A recruiter is a social seller. And vice versa.
The LinkedInplatform is often seen as 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 the members of the LinkedIn platform, whether they are active or passive .
Indeed, LinkedIn is a tool for conversations between professionals, conducive to the creation of trust. It's time to break down the 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 publishing job offers.
The latter can deploy their commercial prospecting, social selling (or modern selling as LinkedIn now calls it) approach.
These two services are managed via their own interface. The individual's LinkedIn account is the means of connecting to these interfaces.
Take inspiration and mix
What if each function took a little from the other? What if we made these two silos more permeable, so that we could 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 salespeople. Their LinkedIn profile is a confidence 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, whether conscious or not, whether assumed or not, both on social networks and in real life.
There can be no human relationships without trust. At least not in the long term.
1. The recruiter
👨💻 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 the needs of the teams
- drawing up the job description
- writing the job advert,
- publication of the advert,
- collecting responses,
- selecting profiles to meet.
He could almost conduct the interviews, but that's not part of his remit.
Paul's job is to find the right person for the job. All the while remaining hidden behind his screen. He's simply connected to LinkedIn to publish the job offers for which he's responsible. He's not visible on LinkedIn.
He doesn't appear on LinkedIn. Well, he is, 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 vacancies.
👩💻 Annie is the recruiter who conducts the interviews. She is the one who makes contact with the candidate. She is the one who is directly visible to candidates on LinkedIn. Or rather, who can be 'visited' by candidates.
In fact, there's a very strong likelihood that the candidates with whom she meets will prepare for their interview by carefully browsing her profile to get to know her. And the company.
Will her profile create trust? Will it give 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 compatible with social selling?
The social seller recruiter
A recruiter with a presence on LinkedIn can broaden the scope of their actions to better achieve their business objectives. With their profile, they have a powerful tool for professional influence. For him and his career, probably the only use he can think of.
However, their profile, a veritable digital professional identity card, offers many more opportunities.
They can create a genuine professional network in which potential candidates for the positions they want to fill will evolve. In this network, ambassadors, influencers 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 directly in his network the profile that matches the advert he's working on?
And besides, does a candidate always have to come through the official channel via an advert?
ℹ️ Some companies use co-optation to increase their chances of finding new recruits. Why not let "recruiters" become " social sellers " too , using the LinkedIn playground to strengthen candidate leads.
Paul has expertise that 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 first circle, he will not only be visible and creadible as a professional, they will also be helping to raise the company's profile, to the benefit of the employer brand and its attractiveness.
With a dose of social selling in their daily lives, recruiters 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 and 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 will only become visible to a prospect when she initiates a public interaction with him by making a comment, or a private interaction by sending a private message. There is no doubt that buyers who are approached in this way will consult their profile to find out who is contacting them.
Will their profile create trust? Will it give credibility to the contact? Will it make them want to respond positively? Is the sales rep'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 needed 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 respond to 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 in Andrée's team. She has of course talked about co-option. But the people she knows are either already in post or not interested in the job. And not just anyone can be co-opted.
Andrée is an excellent candidate who is developing her professional influence in order to achieve her professional objectives and make money. She meets a lot of people on LinkedIn. A whole business ecosystem, not just prospects and customers. Perhaps her colleagues too?
The sales rep as recruiter
A sales rep is not just a sales machine. They are as much a representative of the company as they are a salesperson.
They can influence their business ecosystem by speaking out on LinkedIn. They are therefore attractive and representative. They are a point of contact. An entry point.
For a candidate, they are a valuable source of information about the company's activities, management values and working environment. It is a major player in the employer brand strategy.
ℹ️ And beyond this employer brand, sales staff can play an active role in the recruitment process. Admittedly, this is indirect. They are not directly responsible for 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 in her team or within her company? Why wouldn't Andrée go and find her future colleague herself?
A little dose of recruitment in her social selling approach.
3. All employees
The current pressure on companies to attract talent and meet their development needs means that virtually everyone in the company needs to be involved in the recruitment process.
👉 Human resources staff, whose core activity is to recruit using the tools made available to them by LinkedIn, can also contribute individually to the attractiveness of the company 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 sales person, all the 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 use the full potential of this platform and the strengths of companies by combining business expertise to multiply recruitment opportunities!
Article translated from French