A recruiter is a social seller. And vice versa.
The LinkedInplatform is often considered a :
- recruitment, to recruit and be recruited,
- social selling to sell products, services and solutions,
- to promote the employer brand and rely on employee ambassadors,
- networking, to keep abreast of the latest developments, share information and relax (yes, why else share chat photos).
All of this is done with a more professional approach, although the private sphere is increasingly intruding, making the boundary between private and professional life more and more porous.
Companies have an opportunity to develop a more systemic, global approach, which would serve their interests as well as those of LinkedIn's members, whether active or passive .
Infact, LinkedIn is a tool for conversations between professionals, which is conducive to the creation of trust. It's time to break down silos and mix business skills.
Here's a quick reminder of two business solutions offered by the platform. LinkedIn offers companies two specific solutions dedicated to recruiters and salespeople.
Recruiters can run recruitment campaigns on social networks by posting job offers.
The latter can deploy their sales approach through prospecting, social selling (or modern selling as LinkedIn now calls it).
Both services are managed via their own interface. The individual's LinkedIn account is the means of connecting to these interfaces.
Mix and match
What if each function took a little of the other? What if we permeated these two silos to mix expertise and multiply results tenfold. The recruiter by adding a dose of social selling to his approach. The social seller by becoming an active member of the recruitment department.
Social selling is above all a state of mind for creating and maintaining human professional relationships based on listening, sharing and conversations on social networks, of which LinkedIn is the only representative positioned on the purely professional side.
Social selling mainly concerns sales people. Their LinkedIn profile is a trust builder for the seller-buyer relationship.
Social selling is part of a more global dimension of professional influence and digital leadership. All professionals are involved in a dynamic of professional influence, conscious or not, assumed or not, both on social networks and in real life.
There can be no human relations without trust. At least not in the long term.
1. The recruiter
👨💻 Let's imagine Paul, a serious and hard-working member of the recruitment team.
Paul's job is to manage the company's "recruiter" account on LinkedIn. He takes part in the entire upstream process:
- gathering team requirements,
- construction of the job description,
- drafting the job offer,
- publication of the advert,
- collecting responses,
- selecting profiles to meet.
He could almost conduct the interviews, but that's not his job.
Paul's mission is to find the right person for the right job. All the while remaining hidden behind his screen. Simply connected to LinkedIn to publish the job offers he's in charge of. He's not visible on LinkedIn.
He doesn't show up on LinkedIn. Well, he does, to find his next job. It's a shame, because Paul knows exactly what the company needs and what skills it's looking for, since he's in charge of the job offers.
👩💻 Annie is the recruiter who conducts the interviews. She's the one who makes contact with the candidate. She is the one who is directly visible to candidates on LinkedIn. Or rather, who is "visitable" by candidates.
In fact, there's a very high probability that candidates with whom she has an appointment will prepare for their interview by carefully scanning her profile to get to know her. And the company.
Will her profile create trust? Will it lend credibility to the contact? Will it make people want to respond positively? In other words, is Annie's profile consistent with her objectives? Is it social selling compatible?
The social seller recruiter
A recruiter present on LinkedIn can broaden the scope of his actions to better achieve his business objectives. With his profile, he has a powerful tool for professional influence. For him and his career, probably the only use he can think of.
However, his profile, a veritable digital professional identity card, offers many more opportunities.
He can create a genuine professional network in which potential candidates for vacant positions will evolve. In this network, ambassadors, prescribers and intermediaries will be able to help them in their search.
So what's to stop Paul from going into the huge networking room that is LinkedIn to identify the profile in his network that matches the ad he's working on?
And besides, does a candidate always have to come through the official circuit via an advert?
ℹ️ Some companies use co-optation to increase their chances of finding new recruits. Why not also let "recruiters" become " social sellers " by using the LinkedIn playground to strengthen candidate leads.
Paul has expertise he can share on LinkedIn.
By publishing information, feedback, relaying press articles with his argument, commenting on the publications of members of his network and outside his primary circle, he will not only be visible and crédible as a professional, he or she will also contribute to the company's visibility, to the benefit of the employer brand and its attractiveness.
With a dose of social selling in his daily life, a recruiter will benefit in three ways:
- greater visibility for their expertise
- greater credibility on LinkedIn, because their profile will be consistent with their expertise,
- opportunities to attract talent as well as to identify it through conversations.
A small dose of social selling for big recruitment effects!
2. The salesperson
👩💻 Andrée is a salesperson. With the LinkedIn solution dedicated to her, she can search, identify and follow anyone on LinkedIn without ever being spotted.
She'll only become visible to a prospect when she initiates a public interaction with him through a comment, or a private interaction through a private message. There's no doubt that the buyer will consult her profile to find out who's contacting her.
Will his profile create trust? Will it lend credibility to the contact? Will it inspire a positive response? Is the saleswoman's profile consistent with the expertise she claims to offer this prospect?
Andrée is well aware that her profile is her professional digital identity card.
It must create the trust necessary to trigger the rest of the relationship. A call, a video, an email exchange. Then a meeting in real life, so that she can do her job: identify or reveal her customer's needs and meet them. Andrée is paid for these actions. That's her job description.
Andrée's company is expanding rapidly. She needs to strengthen her teams and recruit. There are also vacancies on Andrée's team. Of course, she's talked about co-optation. Only, her acquaintances are either in post, or not interested in the mission. Besides, not just anyone can be co-opted.
Andrée is an excellent element who develops her professional influence to reach her professional objectives, to make her numbers. She meets a lot of people on LinkedIn. A whole business ecosystem, not just prospects and customers. Collaborators too, perhaps?
The sales rep as recruiter
A sales rep isn't just a sales machine. He or she is as much a representative of the company as a salesperson.
They can influence their business ecosystem by speaking out on LinkedIn. They are therefore attractive and representative. He's a point of contact. An entry point.
For a candidate, he's a valuable source of information on the company's activities, management values and work atmosphere. It is a major player in the employer brand strategy.
ℹ️ And beyond this employer brand, the salesperson can become active in the recruitment process. Admittedly, this is indirect. They are not directly in charge of recruiting. However, they are able to attract and identify talent, and can easily become involved in the entire recruitment chain.
What's stopping Andrée from talking about a vacancy on her team or within her company? Why doesn't Andrée go and find her future colleague herself?
A little dose of recruitment in her social selling approach.
3. All employees
The current tension in companies to attract talent and meet development needs virtually demands that all company players participate in the recruitment dynamic.
👉 Human resources staff, whose core business is recruiting with the tools made available by LinkedIn, can also participate individually in the company's attractiveness with their profile.
A dose of social selling will make them operational for this mission.
👉 Sales people, experts in prospecting to identify customers, are perfectly capable of deploying their talent to identify new employees too.
A dose of recruiter will make them operational.
👉 And beyond the salesperson, all other employees are also indirectly involved in recruitment. They are all in a position to talk about their own expertise learned, developed and delivered within the company. They are all in a position to promote the company's mission.
They all have professional influence. They are all potential recruiters.
It's time to harness the full potential of this platform and of the company's workforce, by combining business expertise to multiply recruitment opportunities!
Article translated from French