The roles of the IT Recruiter and the Technical Recruiter respond to the need of highly-talented professionals in particular fields and record time.
As constant change and new technologies are the order of the day, the demand for highly-skilled recruitment professionals is higher than ever. Building a robust workforce ready-to-cope with various tech stacks, time zones, and cultural backgrounds is becoming a must for every organization.
Side by side with these changes, we find IT Recruitment Agencies- devoted to sourcing and hiring IT talent- and more highly specialized profiles.
What is a recruiter?
A recruiter is a person who sources and finds qualified candidates to fill job positions. Throughout the hiring process, a recruiter aims to meet the employer’s demands and help people find jobs.
Most often than not, recruiters perform an end-to-end process: they must meet with the hiring manager once the job opens. After getting a deep understanding of the complex and soft skills required for the position, the recruiter will manage the job offer and devote plenty of time to attracting and sourcing candidates. Once pre-screening and shortlisting the most promising ones, recruiters will present the qualified job candidates to the hiring manager. As for candidates, a recruiter will be concerned with delivering an excellent experience.
Many recruiters even participate in the onboarding process and ensure everything is polished for the new employee to begin to work. An in-house recruiter may also serve as the employer’s brand ambassador, asking for employee referrals -internally and externally- and continuously trying to broaden the talent pool through networking.
To understand what is a recruiter, you must also consider that:
- Internal Recruiters work for one sole company (in-house) to help with the new employees’ hiring process.
- External Recruiters may work independently or at staffing or IT Recruitment Agencies. They aim to find the best candidates to fill their clients’ open positions according to specific requirements.
What skills do you need to be an IT recruiter?
Among the skills that you need to work as a recruiter, but especially if you desire to work in IT or technical recruiting, we find:
Educational background
Most employers prefer recruiters who have a Bachelor’s Degree in Human Resources. But you will also fit well if you hold a degree in another field such as Psychology, Sociology, Marketing, Business Management, and even Science.
Marketing and communication
These are primary skills needed to be a recruiter. Written and oral communication skills are a vital strength. As a recruiter, you will need to craft compelling job posts and ads and keep potential clients and candidates engaged. Oral skills allow recruiters to express themselves more richly and help candidates bring out the best of themselves during an interview.
Recruiters also have to speak to large audiences in job fairs or Campus events. In a way, recruitment is all about selling jobs: networking, attracting, and nurturing promising prospects while engaging them across the hiring process. When recruiters make job offers, negotiation skills are also essential to bridge gaps. In a few words, a recruiter is the face of the employer’s brand.
Attention to detail
Remembering every detail (and taking note of them, if you are not the kind of elephant’s memory) is one crucial skill for recruiters. In a hiring process, you need to keep in mind the candidates you talked to, their willingness to change jobs, and their expectations.
Time-management and multitasking
A hiring process tends to be long and requires performing many tasks. Recruiters need to organize their time to write job postings, screen applicants, conduct interviews, and write reports. Background checks on candidates may also be among their duties. Good command of tech tools is always valuable and helpful.
Body-language skills and being a good listener
On the one hand, recruiters need to have a body language that invites candidates to open and talk about themselves. Simultaneously, they must be good listeners and pay full attention to both candidates and clients or hiring managers to understand the position requirements and how the process moves on.
Teambuilding
Recruiters always need to rely on a team and work with peers to ensure good practices and smooth hiring processes. If you also have some experience working with distributed teams, that’s a big plus. Nowadays, most recruiting teams gather people from different cultural backgrounds, languages, time zones, and beliefs. Also, they look for candidates worldwide.
Fast-learners and tech-savvy
Another essential skill you need to be a recruiter is to learn new things and use technologies. We find Cloud suites, Applicant Tracking Systems, recruitment software, calendar apps, Canva, Boolean searches, and many others among the tools used. Furthermore, experience with CRM or Marketing tools is highly desirable.
What other skills do you need to be a recruiter? Patience and resilience are more than desirable, even though they are more traits of personality than skills. Working in recruitment entails coping with frustrations and sometimes receiving negative responses. Therefore, you are expected to be flexible and readapt the communication style and methods for better outreach.
The rising of IT Recruiting Firms and roles
While there are general recruiters who may hire an extensive list of profiles, others focus on specific roles, fields, or industries. Such is the case of IT Recruiting firms that help start-ups, SMEs, and big companies find the best technology people. This kind of staffing agency excels in connecting the best IT talent to organizations.
IT recruiters help organizations find talent for Information Technology positions. Sometimes they work as contractors and look for prospective employees for organizations. Still, they can also join an in-house Talent Acquisition team or a Recruiting Firm.
A broad set of profiles, programming languages, frameworks, coding libraries, and platforms are notions an IT recruiter should be familiar with. The same applies to specific certifications commonly expected for certain roles. Though they rarely code, they must catch-up on the market’s latest tech trends.
Part of an IT recruiter’s weekly routine is growing a network of potential candidates that would be an excellent fit for current or future job positions. When it comes to IT, the talent sources are vast and are not limited to LinkedIn. IT recruiters will dive into Github to check developers’ repositories and coding skills. On Stackoverflow, they may get an insight into how peers view prospective employees’ code. There are Meetups, Facebook groups, and Twitter communities for almost every programming language and framework. Joining in the conversations, taking part in conferences, and Bootcamps can help meet and engage tech people and increase an IT Recruitment Agency brand awareness.
Technical recruiters are highly specialized professionals who have acquired enough experience and knowledge to understand the industry, roles, and specific terminology associated with them. A Technical recruiter has a more strategic approach towards top technical talent. The talent pool a Technical recruiter deals with is not limited to developers but also consider engineering, telecommunication, technical, and chemistry roles within particular sectors or industries.
A Technical recruiter spends much time crafting strategies and finding new sources to reach top talent. Assessing candidates through interviews before presenting them to the hiring manager is another duty typically assigned to this role.
Estimates for an IT Recruiter salary
What is the average salary for the IT recruiting field? We must say it varies greatly depending on the company, State, and city. For example, according to Glassdoor, the average annual salary for a Technical Recruiter in the United States is about $50,000. Still, it can reach $127,000 if you work at Facebook offices in New York, or $138,500 if you are in Austin. Moreover, bonuses and commissions may add a plus of about $20,000 to your annual salary.
An IT Recruiter Salary can be relatively lower, with an annual minimum of about $30,000. Still, it can reach $50,000 or even $83,000 if you are in Austin, Texas.
Whether independent, in-house, or working at Recruiting Firms, Technical Recruiters and IT recruiters need to be tech-savvy and show outstanding communication skills to reach and engage top talent.
For more related information, we highly recommend taking a look at our RPO and Tech Talent Pipeline pages. Many successes!
