Again, great post.

Mining candidates is a skill the preceeds building the sales relationship. Just lile sales…If you can’t uncover a lead…you can’t sell anything. I will agree and strongly believe that mining the candidates is easier than building the relationships. I believe the sourcing/data mining skill set is the most critical. However, it is the least used. Recruiters today are still posting open reqs then reaching out to candidates when they should be sourcing based on knowing the business and required skill sets of commonly open positions.

During the candidate surplus, the great recruiters should be taking the time to get inside of their business leader’s heads, build partnerships and then move forward with mining, contacting and connecting with candidates.

Replacing the word he with they from the famous quote that Kevin Costner hears in the movie “Field of Dreams”, “If you build it, they will come” should be heard in recruiter’s heads. The “they” referring to our business leaders and hiring managers coming to us knowing that we will deliver top candidates due to our Level III skill sets.

First, I like the chart. I’d suggest that data mining, in and of itself, is not an example of an advanced skill for a recruiter. Any college kid can mine data. The ability to mine data is nowhere near as important as sales ability. To truly progress and be measurably better as a recruiter, one absolutely must be able to sell concepts and overcome objections.

I completely concur with your point #3, that great recruiters build relationships! However, your further examples of building those relationships were limited to the use of tools like twitter and blogging. The tools you referenced are merely potential avenues to lay a groundwork for or to do some low level maintenance on a relationship.

Truly great recruiters are outstanding in how they deal with real people, in live conversations, in real time.