Suky talks about the perception that recruiters are aggressive in their sales approach, and why she thinks that this isn’t always the case. She also shares her take on why candidates might benefit from being a little more open minded when it comes to having a conversation with a recruiter.
Transcription
Hi I’m Suky from Professional Selection. Today I’d like to talk about something that I’m constantly reading on social media platforms, LinkedIn and so forth, about how pushy and aggressive salespeople and recruiters actually are. I find that really interesting because by its very definition, sales, we’re handling objections. Doesn’t matter whether we’re in the recruitment industry or we’re selling tables, pens, software, doesn’t matter. You’ve got to know your product and there is a simple art of sales.
Something I read quite a bit is how recruiters will send out generic emails without really having looked at an individual’s profile to see the skillset relevance and so forth. Yeah, I’ll give you that one, there’s no excuse for that, there’s no need for that. If you’re just mass mailing anybody that has a certain search word in their CV you deserve everything you get. So as a recruiter if you’re doing that, stop it. That does nobody any good.
Now however if you’ve sent somebody an email and their skill set is not quite right, so for example it might be a job that they’ve done two years ago. It’s interesting because a lot of people get offended, saying I’m way past that. But as a candidate I encourage you to possibly entertain that call or entertain learning more about that role. I’ll tell you for why.
There are so many jobs, simply with the jobs and the growth and and vision of the hiring company, we simply can’t put it all on email. So that might be something worth having a conversation about, because you never know where that company is planning on going. Could be exactly what you’re looking for in your next role. So I would encourage you to have that conversation.
When it comes to some of the other comments I hear is: “oh the recruiter pushed me into having that interview, pushed me into talking to that particular company, I didn’t like it.” Well, hey, we’re adults, say no. It’s literally as simple as that and give the recruiter your reason. Now what I would say, and I’ll do that if I believe that a candidate really should be talking with this company because based on my conversation with a candidate, what they’re looking for in a company and so forth. If I believe it’s a match I will often say to the candidate: “Trust me this once, have this conversation. Twenty minutes, half an hour of your time.” In the overall scheme of things it’s not a long time. However once you’ve spoken to the company it could change your opinion. We have and I’m sure all recruiters have stories like this, and candidates too, where they are encouraged to have that initial call that they were reluctant to, but subsequently they go on to joining that company.
To me that’s not aggressive sales. To me that is a recruiter doing what they’re meant to do: helping candidates find the right company and helping employers find the right candidates. Of course same goes with employers. We often hear about employers talking about how the recruiter was pushing them to see a candidate and it didn’t fit the brief that they’d given, because guess what they wanted ten must-haves and their candidate only had eight must-haves. Again we’re dealing with human beings, right? So I don’t see that as aggressive. You talk to your recruiter, if your recruiter is partnering with you and they’ve spoken to a candidate that they think you should be speaking to as an employer you owe it to your company. As the hiring manager or the recruiter you owe it to your company to speak to that candidate.
Anyway I’m sure there’s a million other examples of what people class as aggressive sales. Would love to hear your opinion, feel free to leave your comments below. Thanks for listening.
