“Selling is an art” – a known truth for over a million years.
Question: Does recruitment have anything to do with selling?
Answer: YES
What is ‘Recruiter Sales’? The simple Q&A style of answering it would be, “The in-depth selling of a hiring opportunity by a recruiter, to a potential candidate.” Now, it’s definitely not as easy as that definition, since it involves finer nuances of selling & recruitment. As a Recruiter, the minute you begin prospecting a potential candidate, the very first line you speak has everything in it to qualify as a ‘SALES PITCH’. One can’t help it – because it runs in the recruiter’s DNA & if it doesn’t someone should be worried about it!
I’ve noticed that good ‘recruiter-salesperson’ has some common selling traits:
- High levels of confidence
- Ability to identify the very-thin-line between being Assertive or Pushy
- Build a strong relationship with candidates through excellent communication, good follow-up
- They can take ‘NO’ for an answer, when they see a dead end
- An attitude that screams “Whatever it takes (legally off course!)…to get the candidate across the line”
- They never never never stop Selling!
There are very high chances of the candidate talking to a recruiter first than anyone else in the company - they need to know about the company, job, peers, work culture, benefit; the whole-nine-yards! The point I’m trying to make is that the recruiter can only sell as much as he/she knows. Eventually, the best salesperson wins!
Dose of Truth: Every candidate that has ever interviewed with your company & rejected your offer to join elsewhere, indicates that – someone in the same field has done better than you! That’s not a very good feeling!
There could be a hundred other reasons why the candidate rejected your job offer – the other company provided higher compensation, work from home facility, better employee benefits, open work culture, whatever! If your company has been able to employ a 1000 people without these very reasons; then you too have your positives! Unless the recruiter incorporates the positives in the sales-pitch at the discussion table, the offer-rejects will continue to happen!
From experience I can vouch for the fact that Selling would work best if it is done in 3-Parts:-
Part 1: Have a list of selling points about the company.
- The pitch would have the Big-Picture from 30,000 feet!
- Mostly would involve discussions revolving around company history, revenue, investors, customers, technology, peers, work culture, benefits, etc.,
Part 2: Selling points of the business that the candidate would be involved in.
- Discussion would involve details about the business group that a candidate would be joining
- The business groups latest successes – more from a motivating stand point
Part 3: The reasons you believe the candidate makes the perfect fit for a particular role
- Involves matching candidate’s strength’s to the business needs
- The reasons that the company & candidate will both have a mutually rewarding partnership
I’m confident that if a recruiter can stick to the basics of selling – the rest as they say – would MAKE history!
X-Factor: Sell, Sell, Sell!
Regards,
The HR Store
