Recruitment Expert Interview Questions And Answers

Entry-level into Recruitment will be as a Resourcer/Researcher or as a Trainee Consultant. Training will vary between companies but all GGL clients have been picked because they offer excellent training programs. Many of our clients have achieved Investors in People status.

Most companies will initially give you a mix of on-the-job, internal and external training conducted by recruitment and industry specialists with the aim of arming you with the necessary tools and expertise to put you at the top of your game and ahead of your competitors.

Typically in the initial stages of your role, you will be more candidate focused and your role will be to generate candidates until you learn and become more comfortable in your sector. This is where your natural persuasion skills will come into play as you gain the candidates trust and exclusivity to use the services of yourself and your company only.

With this question, your interviewer is trying to find out whether you can focus on the needs of the employer without humiliating the candidate. You don't want to send the employer candidates who are clearly unsuitable, but you want to try to preserve the applicant's confidence, too. One way to answer that question is something like this: "I know this company pretty well, and I just don't think you'd be a good fit for each other. I'll look through all of our other open positions and see if there's a better match. In the meantime, you may want to consider doing X (something that provides either further credentials or additional experience)."

This is another question designed to learn more about both your technical competence and your overall suitability for the job. Do you know which questions to ask? Are you intimidated by interviewing someone for a job they already have? If you're nervous, how do you compensate? Your interviewer is looking for proof that you know the job, that you can think on your feet, and that you know how to handle yourself in high-pressure situations.

Recruitment is the process of identifying, screening and hiring the most suitable candidate for a job vacancy.
The candidate might be hired internally or from external sources
The process must be performed in timely and cost effective manner
It can also be termed as a process linking the employers and the employees

There can be various internal and external factors which affect the recruitment process.

Internal factors - The factors which are under the control of organization are called internal factors.

These could be -
i.) Recruitment policy of the organization
ii.) Human Resource Planning
iii.) Expansion plans
iv.) Cost of recruitment

External factors - These are the factors which are not under the control of the organization.

These could be -
i.) Availability of talent
ii.) Brand image of the organization
iii.) Politico-social environment
iv.) Legal conditions
v.) Economic condition of the market
vi.) Recruitment policy of the competitors

E-recruitment means using internet for the recruitment services.

Three main techniques used in e-recruitment are:
☛ Advertising on job portals
☛ Building a recruitment section on company's website.
☛ Screening the database of candidates on job portals

The advantages of e-recruitment are:
☛ Lower cost of advertising the job openings
☛ Helps in saving time
☛ Large pool of candidates to choose from
☛ Day in - day out access to the database
☛ Screening the database brings in only relevant candidates
☛ Paper less process - more organised

When there is a shortage of skills and talents at a particular geographical location, the company tries to hire people from other geographical locations. These people are called expats. Sometimes the companies require only expats for certain positions - depending on their recruitment strategy. While hiring expats it is important to judge following qualities in them:

☛ Professional qualifications and expertise
☛ Adaptability and Flexibility
☛ Cultural sensitivity
☛ Family conditions
☛ Open mindedness
☛ Any past international work experience
☛ Level of self-motivation

Recruitment Consultancy is a fantastically rewarding career both personally and financially but don't be under any illusion - it is not an easy ride!
You will get out as much as you put in and you will have a direct influence over your career progression and salary, not something a lot of industries can boast about, which will either excite or terrify you.

Recruitment is a targeted role. These targets may be daily, weekly and monthly and may consist of KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) and revenue generation targets (billings). These targets act as signposts to help you come to grips with the various tasks that make up your role and you will be monitored closely and given lots of support to ensure you achieve these. As you become more confident and have a better understanding of what the role entails, your targets will be more related to your Commission or Bonuses. Are you the sort of person who enjoys a challenge and will take advice from others on how to achieve your goals?

Days in Recruitment are long-the average consultant will work from 8.30am to 6.00/7ish depending on workload and determination to succeed. If you want to do well, you are likely to want to work long hours and put in the ground work for your success. It can be very satisfying working that little bit extra and seeing your pay packet grow as a result. Are you someone who really wants to make that commitment to your future career?

Managing the many components of the role can be demanding. There are a lot of areas to juggle with many things happening all at once. This in itself can be very stressful and tiring. Do you thrive on having many things to do at once?

