Goodfit

How to hire a Recruiter

Full-cycle recruiters own the whole hiring process. They source candidates, screen them, set up interviews, negotiate offers and close hires. They drive your talent acquisition team. They have a direct effect on how fast and how well you grow.

Screen Recruiter applicants
Recruiter

Free · Email code to start · Uses your mic · Up to 3 minutes

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What is a Recruiter?

A Recruiter finds candidates for open roles, wins their interest, assesses them and closes the hire. It starts with a proper brief from the hiring manager. Then come sourcing and outreach, screening and the shortlist. The recruiter runs the interview process and handles the offer and salary talks. They keep the candidate engaged until the first day. Recruiters are judged on hires made. But a big, often missed part of the job is guiding hiring managers on what to look for.

Also called
Talent Acquisition Specialist, Talent Partner, Headhunter (search)
Function
Talent acquisition
Level
Entry to senior individual contributor
Reports to
Talent Acquisition Manager or Head of TA, or an agency director
Measured on
Hires against plan, time to hire, offer acceptance, quality of hire, pipeline conversion
Next step
Senior Recruiter, TA Lead, Head of Talent Acquisition, or HRBP

The hiring challenge

Recruiters are often judged on fill rate. What matters more is quality: how many of their hires are still there after 90 days? Say a recruiter fills roles fast, but the hires leave in 3 months. That costs you more than an empty seat. So you need to test three things. Screening judgment: can they tell a strong candidate from a polished one? Closing skill: can they handle a competing offer? Pipeline discipline: do they keep their ATS up to date, or does everything live in their inbox?

What to look for in a Recruiter

Four traits matter. Sourcing creativity: do they only wait for job board replies? Or do they reach out, ask for referrals and build communities? Screening judgment: can they tell whether a candidate is worth the hiring manager's time? Candidate relationships: do candidates like working with them, even when the answer is no? Closing ability: can they handle salary talks, competing offers and candidates who hesitate?

Also look for comfort reaching out by phone and text. Many candidates reply faster to a call or text than to an email. Look for local market knowledge, since pay varies a lot between cities. And look for honesty about their own work. Ask about a hire that did not work out. Listen for whether they take responsibility.

How to structure the interview

A strong recruiter interview has three parts. First, a role walkthrough. Ask them to describe the hardest role they ever filled, from start to close. Listen for details on how they sourced, how they screened and how they worked with the hiring manager. Second, a closing roleplay. Tell them the candidate has a competing offer and ask them to close. Score them on empathy and persuasion. Pushy pressure is a bad sign. Showing the candidate what they gain is a good sign. Third, a quality check. Ask about a hire that did not work out. Good recruiters take some of the blame. They describe what they changed in how they screen.

Common mistakes when hiring Recruiters

Hiring for speed over quality. Say a recruiter fills 30 roles a quarter, but 40% of those hires leave early. That is not a strong recruiter. Ask how many of their hires stayed past 90 days. Fill rate alone does not tell you enough.

Not testing closing skills. Many recruiters are good at finding people but weak at closing. The closing roleplay shows whether they can handle salary talks and competing offers with grace.

Ignoring ATS discipline. A recruiter who does not keep clean pipeline data makes everyone else's job harder. Ask how they keep their ATS clean. If they have no process, that is a red flag.

Not checking how they work with hiring managers. Some recruiters cannot push back on unrealistic job requirements or timelines. They burn out or deliver poor results.

Key skills for a Recruiter

  • Sourcing (LinkedIn, outbound, referrals)
  • Screening calibration
  • Candidate relationship management
  • Closing and negotiation
  • ATS discipline
  • Hiring manager partnership
  • Market knowledge (salary benchmarks)
  • Phone, email and LinkedIn outreach

What a great interview looks like

Voice

"Tell me about a role you filled on a very tight deadline. How did you find people, and how many offers did you close?"

Roleplay

"The candidate has a competing offer that pays 10% more. Close them without matching the number."

Voice

"Tell me about a hire who did not work out in the first 90 days. What happened, and what did you change?"

Scenario

"A hiring manager gives you a job description with 15 "must-have" requirements. How do you handle it?"

Voice

"How do you keep your pipeline data up to date? Walk me through your process."

