Empathetic Listening

Normally, our recruiting tips center around sourcing but we have run into this topic over the last few months and wanted to share with you.

As recruiters our role is to learn about a candidate, share about the career, and make the conversation relevant and meaningful. Sometimes it is easy to forget these basic principles because we are so worried about activity, what’s next, the in-depth coming up, a text that pops up, what reports need to go out, etc, etc, etc,

If you can remind yourself to practice Empathetic Listening, your connections with the candidates will be deeper and your productivity will actually increase.

Here are some basic tips to become a more Empathetic Listener:

• Be Present: Put away your cell phone. If you think you are being sly and checking emails/texts- you are not. The candidate knows and even worse, you are distracted so can’t ask even better questions

• Non Judgement: You do not need to agree with everything a candidate says. Remember, we want diversity of thought, background and beliefs so do your best to stay non-judgmental and if you have questions, ask them

• Patience: Silence can be your best friend. Some of our interviews can be emotional for candidates and they may have a hard time finding the right words. Give them space with some silence to let them think

• Follow the basic principle “Listen to Understand, then be Understood”: Understanding a candidates background, vision, and story is arguably more important than executing all of your language perfectly when describing the career. They want to know you heard them—tailor your language with that in mind

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—This document and the information in it are provided for Northwestern Mutual Recruiters and Leadership Teams and may not be distributed to any other organization or used for any other purpose without written consent from Claire Myers Consulting.—