Why Recruitment Research Officer is Important for Business | Required Skills

The recruitment officer intervenes on the upstream phases of a recruitment consultancy mission. It is responsible for identifying, contacting and pre-qualifying potential candidates. Recruitment officer or recruitment research officer is also known as HR Research Assistant, Head hunter, Recruitment Consultant, and Sourcing Manager, etc. Here the question is why recruitment officer is important for the business organization or why company hires recruitment officer.

Why Recruitment Officer Hired by Business

The recruitment officer is looking for the best match between the skills needs and the profiles of the candidates. He works either in a company or in a consulting firm.

Definition of the position and profile sought

• Analyze and synthesize the brief (document of collection of the need) written by the consultant and / or the client, to understand the stakes of the position.
• Emerging potential candidate profiles, proposing a sourcing strategy: announcement, media plan, direct approach …

Implementation of the sourcing strategy

• Identify the sourcing mediums most suited to the target.
• Writing and disseminating the communication (offer) on all media: cabinet website, social networks, general or specialized job sites, national or regional press.
• Look for suitable profiles in the available CVs (firm database, job sites, school directories or professionals).
• Identify the target companies that can host the profile sought and in their organization chart the profiles corresponding to the specifications defined with the client.

Approach and selection of potential candidates

• Select the applications received.
• To contact the potential candidates and validate their suitability to the defined profile: motivations, technical skills, salary pretensions …
• Chase the profiles identified within the target companies: presentation of the position, validation of the motivation, evaluation of the suitability to the profile, proposal of an interview within the firm.

Administrative monitoring and follow-up of the mission

• Make appointments for consultants.
• Reporting to the consultant and / or client on the progress of the assignment: production of progress reports, qualitative analysis of the candidates contacted, difficulties encountered …
• To constitute a pool of applications for the firm (databases).
• Ensuring, on all the media, an active watch allowing a permanent presence of the firm on the Internet and an economic watch on active clients, prospects, competition from the firm.
• Provide consultants with information that can be commercially exploited.

Possible Activities

The recruitment consultant may be required to travel in client with the consultant as part of the initial brief or intermediate reporting on the mission, in case of difficulties and exceeding the deadlines.
He can manage the relationship with the client by telephone on specific points: comments on the progress of the mission, organization of appointments between the client and the short-listed candidates …
It can create and distribute content on the Internet, manage and animate a community.
The recruitment research officer may participate in the evaluation interviews, in pairs with the consultant. He then has an observer role, the consultant ensuring the conduct of the interview.

Variability of Activities

In practice, we can distinguish several axes of variability.

• Indirect Approach / Direct Approach

Depending on the difficulty of the tasks handled, the recruitment research officer can pilot a mission essentially by indirect approach, that is to say based on the applications generated by different media. The profile selection dimension is more present.
Or it proceeds by direct approach that is to say by “chasing” executives who have not a priori shown interest in the position. This method is much more time-consuming; it takes a commercial approach: it must then sell the position to be recruited.

• Middle / top management cabinets

In a middle-top management-oriented firm, the activity is more quantitative (large volumes of CVs to be sorted, large databases) and, in most cases, limited to the perimeter La France. The research officer may, at his / her request, participate in the evaluation interviews with the consultant.

Within a firm specialized in executive search, the activity is very qualitative (few candidates) and more frequently international (imperative English). In this case, the recruitment officer is rarely involved in the interviews.

• Specialist / Generalist

According to the organization and the positioning of the firm, the recruitment research officer can be specialized on a sector of activity (public sectors, new technologies,), a function (commercial, computer,), or Being. In the latter case, the upstream phase of understanding customer needs and identifying target companies is longer.

In a company, this position is rather rare: it is, either attached to the HR development manager, or to a team dedicated to recruitment. Most managers / recruiters are responsible for their own sourcing.

Some sectors (high technology, temporary work, computer services, etc.) recruiting recurring profiles, the researcher ensures on the telephone the pre-selection of the candidates.

Some large companies may have a team of researchers.

Required Skills for Recruitment Research Officer

Technical Skills

• General knowledge of the organization and operation of a company: the researcher must easily identify the different types of organization chart.
• Good economic culture and knowledge of the sectors of activity, for which he recruits mainly (economic conjuncture, cultural specificities, main players,).
• Mastery of maintenance techniques, especially telephone, in order to quickly and appropriately evaluate the candidates contacted.
• Perfect knowledge of the jurisprudence surrounding the direct approach.
• Current practice of office tools, internet, sourcing, e-sourcing (including CVTs, social networks), CV management software and reporting.
• Fluency in English and, if possible, in another language.

Personality Traits

• Ability to listen, upstream to understand the challenges of the position to be filled, downstream when selecting candidates.
• Qualities of communication: oral expression must be excellent, both for the clarity of the information delivered and for the development of the image of the firm.
• Strong persuasion to attract candidates “chased” to the proposed position, but also, if necessary, to convince the senior consultant of the interest of an application.
• Flexibility and openness to keep abreast of developments in the market and current economic developments. Each new mission implies the discovery of a corporate culture, an organization.
• Perseverance and pugnacity: the missions handled can last several months (scarcity of the profile sought, location of the position unattractive …).
• Resistance to pressure (short-term results objectives, multiplicity of missions, strategic level of positions to be filled).
• Reactivity to imagine new ways of sourcing and convincing candidates.
• Meaning of the organization, to carry out several files in parallel.

Factors in the evolution of the profession of Recruitment Research Officer

With the arrival of Generation Y and Web 2.0 tools, the researcher must exploit a wide range of e-sourcing (job sites, social networks, mobile phones and tablets, smart phones). Its sourcing techniques gain in sophistication: search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), Bolean operators.

Anxious about the employer brand, he ensures communication by enhancing the image of his firm and his client. His business has a marketing sensitivity.

In some specialized firms, he must ensure the sourcing of international profiles and have multicultural and plurilinguistic knowledge (he practices minimal English).

In a context of strong competition in its market, it must have a commercial dimension to retain customers and detect business opportunities.

Finally, with the development of regulations (notably corporate social responsibility) and case law, it must respect in its professional practice a certain number of rules of ethics and ethics (respect for personal data, competition).

The certification specifically created for the recruitment consultancy activity, aims, within the certified practices, to guarantee the transparency of their methods of sourcing and evaluation of the candidates.