Recruiter: job description, interview questions, and screening workflow

A resume full of "full-cycle recruiting" and a LinkedIn profile full of recruiter-to-recruiter engagement will not tell you whether this person actually closes roles. Recruiting is one of the easiest jobs to describe well and one of the hardest to do well, and a lot of candidates have gotten very good at the first part. The real test isn't whether someone can explain what an intake call is or list the ATS platforms they've touched. It's whether they can point to a specific role they filled, describe exactly what made it hard, and tell you what they actually did to move it. That's the gap this guide is built to close: a job description you can post today, interview questions that push past process talk, a scorecard, and a screening workflow sized for a small business or a small owner-run agency hiring its own recruiter, not a company with a TA department already in place.

What a recruiter actually does at a small business or agency

At a company with a TA department, a recruiter usually owns one slice: sourcing for a few functions, or screening for roles someone else sourced, with a coordinator handling scheduling and a TA lead handling process design. At a small business or a small owner-run staffing agency, there's no department. One person owns req to offer, often across every role type the business or its clients need filled.

The core responsibilities, in practice:

• Sourcing candidates for open roles, especially the hard-to-fill ones nobody's applying to on their own
• Screening resumes and applications against what the role actually needs, not just keyword matching
• Coordinating with hiring managers or clients: intake calls, feedback loops, keeping a req from going stale
• Managing the candidate pipeline end to end, so nothing sits untouched for two weeks
• Keeping candidates informed and engaged, since a bad candidate experience costs you the good ones
• Closing offers, including the ones with a competing offer or a nervous candidate on the other end
• At an agency, ramping quickly on a new client's business, culture, and hiring bar with very little runway

This is a narrower, more outcome-driven role than an HR coordinator, who typically owns a wider slice of people operations: onboarding paperwork, policy, benefits, employee questions, with hiring as one piece of a bigger job. If the pain you're solving is specifically "roles stay open too long and I don't have time to find and vet candidates," you want a recruiter. If it's "nobody owns HR at all," you may want a coordinator, or one person doing both under whichever title fits your budget.

The hardest part of this job isn't process knowledge. Most candidates can describe a screening funnel or an intake call convincingly. The hard part is what happens when the process hits friction: a hiring manager who won't commit, a role with almost no qualified applicants, a candidate juggling two other offers. That's where a real recruiter earns their keep, and it's exactly what a resume can't show you.

Job description you can post today

Copy this, then adjust the specifics (your req volume, your tools, whether they're filling roles for your business or for clients) to match your situation.

Recruiter
[Company name] is looking for a recruiter to own hiring from req to offer. You'll source, screen, coordinate with [hiring managers / our clients], and close candidates on roles that matter to the business, not manage a process that runs on its own.

What you'll do
Source and screen candidates for open roles, including the ones that don't fill themselves. Run intake calls and keep hiring managers or clients engaged and decisive. Manage candidate pipelines so nothing goes stale. Keep candidates informed and give them a good experience, even when they don't get the offer. Close offers, including with candidates who have other options. [If applicable: manage req load and hiring bar across multiple clients.]

What we're looking for
A specific track record of closing roles, not just describing a process. Comfort sourcing into a thin candidate pool, not just working an inbound pipeline. Ability to push back constructively on a hiring manager or client who's stalling a decision. Strong candidate communication, since you're often the only touchpoint a candidate has with us. Comfort with ambiguity and volume, especially if this is our first dedicated hire for this.

Schedule
[Insert hours and any on-site requirements]

[Insert pay range, per your company's policy and any applicable state salary transparency requirements]

11 interview questions, and what a good answer sounds like

1. Walk me through the hardest req you've closed. What made it hard and what did you actually do?

This is your primary diagnostic question. A strong answer names the actual role, the actual obstacle (a thin market, a slow hiring manager, a comp gap, competing offers), and a specific sequence of things they did about it. A candidate who talks in generalities about "leveraging my network" or "building strong relationships" without ever landing on specifics is telling you they haven't done the work, or can't recall it clearly enough to matter.

2. Tell me about your sourcing strategy for a role that almost nobody applies to on their own.

You want a real method, not a vague reference to "getting creative." Listen for specifics: where they looked beyond the obvious job boards, how they wrote outreach that got responses, how they adjusted after the first approach didn't work. A candidate who can only describe posting a job and waiting hasn't had to source into a hard market before.

3. A hiring manager keeps pushing back interview decisions and won't commit. What do you do?

Good answers show constructive pressure: bringing data (how long the req's been open, what the pipeline looks like, what's at risk if it stays open), naming the cost of delay clearly, and not just sending another polite follow-up. A weak answer describes waiting patiently or escalating immediately without ever trying to move the manager themselves.

4. Tell me about a candidate you had to keep engaged over a long, slow process. How did you do it?

This tests candidate experience, which is easy to neglect when a recruiter is juggling volume. Strong answers describe proactive, honest communication, telling a candidate the truth about where things stand rather than going quiet. A candidate who describes only reacting when the candidate reached out first is describing weak process, not a strong one.

5. Tell me about a placement that didn't work out. What happened, and what did you change afterward?

Every recruiter with real experience has one of these. You're listening for ownership and a real adjustment, not blame. A strong answer names what they missed (a skill gap that didn't show up in screening, a mismatch on expectations, a red flag they talked themselves past) and describes a specific change to how they screen now. A candidate who blames the candidate or the hiring manager for everything that went wrong is a flag.

6. If you started here next week knowing nothing about our business [or a new client's business], how would you get up to speed fast enough to start filling roles?

