if you like working with people, these will be fun things to do. Yet none of these tasks is particularly easy, either. It really is a perfect combination: you can be quite successful at the beginning of your career, yet there will always be more to learn.
How do things change over time?
- You connect and establish rapport with people more easily.
- You become more efficient with your phone conversations.
- You home in on the right candidates more quickly.
- Your “nose for need” improves, allowing you to find companies in need of talent more easily.
- Your network expands, and your use of your network becomes more skilled.
As you grow in your career, new challenges and new responsibilities appear–yet it even gets more fun over time!
If you are eager to hit the ground running yet need a challenge for the long term, then becoming an executive recruiter may be the right move for you!
Matt
The Key Corporate Services Blog Team
Handy guide to our blog post series