This post first appeared on John’s Try Harder is Not a Strategy LinkedIn Newsletter. 

Curiosity has always been one of the most important traits of great recruiters. And in an age where AI is taking over the transactional parts of our jobs, connecting, relationship building, building trust, and influencing capabilities will be the biggest differentiators between high paid talent advisor recruiters and low paid recruiters.

This may sound simple, but if I were to break down what made some of my top performing corporate recruiters better, underneath their sourcing, screening, and closing skills was a super interested, interesting recruiter.

Interested in the business.

Genuinely interested in people.

And interesting themselves.

Let's start with curiosity about the business. One of my most read LinkedIn Talent Blog posts outlines how recruiters need to get more curious about the business, as a top 2 request we hear from business executives in our focus groups sounds something like, "I just want our recruiter to know our business, our challenges, our talent needs better - the WHY for our work, for our hires."

Great recruiters are - obviously - interested in people. In an age of automated, AI-generated outbound messaging and screening, where employer/recruiter bots engage with candidate bots in some kind of hellish bot-on-bot action, I think top talent will crave real connection even more than they do today. They will want to talk to recruiters who are genuinely interested in them as people - their career dreams, the kind of problems they love, what drives them, whether the job opportunity will be a good match, and more. Not a prompted set of questions from AI, telling the recruiter what to ask, but genuine interest in the candidate. Naturally communicated, not scripted. Real.

Many of the best recruiters I’ve known were fascinating people outside of work. I can’t prove cause and effect, but broad experiences seem to give recruiters more ways to connect with candidates (and hiring managers).

Finding commonality. Many of the best recruiters I've met in my long career are super interesting. They lived a different life before recruiting. They were in the military, taught high school, were a champion ice skater, lived abroad, worked in a bank full time while going to university, studied biology, collected '80s era computers, listened to economics podcasts, played varsity tennis in high school, raised their nieces, hiked a mountain, played competitive mahjong, campaigned for politicians they believed in, learned multiple languages, etc. They know that a way to accelerate the connection part of building trust - especially when sourcing/prospecting - is to find some common interests and experiences. And while I don't think they made all of their life choices before and during their job as a recruiter JUST to be more interesting, it has probably served them really well. Not in a manipulative way, where they're using their common or similar experience to get someone to trust them when they shouldn't, but instead, as a way to engage someone who might otherwise feel like a complete stranger.

(Note: Don't ask illegal questions when sourcing or during your recruiter screen.)

Now, how do you become more curious? It's hard to train someone to be curious who's not. But asking more, better questions (ask AI to help you) is a start. I outline some questions in that curiosity article aimed at building better business acumen. And getting more curious about leads and prospects starts with asking questions like "what do you do?" with a bunch of follow up questions like, "what's something surprising about a job like that?" or "I was reading this article about X - since you work in that space, is that true?" or "I've always wondered how someone becomes a [role] - does university prepare you for that job, or do you need to learn it through experience or mentoring?" Any of those kinds of questions gets the conversation started. People will often share what they love about the work and what their career goals and gaps are without asking any direct questions about their interest in making a career move. This helps us understand their intrinsic motivators, should they become a candidate later.

How does someone become more interesting? Well, that's a bit harder. :)

Some of it comes with experience and age - a longer life lived. And some of it comes with the privilege of having disposable income to do more than just work and make ends meet. (I became 42x more interesting after I traveled outside North America, but couldn't really afford to do that until I was in my late 30s; I'd only traveled on a plane once when I lived at home with my parents - we just didn't have the money growing up to travel outside of regional road trips).

But a lot of it comes from reading, listening to podcasts, investing in things outside of work, and getting ourselves outside our comfort zone. And surrounding ourselves with more interesting people. It's natural to want to hangout with people close to you in age, who are also single/married with/without kids, who have similar economic backgrounds. But mixing up the people you hang out with is key to opening up your mind, learning, and being more interesting.

Genuinely interested people are easier to trust. Interesting people are easier to talk to. And I believe the highly paid recruiters of the future will need to be both of these things to make the kind of human-to-human connections required to recruit top talent.

• Diverse experiences broaden perspective.
• Broad perspective increases empathy and conversational range.
• Curiosity increases connection.
• Connection builds reciprocal trust and longer term relationships.

Curiosity may be the meta-skill of recruiting. It helps recruiters develop business acumen, understand talent markets, build stronger relationships with candidates, and learn new technologies. Many recruiter competencies are visible, like sourcing and selling. Curiosity is often the hidden capability underneath them.

What have you done to satisfy your curiosity this past year? And what's something interesting about your background that helps you connect with people more easily? Please share.

p.s. There's research that shows that curiosity is a strongly correlated with job performance.