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Thinking about becoming a recruiter but not sure if you’ve got what it takes? Recruiting can be a great field to enter. It has tons of transferable skills and lots of upside. Plus, many recruiters are paid bonuses for filling positions. All in all, it’s an excellent field to enter. But many people think it requires a specific educational background or work experience. Not true! Read on to learn three tips for becoming a recruiter with little to no career experience.

1. Make Sure You Have The Personality

One of the biggest factors in determining if you would be a good recruiter is your personality. While you don’t necessarily have to be an extrovert, some key personality traits are must-haves if you want to become a recruiter with no experience:

• An eye for matchmaking – Are you the type who always finds a match for your single friends? Do you just have the instinct for seeing when two people will be a good fit? Then you’ve got what it takes. Recruiters have to be able to assess personalities and skill sets and match them to positions they will be successful in. 
• Social media chops – Any good recruiter must have a love for social media. In today’s world, social media networking is one of the biggest ways that recruiters find matches. So being tech-savvy, having a large following, and knowing how to use your contacts to bring in others is a must. 
• Positivity – If you don’t have a positive attitude, even during the worst of times, it’s hard to convince anyone of anything. Since so much of a recruiter’s job is hyping up people and positions under any circumstance, a positive attitude is a must.

2. Make Sure You Have The Education

Education is a tricky one, because there is no degree in recruitment. So what field should you study? Essentially, you need any education. Recruiters frequently have bachelor’s degrees in HR or management, but this is absolutely not necessary. Do you have a degree in an engineering or science field? Recruit for a tech company. What about education? Look for a position at a university. Even a lawyer is qualified to be a recruiter. They could work for a law firm or governmental agency. If a field exists in which people need to be hired, then that field’s educational background would work well for recruiting. In short, if you want to become a recruiter with no experience, you probably need an education – but the sky’s the limit on what that education looks like. 

3. Make Sure You Have The Skills

If you want to become a recruiter with no experience, here are three big skills that every prospective recruiter must have:

• Sales Skills – Sales is the number one skill you must have to recruit. Recruiting is selling a job to a candidate and a candidate to an employer. If you want to prepare yourself for recruiting, go get a sales job… any sales job. Work at a clothes store and practice making people feel good about what they try on. Work at an electronics store and learn how to match people to the products they need. Try selling cars or other big-ticket items. Whatever sales skills you can develop will go a long way to helping you excel at recruiting.
• Networking Skills – Networking is not only how to become a recruiter with no experience, it is essential to the success of a recruiter. You have to meet people to connect people, and that means doing a LOT of social things, and doing them well. The good thing is that networking skills can be learned. So start practicing. Go to networking events both online and in person. Create and practice your elevator pitch. Volunteer for organizations that you’re passionate about. Whatever networking you do will make you a better fit for any type of job in recruiting. 
• Project Management Skills – The recruitment process is essentially a big project. A need is found. A job description is created. The job is posted. The candidates are recruited. Interviews occur. A match is made. Each of these moving parts requires a keen eye for detail and project management to keep the process on track and on time. If you’re organized and good at managing lots of moving parts, recruiting may be the role for you.
• Resume Writing Skills – Finally, building your own perfect resume is a great way to showcase your talents. Your resume should highlight your initiative, your ability to prioritize and multitask, and your communication skills. And as a recruiter, you can put those resume writing skills to use helping others with their resumes!

If recruiting sounds like the career of your dreams, don’t let a lack of experience stop you from going for it. Just get out there, pound the pavement, and apply, apply, apply. Temp agencies like Whitman Associates in the Washington DC area frequently post recruiting jobs. Temp jobs are typically easier to get and are great for resume and experience building. Check the job listings regularly and take a chance. With a little front-end effort, you can become a recruiter, even if you have no experience at all!

