It's a profession with limited barriers to entry and literally a million agency/corporate positions available.

It's a profession where the hardest workers and the most entrepreneurial usually get the best results.

It's a profession looked at with disdain by many candidates who are sick of hearing from members of said profession.

SO - Anyone can be a recruiter, right?

I bring this up for the following reasons.  I'm just coming off a couple of days at Recruiter Nation Live 2017, a conference put on by the good folks at Jobvite.  Great show and good people, glad I went.

Speaking of good people - I heard no less than three times - in different ways - people talking about the fact they had told friends, family members and complete strangers that they should get into the recruiting game.  The common factor in all of this advice was that anyone could be a recruiter.

Career a little slow?  Not finding the right path for you?  Just got out of prison?

You should be a recruiter. Seems like anyone can do it.

My favorite story was one where a guy was in an Uber and struck up a conversation with the driver, and ended up giving him the advice to become a recruiter.  The guy messaged him two weeks later and told my friend that he landed his first recruiting job - at a place I'll call TereoTech - which means he'll either be unemployed in a month or become one of the greatest recruiters of all time - because that's what TereoTech does.

Which is the point of this post.  Yeah friends, anyone can probably be a recruiter.  Present yourself in the right way and appear scrappy as a youngster, and you can probably find a job.  If you're older, you can parlay your subject matter/functional area expertise into a gig recruiting people who do what you've done in the past.  We call that a specialty recruiter in the biz, and your experience in any specialty probably can give you a shot as a recruiter.

A lot of people can get a job as a recruiter.  

But just because you can get the job doesn't mean you'll be successful, or even like it. What dictates whether someone can actually do the job of a recruiter?

Recruiting in it's purest form is sales.  Behavioral traits that equate into success for recruiters are as follows:

High Assertiveness - you're going to have to ask for things without shame.

Low or mid-range Sensitivity - rejection is a part of the gig.  If you're a diva every time you get rejected, it's probably not going to work.

Low Team - doesn't mean you're a bad teammate.  The low Team designation simply means you're driven for high performance via individual scoreboards - you like to win. YOU, not us.  Us is nice.  But unless you're motivated by seeing your name at the top of a list, you probably won't be satisfied.

There's more, but I'll stop there.  The same things that make a great salesperson also make for a great recruiter.

Lots of people can get a recruiting job.  Few can be good to great at it.  

Shout out to the Uber driver now at TereoTech - you'll know whether it's for you if you can tolerate the good folks at TT requiring you to make 120 calls a day and the rejection that comes with that.

Get a year in at TereoTech and then give me a call - we've got a great team you'll love at Kinetix one you figure out it's for you.