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Recruitment

Assessing Recruiters for Grit

By September 14, 2017No Comments

Hello Friday Whiteboard readers.  Today’s blog has already been written, about a topic you might naturally expect me to be commenting upon, but due to some technical issues it has been a little bit delayed.

I will post the blog once we have been given the all clear on the technical issues causing the delay, which will hopefully be later on today…

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In the meantime I should take this opportunity to thank Talegent for putting on a very interesting breakfast presentation this morning about how recruiters and HR departments can leverage the latest predictive measures to assess candidates.

Lots was said about the here and now of gamification to reduce jobseeker drop off rates when applying for jobs and undertaking psych assessments, as well as the future which will involve immersive augmented reality, virtual reality and the good old AI of course… But what I was particularly taken by was a new trend for assessing candidates for grit.

I like the notion of grit as an important trait in recruiters.  We’ve always heard about the importance of EQ in recruiters, the requirement for sales ability, and the need for resilience. But grit seems, to me, to be a nice word to sum up all of those things that should make a good recruiter.

John Austin from Talegent recommended a book by Angela Duckworth called Grit – The Power of Passion and Perseverance.

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“Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day-in, day-out. Not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years. And working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.” – Angela Duckworth

Sounds a lot to me like working and building up a recruitment desk in the modern market. So we will be assessing our recruiter candidates for grit from now on, and I suggest you do too.

Jonathan Rice

MD at New Zealand rec-to-rec firm Rice Consulting and co-founder of on-demand recruiter offering Joyn. Recruitment agitator and frustrated idealist, father of two, husband of one, and lover of all things Arsenal and crafty beer.