Top 5 tips how to conduct effective negotiations in recruiting

Learn how to build communication with the client and the candidate effectively, using the example of Lucky Hunter cases.

Recruiting is one of those fields where you have to negotiate almost every day, and a lot depends on their result. Therefore, the ability to act as an excellent negotiator is more important here than ever :)

We have five tips for recruiters that will help build effective communication not only with candidates, but also with clients.

Put yourself in the place of the interlocutor

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It sounds very simple, but in fact this point often turns out to be one of the most difficult. Why does the ability to put yourself in someone else's place matter so much? When we understand what a person is guided by in their decisions, it becomes clear to us what arguments can be used and how to handle the objections correctly.

The recruiter, conducting negotiations with candidates and customers, plays the role of a sales manager and psychologist: it is important to present the vacancy correctly and put an emphasis on those aspects of it that will "ignite" the interest of a particular candidate. To do this, in turn, you need to understand their preferences, values, priorities and character — these points should not go against the proposed position.

Case: The ability to understand what are key values for a particular candidate and how to interest him in a vacancy helped us a lot during our search for machine learning team lead. We managed to fill the job opening quickly because our recruiter made a unique offer for each specialist with whom she negotiated about the vacancy. She studied carefully not only their CV, but also their personal information to make communication as productive as possible.

Show empathy and emotions

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Recruiting involves working with people, which means you can't do without emotions and different ways of their manifestation. Emotions are not always positive, and often this happens for reasons that a recruiter has no influence on.

Case: In our practice, there was a case when a recruiter offered a candidate who was suitable for all the requirements of the vacancy to try himself in the selection for a vacant position in one of the IT companies. The specialist, in turn, reacted very emotionally, saying that he had recently resigned from this company due to dissatisfaction with business processes and the team — his last place of work was not in his CV, so the recruiter did not know about this incident.

There are different situations and sometimes the key to success is to listen to the interlocutor and show that you understand them and sympathize with their problem. Of course, there are exceptional cases when your interlocutor is a contentious person, but usually the ability to show tact at the right moment will help to maintain good relations with a potential candidate or client, which will be useful in the future.

So, even if the candidate has a negative experience of communication with a particular company, you can contact them if you need a specialist of that field to another firm.

The ability to complete negotiations, though not reaching an agreement, will be a good foundation for the next meeting, which could end in "win-win" way: a recruiter, choosing the right strategy of communication with the candidate in the past, will fill a new job opening, and the candidate will be able to work in another company and receive positive experience.

Use the principle of partnership

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We often mention the principle of partnership, because we consider it to be really important in recruiting :)

Respect for the interlocutor and adequacy applies not only to working with clients, but also candidates. It is important to be able to listen to each other, discuss problems and be open to adequate dialogue.

Case: The principle of partnership helped us to find three QA for the St. Petersburg office of an American company. The task was complicated because of several difficulties - for example, the absence of a relocation package and remote work, preferred by most IT specialists nowadays, as well as the requirement of continuous experience at one place of work for at least 2 years.

However, we managed to negotiate with the customer and convince him to consider a candidate from the region: the customer listened to our advice, as a result he liked the suggested specialist very much and made him an offer. Also we were able to convince the candidate to move to Saint Petersburg using point 1 :) He dreamed of moving to his favorite city a lot, so after receiving the offer, he agreed even with the absence of a relocation package.

Increase the level of your expertise

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Deep knowledge of the IT market, important features of a particular vacancy, and other aspects increase the level of trust of a potential client who sees you as the expert. It will also help you feel confident in conducting negotiations, survive the client's questions and suggest a strategy that will be effective for solving specific problems of the customer, taking into account their objectives and goals.

Case: Most recently, we have filled the vacancy of a senior ASO specialist in an international startup in just a month. Our recruiter had a high level of expertise and knowledge of the IT market, so she determined that this profession appeared in the IT field not so long ago and many specialists simply did not have time to gain team leadership experience.

At the same time, only 30% of the specialist's future tasks involved team management — this helped us to build a strategy for further search. We convinced the client to consider candidates who did not have experience as a team lead, but at the same time their professional background was rich. The candidate who got the offer was interested in gaining new management experience, as well as solving problems on ASO optimization.

Know when to put a point

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This is also a useful skill that should not be underestimated, especially because it will help reduce stress a lot.

There are situations in which a recruiter is powerless, no matter how brilliant as a negotiator they may be: if the interlocutor is not ready for an adequate dialogue, likes conflicts and prefers to solve problems by giving names and emotional manipulation, it won't lead to any good results.

Even if this happens, a situation may occur that the effort spent on achieving these results will not be worth it.

Therefore, in order to protect yourself from communication that will potentially cause only harm, sometimes it makes sense to indicate your position politely and refuse from conducting further negotiations — this is quite a vital topic for recruiting, so we also devoted a separate article to it.

These life hacks are not a "universal pill", because each case is unique and the strategy of conducting negotiations depends on many factors. However we hope that our advice will still inspire you in further communication with clients and candidates, and also help you figure out several of the described points that can be used in your cases :)

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