As a recruiter, it’s important for you to have an understanding of the skills your clients are looking for. These days, technology is becoming a bigger and bigger part of the business that companies do.
While a non-technical recruiter is not expected to be an expert on enterprise networks or large-scale technology installations, you should work at developing your understanding of technical skills.
Your enhanced knowledge will allow you to get more out of your HR software and find better matches for your clients.
Train With A Group
The tech experts at Stack Overflow suggest that recruiters who are trying to enhance their knowledge of technical fields should train as a group with members of other parts of the process.
In-house recruiters should train with technical hiring managers to gain an understanding of how technical positions affect the company's productivity, while independent recruiters can train with experts in technical fields to enhance their recruiting knowledge.
Break It Down By Departments
In any situation where a recruiter needs to understand a particular field better, it always helps to break down each department and gain a basic understanding of the role of each employee. For example, taking the time to get an overview of the role of each person in a network support group will help the recruiter to understand how the group works together and the importance of each person.
As a recruiter, your job is to match up potential employment candidates based on the needs of the company. By understanding the basic role of each person in a technical department, you can gain a better idea as to what kinds of qualifications each person should have and even what kinds of personalities work best in each position.
Become Familiar With The Language
Do you know what a technology stack is? Do you understand how it affects a company's network structure? To be a good recruiter, you do not need to be a technical expert. But you do need to be able to understand what your clients are telling you when they start to talk about employee qualifications. You do not need to be an expert in the language of the technical departments, but you do need to have more than a basic understanding of what the language means.
A good way to enhance your understanding of the language of technology is to simply do some research. You may find that your use of the terminology is a little confusing to technical department managers at first, but your ability to communicate with managers will improve over time.
Recognize Skill Sets
One task your HR software can help with when it comes to recruiting technical workers is matching the skill sets of candidates with the needs of the department manager. Once you gain an understanding of the roles in each group and are able to speak to the department manager on any sort of technical level, using your software to recognize pertinent skill sets should be easier.
The process of understanding the roles of each technical worker in a department helps to lay the foundation for recognizing skill sets. Once each role is better defined, than matching skill sets becomes a more refined and precise process.
Learn From The Process
A good recruiter is always prepared to learn from the process of finding and hiring good technical talent. As you conduct interviews, pay attention to the answers you get and use that information to formulate more precise questions in the future. As you discuss candidate requirements with the department manager, be sure to ask plenty of questions to help you better understand what the leadership team needs to be effective.
You should not let your lack of technical background prevent you from being able to recruit technical employment candidates. By working with various technical people and using the recruiting process to your advantage, you can gain the understanding you need to find the perfect candidates for your hiring managers.
It is important to remember that learning to understand technical skills is a process, and it does not happen overnight. You need to utilize the tools and resources available to you to enhance your understanding of technical roles within departments, and then develop your own working knowledge over time.
