The Impact Of Social Media In Hiring Staffing Salespeople

Staffing Salespeople are an interesting breed.  We're not technically recruiters in the sense that our job is working with clients, not candidates.  We may sweep in and offer some broad advice right before an interview, or serve as the final say on candidate salaries, raises, and filtering, but that's because salespeople are normally Type A personalities who like to tell other people what to do, while recruiters are often Type B personalities who are better at forming relationships or digging up data.

So salespeople, are, well, salespeople, and they should be treated as such when they are hired.  Their goal is prospecting, negotiation, and client management, so when you look to hire one, your main thrust is often cold-calling, lead generation, and closing.

Or at least it used to be.

This whole social media phenomenon is starting to change the rules for salespeople.  It's not just in staffing, but the primary value in using a staffing firm is in their connections.  Each firm has a pool of clients and a pool of candidates the primarily draw from.  Those connections drive business, lead to referrals, and are the lifeblood of every agency.

So what happens when the best and brightest in a job market start making their own connections?  What happens when Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, and blogs start sharing information for free that used to be the sole province of recruiters?  What happens when cold-calling no longer works, as HR and hiring managers find themselves overburdened with prospect calls, and start turning to their social networks on Twitter and Plaxo to find information on whose hiring? 

What happens when client lists are no longer considered confidential, because every name and number in your database is already supplied at Jigsaw or ZoomInfo or LinkedIn or Plaxo or Spoke or eCademy, and thus your storehouse of carefully screened client numbers is now in the public domain.  The world of networking is moving online because it's efficient to do so.  I communicate with thousands of people a day, even when I only talk to a handful on the phone.  And the quality of those communications ranges from two sentences to full strategy sessions. The truth is I'm always selling when I'm online.

So when hiring account managers, you must learn to hire salespeople that understand how to generate leads in addition to prospecting.  You need to hire people who are proactive in establishing an online presence, skilled in identifying likely prospects from online communities, and most of all, establishing trust with a client before they ever meet them.

That's right.  The salesperson who will best represent your firm will be a social media expert, connected to the entire marketplace through online platforms, in the way that we used to be connected through good old fashioned legwork.

Do your current salespeople know how to create an online reputation? And how will you go about interviewing someone who knows how to bring online results?

Comments

[Steven Rothberg CollegeRecruiter.com]

I wonder how many sales managers will read this and think that the answer is to hire sales people who know how to keep secrets on-line and not share their contact list via LinkedIn etc. I feel that approach is seriously flawed. It made sense 10 years ago and perhaps even five years ago, but those who network on-line are following the golden rule that if you give away a lot of nickels, they tend to come back as dollars.

Personally, I'd rather have sales people who are good at sharing information on-line as I know they'll be more personally fulfilled and successful than the sales people who hoard their knowledge and contacts.