This matters most for a small agency or a small business making its first dedicated hire, where there's no ramp program to lean on. Good answers describe a real plan: what they'd ask in the intake conversation, what they'd want to shadow or read, how they'd validate their own understanding of the role before sourcing against it. A candidate with no plan beyond "I'd figure it out" hasn't had to do this cold before.

7. How do you handle a week where you have far more open reqs than you can give equal attention to?

You're testing comfort with volume and ambiguity, which matters more here than at a company with a coordinator and a sourcer splitting the load. Strong answers describe how they'd triage: what makes a req urgent versus what can wait, and how they'd communicate that prioritization to hiring managers or clients instead of just quietly falling behind on some of it.

8. Tell me about a candidate who had a competing offer. How did you handle it?

This surfaces closing skill directly. Listen for specifics: what they found out about what the candidate actually cared about, how they addressed it, whether they brought anything real to the table (timeline, clarity, a direct conversation about the tradeoffs) rather than just hoping the candidate picked them. A candidate who says they've never lost anyone to a competing offer, or who has no real story here, hasn't been tested yet.

9. How do you decide what belongs in a written screening process versus what you handle case by case?

Good answers show judgment about building structure without over-engineering it for a small team. Listen for a candidate who can describe a repeatable process for the basics (how they screen resumes, what questions they always ask) while staying flexible on judgment calls that don't fit a template.

10. What do you do in the first two weeks on a req that's already been open a long time with a thin pipeline?

Strong answers start with diagnosis: is it the sourcing, the screening bar, the comp, the hiring manager's responsiveness? Then a plan to address the actual bottleneck, not just "source harder." A candidate who jumps straight to activity without diagnosing what's actually broken is likely to repeat whatever didn't work before.

11. Why do you want to do this here, at a small [business / agency], instead of somewhere with a bigger TA team around you?

This checks whether they understand what they're signing up for: more ownership, but no playbook and no team to lean on when something's hard. A candidate who can't give you a real reason beyond the title, or who seems surprised by how much they'd own alone, may be underprepared for how unstructured this role is at a small operation.

A scorecard you can score candidates against

Interview questions only help if everyone involved is listening for the same things. Score every candidate on the same dimensions, so you're comparing evidence instead of six different impressions of who "seemed like a closer."

How to screen recruiter candidates without losing a week to it

Truffle is a candidate screening platform that combines resume screening, one-way video interviews, and talent assessments, so you can build a screening workflow around what actually predicts a good recruiter hire: evidence of closing, not polish in describing process.

Recruiter postings pull a lot of resumes that look strong on paper. Everyone lists "full-cycle recruiting," the same ATS platforms, and a version of "relationship-driven, results-oriented." A resume can't show you whether someone actually closes hard roles or just talks about closing them well. That's a screening problem, not a sourcing problem, and it's worse for this hire than most, since the candidates you're screening are professionally good at presenting themselves.

A workflow that fits a small business or a small agency hiring its own recruiter:

• Resume screening first. Cut obvious mismatches on relevant req volume, industries, and specific tools before you spend any time live.
• A short one-way video interview for your first real look. Ask 2-3 of the scenario questions above, like the hardest-req question or the competing-offer question, so you can hear how someone actually reasons through pressure before you commit any live interview time to them.
• An interview skills readiness check to add a signal a resume can't fake. Our interview skills test and rubric scoring assessment gives you a structured, scenario-based read on how a candidate thinks under interview conditions, useful for a role where the candidate's own interviewing and evaluation instincts are part of the job.
• A live conversation only for candidates who clear the first three steps. By the time you're on a call, you already know they can source, they can reason through a stalled hiring manager, and they can communicate clearly. The live conversation is for fit and final judgment, not for discovering for the first time whether they can actually do the job.

Our resume screening and one-way video interview tools handle the first two steps in one place, with AI that surfaces your strongest matches against the criteria you set. You review the evidence and decide. It doesn't pick for you.

Common hiring mistakes for this role

Hiring for polish over a track record of closing. Recruiters are professionally good at presenting well in an interview, since it's the same skill they use on candidates every day. A confident, articulate answer about process isn't the same as evidence they've actually filled hard roles. Push every answer for specifics until you hear a real example, not a description of the job.

Not testing them on a scenario from your actual business. A generic "tell me about your process" question lets a candidate answer in the abstract. Give them a real, specific situation, a role you've struggled to fill, a hiring manager who's been slow, and see how they'd actually approach it.

Staying vague on in-house versus agency-style expectations. If you're a small agency, be explicit about req volume across clients and how fast you expect them to ramp on a business they've never seen before. Candidates coming from an in-house background may not be used to that pace or that context-switching, and it's worth surfacing before the offer, not after.

Assuming "great with people" is the whole job. Warmth and rapport matter for candidate experience, but they don't predict whether someone can push back on a stalling hiring manager, source into a thin market, or close a candidate with a competing offer. Screen for both.

Skipping the ramp conversation. If this is your first dedicated hire for filling roles, or a new hire at a small agency, they'll be building your intake process, your screening bar, and your candidate communication from close to scratch. Ask directly whether they've built a process before, not just executed one that already existed.

If you haven't yet decided whether to hire this role in-house or bring in a staffing agency instead, or you want comp benchmarks and sourcing-channel detail before you post anything, our guide to hiring a recruiter who can actually close reqs covers that decision-making ground. This page picks up once you've decided: the job description, the questions, and the workflow to screen for a real closer.