Throughout my recruitment career, I've often been told, "You don't need a background in IT to be an IT Recruiter."
Yet, when I was hired as an IT Recruiter by TRC in 2008, one of the main reasons was that I had previously worked in IT. The perception was that this would help with business development.
The truth is, telling people I used to work in IT had very little impact on BD and still does unless you can explain why that makes a difference.
The main difference comes at the beginning and the end of the recruitment process.
In the beginning, it is about understanding the requirements, whilst towards the end, it's assessing and evaluating the candidate's level of skills and suitability.
While having a background in IT can be advantageous during the search, essentially, any good recruiter can achieve comparable results.
Having a better, fuller understanding of requirements upfront will help you better position the opportunity, find the right candidate(s) quicker, and sell the opportunity to the right candidates.
Having IT knowledge will help you qualify the candidate's depth of skills and experience and will save the hiring manager time reviewing and interviewing candidates.
So, yes, it's absolutely correct, "You don't need a background in IT to be an IT Recruiter." But there are some significant advantages if you do.
There is significantly less time wasted for candidates and hiring managers by getting the right fit and less re-work.
At +People, we have knowledge in the following areas from current and ex-IT professionals,
- Software Development & Testing
- Software Design and Architecture
- Web Development
- API Development
- Cloud
- DevOps, CI/CD
- IT Infrastructure
- ITSM
- Project Management
#itrecruitment #itskills #efficient