Getting into recruitment can be a great option for your career. It can increase your salary, allow you opportunities to help people and otherwise aid your career. But how do you transition to be a recruiter? What are the steps you need to make before taking that leap? We explore in our guide explaining how do you transition to be a recruiter.
Set a plan
Like anything else in life, you will need a plan to move forward. You can create a timeline where you set out goals in order to figure out step by step how do you transition to be a recruiter. This will help you to organize your thoughts and structure for how you will make the transition, but it will also give you something concrete to work towards.
A great tip for setting goals is to be SMART about them. When you are thinking about how do you transition to be a recruiter, try and make your goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This will help you to set goals that you will stick to on the road to a career in recruitment.
Rework your resume
The first of those steps is to take another look at your CV. Any CV should be tailored to the job you want, emphasising relevant skills and omitting others that aren’t relevant to the job role or industry.
Think about the skills that can be transferred into a career in recruitment. For example, if you’ve had a lot of work in hospitality, you can take people skills and other soft skills from that industry and transfer them to a role in recruitment, and hard skills like handling money and managing a team can also be useful.
Strengthen any skills
When wondering how do you transition to be a recruiter, you will no doubt be wondering what skills it actually takes. Recruitment is ultimately about managing people and acting as a middleman between employer and employee, so it takes a lot of communication and organisational skills. Time management, relationship building, and attention to detail are all coveted soft skills. However, you might need to do some work to advance your hard skills, like critical thinking, social media use, research, and marketing skills.
There are a few ways you can go about strengthening these skills. You can reassess your current role and see if you can take in more responsibilities that are relevant to these particular skills or you can take on further education. Courses in human resources or communications is greatly appreciated in the recruitment industry.
Talk to industry peers
When asking “how do you transition to be a recruiter?” the most useful information is going to be from those who are already have. Consider talking to people who are already in the industry and ask what skills are most important to them, how they made the transition, etc.
Ask the management in your current role if they have a recruiter or recruitment agency they use. On the other hand, you can call up agencies and ask them how do you transition to be a recruiter?
Gain experience
There are a few ways you can go about gaining experience to transition into recruitment. Within your own current role, ask if you can be more involved in the hiring process. You don’t need to be making decisions, simply start writing job descriptions, look at CVs and put forward candidates.
For more substantial experience, you can look at entry-level opportunities to get out of the role you’re in and into recruitment. You’re likely to be handling administrative tasks such as reviewing CVs, scheduling interviews, typing offer letters, etc. and it’s a great way to get your foot on the first rung of the recruitment ladder.