Thought about entering the legal field but don’t know how to begin? Whether you’ve studied for law school your whole life or your professional experience amounts to watching Legally Blonde a few times, you might be surprised at the opportunities available to you as a legal assistant. Washington, D.C. and other major metropolitan areas are ideal markets for entry-level legal assistant jobs. Being a legal assistant is different from being a paralegal, but you will still provide invaluable support to attorneys while gaining experience in the field. Here are our tips on how to land this great position.

What is an entry-level legal assistant?

Before explaining how to get an entry-level legal assistant job, let’s start with clarity on what it is—and what it isn’t. Although every law office or agency has its own regulations and expectations, there are some general guidelines when it comes to this type of position.

Legal assistants should be able to:

• Organize files for the office
• Compile facts for cases
• Follow up on details relating to specific clients or interactions
• Handle client or witness communication
• Conduct research
• File legal documents in court
• Draft documents for litigation
• Process, prepare, sort or proof legal documents
• Maintain client files and information

Essentially, this position assists the lawyer. An entry-level legal assistant job will involve all varieties of legal work in a supporting capacity. They act primarily as case managers, although some legal assistants also function as legal secretaries. Although they work alongside lawyers, they do not have the same authority over the legal documents and presentations.

How is a legal assistant different from a paralegal?

Legal secretaries serve on the administrative side, performing duties such as greeting clients, answering phones, scheduling appointments, and maintaining the calendar. Legal assistants can also fill these secretarial roles while supporting the lawyer in other ways from investigating to writing. Paralegals perform more in-depth preparatory work and function more similarly to an attorney. For example, a legal secretary might type minutes, while a legal assistant might prepare the case brief and the paralegal could work to develop the ruling with the lawyer directly.

Before applying, you can explore more details about these different job categories so you can determine where specifically you feel best suited.

Tip #1: Demonstrate effective communication skills

If you want to get an entry-level legal assistant job, you need to show that you know how to communicate effectively. Whether you’re managing the lawyers’ schedules, compiling facts for cases or drafting documents for litigation, you must get your point across clearly and effectively. 

Many individual lawyers or larger legal institutions are more than happy to train entry-level workers on the minutiae of their processes and applicable laws, but they need the employees to come in already knowing how to express themselves in appropriate and precise language. 

You can demonstrate your effective communication skills in your resume and interview. Legal assistants are often the ones to handle communication with clients and witnesses, as well as to facilitate communication across the office, so it’s imperative that you show you could fill that role.

Tip #2: Highlight the experience you do have

Yes, we’re talking about an entry-level legal assistant job, but that doesn’t mean that you’re going in with nothing. Don’t worry if you don’t specifically have a legal background. You will have other experiences or traits that can make you a good fit for the position, so make those aspects of your application clear. Maybe demonstrate how you’ve already managed large schedules in the past or that in your schooling you served in an administrative capacity or leadership position for an extracurricular group. 

Tip #3: Express a willingness to learn

When it comes to entry-level legal assistant jobs, it’s important to recognize having the right attitude matters more than knowing the ins and outs of the law. Legal expertise is appreciated but unnecessary when you’re just starting out. Teachability, however, is required. 

In our experience in Washington, D.C., most entry-level legal assistant jobs require an eagerness to benefit from the law firm’s expertise. Present yourself as a competent communicator ready to learn how the lawyer wants things done rather than showing up as a legal expert already entrenched in a specific structure and process. 

Tip #4: Go through the experts

Once you’ve polished your resume and prepared for your interview by demonstrating effective communication skills, highlighting the experience you do have, and expressing a willingness to learn, it’s time to land that entry-level legal assistant job. You can go through the job search yourself and play the waiting game, but it’s easier, less stressful, and more effective to go through the experts. 
At Whitman Associates, Inc., we are celebrating 50 years of providing expert staffing in Washington, D.C. and the surrounding area. Start by emailing your resume to resumes@whitmanjobs.com to see what doors can open for you.

Are you looking for a versatile job position that provides opportunities for growth and training? Working as an administrative assistant can be a challenging yet rewarding pathway, and many companies are hiring now in this position. Here’s our guide about what to expect from entry-level administrative assistant jobs.