You can use these questions in Goodfit as they are, or edit the questions and the scoring for your team.

Recommended interview process

  1. 1

    Round 1: AI Voice Interview15 to 20 min

    A walk through a past role, how they source, and how well they judge candidates.

  2. 2

    Round 2: Closing Roleplay15 min

    A negotiation with a candidate who has a competing offer. Scored on empathy and persuasion.

  3. 3

    Round 3: TA Leader Interview30 min

    Team fit, pipeline discipline, and how they work with hiring managers.

In Goodfit, the AI interview runs the first round for every applicant. Skill tests, coding tests and roleplays can run in Goodfit too. Your team reads the scorecards and joins for the later conversations.

FAQ

Recruiter hiring questions

What does a recruiter do?
They own a set of open roles and must fill them well. They start with an intake talk to learn what the role really needs. They write a posting that attracts the right people. They go out and find candidates instead of waiting for applications. They screen people and build a shortlist. They set up interviews and keep the process moving. They collect feedback and question it when needed. They make and negotiate offers. Then they stay in touch until the start date so the hire does not drop out.
What is the difference between an in-house recruiter and an agency recruiter?
An in-house recruiter works for the employer and fills that company's roles. They are measured on hires, quality and cost. An agency recruiter works for a staffing firm and fills roles for many clients. They are usually paid a fee for each placement. That makes the job much more like sales, with winning new clients on top of recruiting. Agency recruiters tend to be faster and tougher. In-house recruiters tend to know the roles and the culture more deeply.
What is the difference between a recruiter and a headhunter?
Headhunting, or executive search, means reaching out to people who are not looking for a job. It is usually for senior or rare roles. It is usually retained search, which means the firm is paid upfront. A contingent firm is paid only when someone is hired. The work involves lots of research, needs discretion and moves slowly. It aims for a few highly qualified people instead of a big funnel. Recruiter is the wider title. It covers everything, including high-volume hiring, which works almost the opposite way.
What metrics is a recruiter measured on?
The main one is hires against plan. Others include time to fill and time to hire. Offer acceptance rate shows whether they set the right expectations. They also include conversion at each pipeline stage, which sources work best and candidate experience scores. Quality of hire is measured by early performance or how many hires leave in the first year. Speed alone is a dangerous target. The fastest way to fill a role is to lower the bar. You pay for that two quarters later.
What skills does a recruiter need?
First, intake skill. They must question a hiring manager's wish list and turn it into a realistic profile. Most bad hiring processes go wrong at this step. They need sourcing skill that goes beyond keyword searches. They need to assess people well, so the shortlist is truly filtered. They need to persuade, since the best candidates usually have choices. They need process discipline, because candidates drop out of slow processes. And they need to be honest, even when that means telling a hiring manager the role cannot be filled at that budget.
Is recruiting a sales job?
Partly, and more so at an agency. A recruiter sells the role to candidates. At an agency, they also sell the service to clients. Resilience and pipeline discipline are clear sales skills. The difference is that recruiting is a match between two sides, and you learn the result much later. A hire who fails at six months is a failure, even though the deal closed. Recruiters who treat the job as pure sales often have great fill rates and poor retention numbers.
What qualifications do you need to become a recruiter?
Very few formal ones. That is why many people start their careers in recruiting or switch into it. A graduate degree is typical. An HR qualification helps for in-house roles. Technical recruiters need enough subject knowledge to hold a believable talk with an engineer. What employers really look for is proof they can close. They also want someone who can explain a role well and judge candidate quality.
What interview questions should I ask a recruiter?
Play a hiring manager with an unrealistic brief and ask them to run an intake talk with you. Score whether they push back. Give a hard-to-fill role and ask how they would find people beyond job boards. Ask about a candidate who turned down an offer and what they would do differently. Ask how they would handle a hiring manager who rejects every shortlist without clear reasons. And ask them to sell your company to a candidate who already has an offer elsewhere.
How do you screen a large number of recruiters?
Recruiter resumes list placements without the context. You cannot see how hard the role was, what the market was like or how much help they had. So use a structured first round. Include a live intake talk and a pitch exercise, scored on the same rubric for everyone. This compares candidates on the two things that best predict success. Do they question a brief? Can they persuade? It also shows how they will present your company to candidates.

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