Rick Kelo – How to Become a Recruiter

Recruiters occupy an interesting space in our country’s professional landscape. Their job entails matching companies with qualified and culturally appropriate individuals for a specific job or role. Companies often pay thousands of dollars for this service. Why? Because while it might seem like a fairly easy thing to do—matching someone with a job description that they fit—the process is actually much more involved and recruiters often spend months sifting through applications and researching companies in order to find the perfect fit. Recently, LinkedIn conducted a survey and analyzed the profiles of over 100,000 professionals working as recruiters. Their findings were interesting: recruiters often have an average of more than ten years of work experience, some background in psychology or at least a highly specialized area of work placement, and are typically women.

If you follow the recruiter profile of RickKelo in Chicago, IL for example, you will see that becoming a recruiter starts with the right education. The top five most common university majors for recruiters are (1) psychology, (2) business, (3) marketing, (4) human resources, and (5) sociology. Rick Kelo graduated with an engineering degree and then went on to obtain his MBA in Finance from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His first job after he received his education was actually in the military in various Platoon Leader positions. This might seem to deviate from the norm but actually according to LinkedIn, most recruiters initially take positions in areas such as operations, administration, and support. This gave him some of the top skills sited by recruitment offices: training professional, applicant tracking, and employee training and development.

He might differentiate slightly from the norm because of the fact that most recruiters—about sixty percent—are female, but he has the background and work experience beyond what most would expect. His greatest asset is his educational background and work experience. Recruiters, or at least the best ones, are highly specialized individuals. Rick Kelo’s background in finance and experience in the workforce give him the unique insight into the cultural climate of finance positions necessary to be an effective recruiter.

He currently works as an Executive Recruiter for TaxScout, Inc., the nation’s premier tax search firm. Niche recruitment offices such as these benefit from having highly trained and specialized recruiters who work to build client bases with reputable companies around the country, organize and manage databases of potential clients, and work with companies to develop and manage retention policies for the employees that they place.