T.E.A.M.

People Science Reimagining Talent Acquisition

T.E.A.M.: Together Everyone Achieves More. It’s always true, even when everyone brings with them differing skill sets, personalities and levels of experience.

The challenge? Bringing together a group of individuals to create a cohesive unit.

When I began my career as a recruiter, each team within the office had already been working together for a while. They knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and when it came to finding the ideal candidate for a given position, that familiarity allowed them to be super-efficient. While that was certainly a good thing, it did add a new dimension of difficulty to my world. Not only did I have to learn how to be a recruiter, but I also had to learn to become a productive member of a team.

It wasn’t easy, at least not in the beginning.

One thing I had on my side was the experience of working as a sales rep. I knew how to work well under pressure to achieve my goals and that proved to be invaluable with the recruiting piece of my job. The more challenging piece was getting to know my co-workers.

One of the first conversations I had with my co-workers was about my past experience in sales. I remember being surprised (and comforted) that they came from a wide variety of backgrounds. This conversation helped them get to know my strengths and weaknesses right off the bat, making it faster and easier for me to orient to a team. At least two of them had been recruiting for a long time, and they helped me get caught up on crucial information about the client we were working with and clued me in to some good habits to establish early. We discovered together that with my sales background, I was able to recruit at a fast pace and overcome objections. Some of my teammates were great at sourcing; others were especially proficient at communicating with our client’s managers. Over time, we began to support one another, filling in the gaps and filling out a well-oiled recruiting team. It allowed us not only to achieve our established goals, but often surpass them.

It kind of makes me wonder why so many people choose to go it alone.

While everyone has their own skill set, personality, and experience level, Together Everyone Achieves More, but the challenge is how do you bring together a group of individuals to create a cohesive unit.  Since I began my career as a recruiter each team within the office had already been working together for quite a while everyone knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, which helped them work efficiently in order to achieve their goals of finding the ideal candidate for each position that needed to be filled. Once I was assigned to one of the teams my hurdle was how I learn how to be a recruiter while figuring out the best way to be productive member of the team. Well to be honest it wasn’t easy in the beginning, from my past experience as a sales representative I knew how to work well under pressure to achieve my goals, which helped with the recruiting now the next step was to learn more about my coworkers.

An easy way to learn more about everyone else and have them learn more about you is to find out what do you have in common it doesn’t necessarily have to be related to your professional life. Keeping it casual can be useful with breaking the ice since you are new and they don’t know much about you other than their manager telling them someone knew will be starting Monday.  Once I got past that point I was able to tell them about my past experience and why I decided to become a recruiter what surprised me was the other people on my team came from such a wide variety of backgrounds. As I mentioned before the established teams knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses now it was our turn to do the same except with one difference I was new to recruiting.

Presenting us with some obstacles to overcome fortunately there were at least two individuals who have been recruiting for a long time so I was able to get caught up on crucial information about the client we were working with as well as some good habits to get into early. We then figured out that with my sales background I was able to recruit at a high pace and overcome objections in addition I am extremely organized helping with being as efficient as I can be each day. Some of my teammates were great at sourcing; others were able to proficiently communicate with the managers of our client, etc…. Over time we began to support one another and fill in the gaps allowing us to achieve our established goals and at times surpass the goals given to us.

Over the past year I have learned so much not only about recruiting, but also myself and what I can achieve when I am a part of a TEAM. I have learned that trust is key, an open line of communication is useful, and working together not against each other will only increase the chances of achieving more.

By Vincent Buontempo | People Science Talent Advisor II

Comments

Join the discussion, leave a reply.

Don't worry, your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked: *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.