Expertise, Empathy and Execution

Last year we posted a blog covering an interview we did with Rob Davidson, Founder and Director of Growth at Davidson Recruitment.  One of the questions we posed to him was; what is the impact of technology on the future of the recruitment industry?  Rob went on to talk about the challenge being that we have to learn to operate in a world where technology makes us more connected. To survive or indeed flourish we have to have valued relationships and we have to find ways to have candidate and client pools that are unique and loyal to us.  We have returned to this question again and explored it further asking Rob to expand on, in his opinion, the top three essential skills that we as recruiters need to survive the 21st century.

“There are only three traits to rule them all when it comes to surviving the future world of work, according to Rob Davidson and they are Expertise, Empathy and Execution.

For the foreseeable future, there will always be a role for good recruiters with highly developed interpersonal skills on the basis that humans will prefer to deal with a human over an algorithm, provided that person has certain attributes.

So how exactly do we build better humans with better skills to ensure they are not only successful, but sustainable recruiters for the future? The answer lies in these three attributes:

Expertise

Today, we are already seeing large employers building competent internal recruitment teams and offshoring the majority of their recruitment function, with online platforms such as LinkedIn making it easier for them to recruit themselves.  And this is only the beginning. It is for this reason, that agency recruiters must have genuine expertise if they are to survive.

The ultimate test is how your clients would feel if you weren’t around tomorrow.  Ask yourself, ‘if I ceased to exist tomorrow, would my clients and my candidates miss me, and, how long would it take them to replace me?’.  For most recruiters the answer is, ‘no’, and ‘not long.’ How then do we move to ‘yes’ and ‘quite some time?”

The test is simple – candidates will always want to deal with a recruiter who can confidently advise them where the best jobs in their industry are, what they pay, and who can get them an introduction to those employers.  Whereas clients want access to top talent they can’t source themselves. Both clients and candidates want to deal with recruiters who are specialists in their field and who can add genuine value.

The starting point is how do I develop the expertise to deliver this value to candidates and clients? It’s not easy, but gaining true expertise in any field takes time. Many researchers believe you need 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert.  To translate this into the recruitment world this equates to at least five years’ experience plus deliberate practice, i.e. constantly seeking and responding to feedback and engaging in a rigorous learning program.

Empathy

If there is one trait to rule them all in the 21st Century, it is empathy. So what is empathy and why is it so important? Empathy means having the ability to understand what another is thinking, how they are feeling and to make an appropriate response. The world’s leading organisation for teaching empathy, believe it or not, is the US army. The US army put a great deal of energy and time in to training their soldiers to understand what a potential enemy is thinking and how they are feeling so they can make an appropriate response. For a solider, it’s literally the difference between life and death.

So why is empathy critical for recruiters? Research suggests that empathy levels seem to be declining.  The tendency for people to communicate through technology has been suggested as a major contributing factor. By far the best way to build empathy and trust is in face-to-face communication. As technology continues to put up barriers to human interaction, the expert recruiters who make the effort to meet regularly with their clients in person will find it much easier to build loyal and lasting relationships. Empathy can be a major competitive advantage for a recruiter. It is more a skill than a trait and, like all skills, it can be improved with training. Even eight weeks of meditating regularly has been shown to significantly increase empathy.

Execution

Once you have used your empathy skills to develop strong, face-to-face relationships and your expertise to add value to your candidates and clients, there’s one remaining ‘E’ to master if you are to be successful and that is execution.  You’ve got to consistently deliver and that takes grit.

The reason is simple – an individual’s grit level will indicate how likely they are to have the tenacity to learn and improve themselves or to persevere when the things get tough. Researcher and author on what makes people successful, James Clear, suggests that intelligence accounts for only 30 per cent of most career achievement. The rest is a recipe of mental toughness and an ability to persist when others give up. This combination determines who will be successful in life.

Recruitment is no different; the most tenacious recruiters are often the best recruiters. The good news is that we can improve our inherent grit levels. A good starting point to build grit is a daily physical exercise routine. No matter how much technology seeks to disintermediate the recruitment industry there will always be a place for expert recruiters with highly developed empathetic relationships and who can execute their skills by consistently delivering for their clients and candidates.

And the good news is that these three skills are learnable. While they are difficult to master, they are no more so than the skills any other professional is expected to possess in the 21st century.

As our industry continues to move towards being seen as a genuine value-add professional service, recruiters must be prepared to apply the same rigorous professional development standards that apply to consultants in all other domains.

So what skills do you need to work on?

If you want to find out more about Rob Davidson and the wider Davidson Recruitment & Consultancy business. Please click the link below http://www.davidsonwp.com/