What do administrative assistants do?

“Administrative assistant” is a fairly vague job title. This position often acts as a “catch-all” for a variety of internal and customer-facing tasks. Broadly, administrative assistants control the office efficiency. They are responsible for ensuring operations run smoothly. This can involve:

• Answering and directing phone calls and emails
• Organizing and scheduling meetings
• Ordering office supplies
• Assisting with special projects
• Producing and distributing correspondence
• Greeting customers or clients
• Booking travel arrangements

The Washington, D.C. metropolitan area is a perfect market for this role with so many private businesses, consulting firms and government contractors needing entry-level administrative assistants to ensure jobs are completed on time. While some of these descriptions sound more like a secretary or receptionist, there are some distinctions in those titles.

How is an entry level administrative assistant job different from a secretary or receptionist?

In general, receptionists serve as the first point of contact for an office, secretaries do clerical work and administrative assistants keep the office running smoothly. All of these job categories overlap and work together. In some offices, being an administrative assistant will look very similar to the role of a secretary or receptionist. Other times, often in larger companies, administrative assistants are more of efficiency specialists, like project managers, who oversee and ensure that overall work operations flow smoothly.

For example, rather than directly manning the phones, an administrative assistant may provide a receptionist with a flow chart of how to more effectively direct calls. Working an entry-level administrative assistant job could, in that context, also include serving as a go-between for the receptionist and the higher levels of leadership in the office. 

When applying for an administrative assistant job in Washington, D.C. or the surrounding area, it’s important to understand the industry, company structure and work culture. Depending on the company’s needs, the role may look different from one place to the next. Many companies look for candidates with a willingness to adapt and take on new responsibilities.

Making your own system within the established structure

Administrative assistants work in a delicate balance. The position can be one of the most versatile in an office because there are so many administrative tasks that need to get done. Often managers will expect administrative assistants to bring their own ideas and systems to fit within the established structure.

For example, maybe the traditional protocol is that the administrative assistant will make calls to confirm the next day’s appointments. The administrative assistant may have the freedom to make notes in a client’s file or update calendar meetings in a manner that they find most efficient and helpful for the senior staff. Managers often appreciate assertive, independent assistants who can complete core tasks without asking too many questions.

Day-to-day management with a broad perspective

To be successful in an entry-level administrative assistant job, prospective candidates have to recognize that they will be responsible both for the fine details of the day-to-day office management and the larger picture of the company’s goals and objectives. A detail-oriented mindset and the ability to concisely summarize key takeaways are both important.

Administrative assistants often deal with putting out lots of little “fires” that pop up throughout the natural workday, but they need to maintain a broad perspective so urgent tasks don’t replace the important components of the role. Fast-paced markets like Washington, D.C. expect administrative assistants to keep up with action items and prioritize effectively, even in an entry-level job.

Serve as an assistant, not a manager

While administrative assistants do track and monitor efficiency, ultimately this is a supportive role rather than leadership. This means that administrative assistants work directly under some sort of higher management or leadership in the office. Administrative assistants will typically not have to make the tough calls themselves.

Administrative assistants have a specific hierarchical place in the company that may vary depending on the industry, company size and other factors. Regardless of the specific structure, administrative assistants typically work very closely with the leadership they work to assist. In this role, you could expect plenty of formal and informal meetings and check-ins with one or several leadership personnel at the office.

Get a specific snapshot of your possibilities

Each administrative assistant position looks a little different. If you have the related skills of multitasking, prioritizing, organizing, and making sure others stay on task, an administrative assistant job could be a great fit for you. Whitman Associates, Inc. helps place candidates in entry-level administrative assistant jobs in Washington, D.C.  and the surrounding area. We have more than 50 years of expert staffing experience. When you’re ready to start your new career path, send your resume to resumes@whitmanjobs.com. We’ll provide a specific snapshot of your possibilities as an administrative assistant.