This is a question I ask myself almost daily at Recruiting Experiences. For those who don’t know, we are a small, startup recruiting firm. I started as a Recruiting Coordinator on May 16th, 2022. I quickly realized that everyone wears a leader hat depending on the topic. Every one of us can teach another person something about our work.
Being a leader requires a few key skills. Personally, I believe it requires kindness, simplicity, knowledge, communication skills, listening skills, ability to motivate people, creativity, integrity, and grit. Now we don’t have time to get into each of these, and some of them are self-explanatory, but I do want to touch on some of them.
A leader needs to be able to show kindness. How many times have you had someone teaching you something difficult and the person is getting frustrated because to them it’s easy? It happened a lot for me in school via peers, teachers, and administrators. Those interactions left me feeling either more confused or made me wish I had just gone without learning it, even though learning it helped me speed things up. A leader doesn’t act like that. A leader must be patient and kind through all interactions.
Simplicity and knowledge go hand in hand. Leadership doesn’t have to be difficult, if you know what you are talking about. Being able to simplify a topic that you are talking/teaching is vital. We do this as much as possible at work, it’s one of our core values. We help our clients simplify their interview processes to make it faster and more efficient for them and the candidates. Who wants to go through 10 interviews just to be told that they didn’t get the job. And what employer wants to have 5-6 people to interview 10 times. No one! Leaders can help simplify that down to 2-5 interviews instead of 10+.
June 1st, we had 4 new employees, and 5 interns started with us at RecEx. I saw the 6 “older” recruiters take on leadership of these newbies so fast. They jumped into teaching and helping the new team members learn how to be Recruiters and Sourcers.
I am in an interesting spot at Recruiting Experiences because I am the Business Operations Specialist, This is a fancy title for “wears a lot of hats”. Basically, I am trying to get the business to run more efficiently. Which means that I am constantly learning new technology and programs and deciding if it will help us move more efficiently. One of my professors made a claim during one of his lectures. He said, “In order to be an effective leader you must be a professional listener” This is a vital reminder for me when working. I have to listen for the needs of my team in order to find tools that will help and not just be another box to check. When I decide we should be using it, I put on the leadership hat and teach it to everyone.
Being a leader doesn’t come from having a super important title. It comes from wanting to help others and being someone who has knowledge and is willing to pass it on to others. Anyone can be a CEO, not everyone can be a leader.
