We can learn a lot about our own roles from our cross-departmental colleagues as well. I’m continuously shocked at how many recruiters ignore the lessons they can learn from sales, marketing, finance, etc. If you haven’t, take 5 minutes to ask someone in marketing to show you how to do data-capture on your applicants. You can track what boards (and jobs on those boards) people are applying from, who’s linking to your career site from those boards, where potential candidates click-through on your site, and on & on. Capture this data, and use something like Salesforce.com’s excellent new app Recruiting Manager to track this info. You can slice it & dice it to your heart’s content, dahboard it, etc. Great data to bring to your execs to back up new initiatives, and to glean ideas from for new directions for your department.

Also, if you’re not a writer, hit up marketing or product to take advantage of their skills in crafting your job ads. Your ad is, well, an _ad_. There needs to be an emotional connect with your audience – a laundry list of the things you ‘need’ just isn’t going to get you very far.