There can be many ups and downs in the role. When things are going well and you are making placements and taking home good commission it can be the best job in the world. However, sometimes things will not go your way. Sometimes people may not take jobs at the last minute, or a client may decide not to recruit and you will feel frustrated. At times you may feel that you are not being successful when making New Business Sales call; you may speak to someone who is not receptive to what you had to say. You may feel at times that things are not going well. How resilient are you? Are you the sort of person who will look at how you could be better at your job, who will pick themselves up from being down and try even harder to get to where you want to be?

Other things to think about as you consider this Career Path are; How much do you enjoy persuading other people to do things you want them to? How confident are you? How do you get on with different groups of people? Are you happy talking at lots of different levels? Do you want to become an expert in a field of business? If so, what area?

This question is designed to test your suitability for the position. Your answer should focus on your desire to help both candidates and employers achieve success. You also want to illustrate your ability to sense which candidate would be a good fit for which employer. The wrong answer? "Well, I've been on a lot of interviews, so I thought I'd give it a try from the other side of the table."

The interviewer wants to see how self-aware you are. Don't use personal weaknesses such as 'I find it hard to get out of bed in the morning'. A weakness can also be a strength. Use a professional weakness such as lack of experience (training can always overcome that) or one that can be turned around into a strength such as 'I'm very focused on achieving targets at work, so sometimes people can think I'm ignoring them'.

The main components of a recruitment policy are:
☛ Terms of recruitment
☛ Sources of recruitment
☛ Using the services of placement agents
☛ Payment terms and conditions for placement agents
☛ Recruitment of contractual employees
☛ Obtaining requirements from departments
☛ Selection process
☛ Employment terms and conditions

The question looks for information on two fronts: How do you define difficult? and, what was your handling of the situation? You must have a story ready for this one in which the situation both was tough and allowed you to show yourself in a good light.

Avoid talking about problems that have to do with co-workers. You can talk about the difficult decision to fire someone, but emphasise that once you had examined the problem and reached a conclusion you acted quickly and professionally, with the best interests of the company at heart.

"What are some of the things that bother you?" "What are your pet hates?" "Tell me about the last time you felt anger on the job." These questions are so similar that they can be treated as one. It is tremendously important that you show you can remain calm. Most of us have seen a colleague lose his or her cool on occasion - not a pretty sight and one that every sensible employer wants to avoid.

This question comes up more and more often the higher up the corporate ladder you climb, and the more frequent your contact with clients and the general public. To answer it, find something that angers conscientious workers. "I enjoy my work and believe in giving value to my employer. Dealing with clock-watchers and the ones who regularly get sick on Mondays and Fridays really bothers me, but it's not something that gets me angry or anything like that." An answer of this nature will help you much more than the kind given by a California engineer, who went on for some minutes about how he hated the small-mindedness of people who don't like pet rabbits in the office.

Your interviewer wants to know that you've actually done the job and are able to handle any bumps in the road. You should be ready to talk about a less-than-ideal job that you were able to sell to a candidate by focusing on the (truthful!) positives.

Avoid being negative about your current employer. Instead think about how the role you are interviewing for will offer you something which your current role does not. This could include more money, long term career development, working in a bigger team, being involved at an earlier stage of a company's growth, gaining an opportunity to take on management responsibilities, working in a new sector etc...

There can be two kinds of sources of recruitment for organizations - Internal and External.

☛ Internal recruitment - It means getting the candidate from within the organization to fulfil a vacancy. Internal recruitment can be done by:
► Transfer - transferring an employee from one location/ department to other.
► Promotion - Taking the employee higher up in the hierarchy
► Ex-employees - These could be the retired or retrenched employees
► Demotion - Lowering the position of an employee in the hierarchy for various reasons

☛ External recruitment - It means getting the absolutely new candidate to the company. The sources of these employees could be many:
► Job notifications in the print/ online media
► College campuses
► Placement agents
► Unsolicited applicants
► Employee referral program
► Employment exchange
► Labour contractors

If a company decides to outsource its recruitment activities, it looks for a consultant to do this job. Following are the important qualities, a company should look for in the consultant before hiring them -

☛ Experience and expertise in the sector
☛ Resources they possess
☛ Achievements in the last projects
☛ Flexibility and adaptability
☛ Result orientation

This is a nice question to allow interviewees to describe their likes and hobbies for the interviewer to decide if you will fit the culture of the company. Mentioning upskilling to a company who put emphasis on training and development or stating your fondness for team sport to a highly motivated sales team can be the icing on the cake but to understand what answer to give you must listen to the interviewer's description of the company and try and relate your interests to the role advertised.

