I am no recruitment expert, and I want you to know this before you go ahead and invest your time in reading this. Here’s why I, a marketer, am writing this.

I spent the last year working with top entrepreneurial recruiters.

I have spent the last year at Crowdstaffing — an amazing and highly innovative company in the recruitment space. I’ve had an opportunity to closely observe and work with several immensely talented entrepreneurial recruiters and recruiting teams focused on business in the U.S. and Canada.

I realized that recruitment is not easy.

Recruitment can be very well-paying and extremely satisfying. But, contrary to how it looks from the outside, it is not easy. Obviously, it is not rocket science either. It is not intellectually demanding to understand what a recruiter is supposed to do. But I have learned over time that it is very challenging. For one, it is the only job where the product you’re selling (the candidate) can say “No!”.

Hmm. Interesting.

Most of the independent recruiters and influencers I observed and worked with are focused on U.S./Canada region, but I believe these 3 traits can be extended to all successful recruiters.

1. They Set Realistic Goals and Follow Them Religiously

It is easy to assume this is most applicable only if the recruiter is an entrepreneur. But that is not the case - All successful recruiters set realistic, quantifiable goals.

As a recruiter, chances are you aren’t completely alien to the idea of working with targets. But consider goals to be a combination of targets and actions. Once you set annual goals, break them down into smaller quarterly>monthly>weekly goals. Do not hesitate to go down to the granularity of daily goals, especially if you’re an independent recruiter. You may constantly tinker with your weekly/monthly goals, but the key is to keep the sum of these numerical targets and actions over the year equal to your annual goal, which requires thinking deeply and planning carefully for your path ahead.

Especially in an entrepreneurial recruitment setup, this is the first and the most basic premise that separates highly-paid recruiters from their less successful counterparts. At Crowdstaffing, goal-setting starts early on, and such entrepreneurial recruiters are rewarded with more opportunities, more earnings, and a chance to work with Fortune 500 clients exclusively.

2. They Focus on Quality, Relentlessly

In my short time in the industry, I’ve found out that recruitment is extremely noisy, which also makes it very challenging. Usually, there are multiple recruiters competing with each other to service the same client. In such a scenario, it is very easy to forget about quality — a mistake that the best recruiters I met simply do not seem to make. As long as you continue to find candidates the clients can’t find themselves, you’ll continue getting paid well.

From my experience, you don’t have to be Steve Jobs to pick high quality candidates. By all means, be quick to respond, but be very, very mindful of the expectation of your clients. And if you have even a shadow of a doubt about a candidate, do not submit their application.

Here’s a quick checklist to ensure quality:

• Talk to the hiring manager
• Ask specific questions about the job
• Read the job description carefully
• Make note of special instructions if any
• Make a real effort to understand the company culture
• Know the best channel to reach out to the requisite candidates...
• And if you don’t know which channels to use, try them all!

3. They Genuinely Care About Their Candidates

Simply sourcing great candidates is not enough. The entire candidate experience from the first interaction to a successful placement or rejection needs to be carefully curated.

What set the really successful recruiters apart from the rest was the exemplary level of candidate service, which became the biggest differentiation in all the noise - and that stems from genuinely caring about your candidates.

Pick up that phone, be courteous, give them the exhaustive picture, share good and bad news promptly and with empathy. Give them a shoulder to cry on if required. All of this might seem like basic etiquette, but even this is lacking in the industry today!

I have been told stories where recruiters who genuinely cared about their candidates got referrals from them, even when they weren’t able to place them. Such is the power of caring for candidates and curating their experience.

It's Not As Easy As it Sounds...

Editor's note: this post was originally published on Medium and was re-published with the author's permission.