Recruitment Consultancy is a growing and competitive industry. As a result, it gives you the opportunity to work within a very social environment with like-minded, driven and confident individuals. As most of your salary will be based around very generous, uncapped-commission schemes there tends to be a direct correlation between the amount of work that you put in and the size of your pay cheque. Such a meritocracy means that those who are willing to put in the most work will be rewarded with both a higher salary and also a faster-route to promotion!

All managers and directors started as trainees and simply worked their way up. The companies we work with have strong positive promotion cultures where they recruit a pool of graduate talent with a view to fast tracking trainees to positions of responsibility.

Recruitment offers the opportunity to learn both invaluable transferable skills and in-depth industry knowledge. You are likely to be working in a niche sector where you will come to understand the complexities and dynamics of particular markets whilst working with industry high-fliers. On that basis, you become a very valuable resource to your clients-you are a person in the know! The days are long but it is so fast-paced that the day goes in a blink of an eye. Finally, and probably most importantly, it offers you the opportunity to earn an incredible amount of money within a very short period of time!

The important thing to remember is that the client is the one who foots the bill. You never want to demoralize an applicant, but you can't waste the client's time by sending them candidates you know you wouldn't hire yourself. So this question is designed to determine whether you can diplomatically turn down an unsuitable candidate. There are several ways you can answer this question, but a solid standby is always, "We don't have anything that's a good fit right now, but we'll hang on to your resume and give you a call as soon as something pops up."

The purpose of recruitment is to:
☛ Attract the maximum number of candidates to the organization and encourage them to apply
☛ Create strong database and select the best candidate for the position
☛ Ascertain the current and future manpower requirements of the organization
☛ Make the hiring exercise a cost effective one

Importance of recruitment is:
☛ To identify the potential candidates within the organization for future man power requirements
☛ To identify the outside candidates and hire them to meet the man power requirements
☛ To establish various sources of candidates
☛ To help in increasing the success of hiring process

Many organizations outsource their recruitment services to the placement agencies. The main advantages of doing so are as follows:

☛ It allows the organizations to focus on core and strategic activities
☛ It leads to optimal use of resources and time
☛ It provides access to the expertise of the placement agents
☛ Reduction in recruitment cost

Major challenges a recruiter faces are:

☛ Lack of candidates in some particular domain
☛ Changing trends of the market
☛ Lack of self motivation
☛ Lack of agility in the process
☛ Lack of job prioritization
☛ Lack of proper job analysis

The safest answer contains a desire to be regarded as a true professional and team player. As far as promotion, that depends on finding a manager with whom you can grow. Of course, you will ask what opportunities exist within the company before being any more specific: "From my research and what you have told me about the growth here, it seems operations is where the heavy emphasis is going to be. It seems that's where you need the effort and where I could contribute toward the company's goals." Or, "I have always felt that first-hand knowledge and experience open up opportunities that one might never have considered, so while at this point in time I plan to be a part of [e.g.] operations, it is reasonable to expect that other exciting opportunities will crop up in the meantime."

Recruitment is a dual selling process. At all stages, it is your responsibility as a Recruitment Consultant to control the sales process for your candidates and clients, ensuring that you are making placements and earning yourself some good commission in the process!

There are many steps in the Recruitment process. These are outlined in brief below:
Initially in recruitment, the role is mostly phone based while you build your business generating clients and candidates through
☛ Cold calling businesses to win their business
☛ Generating candidates through networking, referrals, database searching, head hunting and lead generation.
This phone work is particularly important because as the industry moves at such a pace, the majority of your business will be carried out over the phone with some face-to-face client meetings and both internal and external candidate meetings.

You will be constantly gathering information by asking open questions to find out your client and candidate needs, matching the requirements, interviewing on the phone and face to face, arranging interviews, helping prepare and taking feedback from clients and candidates, managing offers and generally ensuring that the process runs smoothly for all parties!

The interviewer wants to know if you can transfer the things you've learned from being a recruiter to your position as a candidate. What recruiter competencies make you shine as a candidate? Conversely, what's completely different about being the candidate instead of the recruiter? Any answer that illustrates a realistic understanding of the recruitment and hiring process should be just fine. This question is just another way of making sure you know what you're doing.