The Modern Recruiter: How Sales and Marketing Skills Work Together

By Michelle Sargent

Key Takeaways

• The recruitment landscape has evolved from a transactional process to an experience-driven approach where jobs are products to be marketed and sold to candidates.

• Modern recruiters must master sales and marketing competencies - from building relationships and managing pipelines to creating compelling employer branding and multi-channel outreach strategies.

• Success requires a candidate-centric approach that combines marketing expertise to attract candidates and sales skills to guide them through the recruitment journey.

Until now, recruiting was a transactional activity. Hiring professionals would write a job description, distribute it to various outlets, and wait for applications. Candidates waited to hear updates or make interview appointments, and the entire process focused solely on the company's needs.

Times have changed. Digital tools make it easier to reach candidates where they are. Talent acquisition is now about creating an experience that makes candidates feel cared for and want to say "yes" to working for an organization.

In other words, jobs have become products that hiring professionals sell to candidates. Marketing campaigns have to appeal to applicants to sell the role and the business environment effectively. Therefore, it is crucial for hiring professionals to have a sales and marketing mindset in modern recruiting.

The Sales-Recruitment Connection

Many talent acquisition professionals recognize that the recruitment process has become a sales pitch for both the business and the role. Given the similarities between recruiting and selling, it's easy to see why.

Essential sales skills for recruiters include active listening, persuasive communication, negotiation, and relationship-building. It is crucial to understand the candidate’s perspective and clearly convey how the role aligns with their goals and aspirations.

Shared Core Competencies

Meeting Needs

Both salespeople and hiring professionals should understand the needs of their target audience. This means knowing what clients (candidates) need and explaining how a product (job) meets those needs.

For the hiring professional, this means crafting an employer brand showcasing what the candidate wants in an employer. A professional branding team can help with this process, giving recruitment marketing professionals access to experts who help build candidate personas and develop and deliver targeted content and messaging around the employee value proposition.

Tip: Recruitics’ RX Studio helps recruitment marketers elevate their employer brand and make a lasting impact, which is the key to attracting and retaining quality talent.

Nurture Relationships

Hiring and sales professionals both build and nurture relationships. Consumers and candidates want to feel that the company they're working with truly cares about them and understands their needs. Fostering relationships builds trust, essential for closing a sale and hiring the best candidate.

Lead Pipeline

Salespeople and talent acquisition professionals need to successfully manage a lead pipeline to keep processes moving forward, preventing the need to  start from scratch each time they need to make a sale or fill a role.

Handle Objections

It’s essential that both talent acquisition and sales professionals handle any objections a candidate or lead might have. For recruiters, this involves anticipating what might keep someone from saying yes and reframing their hesitations as positive opportunities and investments in themselves, their personal lives, and their careers.

Strong Negotiations

Both sales and hiring professionals need strong negotiation skills to negotiate prices (salaries), features (benefits), or other elements to close a deal or get a candidate across the finish line.

The Recruitment/Sales Cycle

While the necessary skills for sales and hiring professionals are similar, so are the cycles each engages in.

Prospecting/Sourcing

For the hiring professional, prospecting is candidate sourcing. Just as salespeople reach out to prospective buyers to generate new business, hiring professionals search for candidates to spark their interest in applying for open roles.

Screening/Qualifying

Both professionals then qualify or screen prospects. This is where potential  candidates are vetted to ensure they have the necessary qualifications and are serious about moving forward, just as salespeople qualify a prospect as someone who might buy their product or service.

Interview/Presentation

The next step for a salesperson is the presentation, where they learn the customer's story and show them how their product or service fits into it. Similarly, talent acquisition professionals interview candidates to get to know them better, determine whether they're the right fit, and show them how the role can help them meet their professional goals.

Offer/Sale

Finally, sales and hiring professionals make an offer or proposal. Closing the deal is critical to ensuring both parties know what they're getting and what to expect going forward.

The Marketing-Recruitment Connection

Just as sales and recruitment require some of the same skills and processes, recruitment also shares similarities with corporate marketing.

Employer Branding

Marketing professionals are responsible for positioning the company using the principles of effective branding. Similarly, recruitment marketing professionals build the employer brand, ensuring that candidates see the company as an organization aligned with their values that will meet their professional needs.

Like marketing professionals, recruitment marketers need to develop captivating campaign materials (and compelling job descriptions) to attract candidates and encourage them to apply. 

Marketing and hiring professionals also should build an attractive value proposition, helping the customer or candidate understand the benefits they will receive in the partnership.

Candidate Attraction Strategies

Talent acquisition and marketing professionals use the same strategies to attract customers and candidates.

Content Strategy

Marketing and recruitment also rely on having a solid content strategy. Both professionals work to deeply understand their target audience and craft content that speaks to their needs and challenges. It’s critical to know where and in what form to put that content to reach the right audience.

Multi-Channel Outreach

Multi-channel outreach is popular with consumers and candidates, as people prefer to receive messaging through the most comfortable avenues. For example, some prefer email newsletters and campaigns, while others appreciate seeing advertisements and announcements on social media. It’s vital for a company to be where their prospects are.

Social Media

A solid social media presence benefits recruitment and marketing professionals. Research shows that 35% of Americans use social media to research or look for jobs. Consumers are also influenced to buy products and services based on the ads and content they see on social media. Sharing engaging content on the appropriate platforms allows marketing professionals to reach millions of prospects or candidates.

Implementation Framework

Recruitment marketing professionals should learn to develop their sales and marketing mindsets. A solid framework helps them achieve that goal and improve hiring metrics.

Assessment and Planning

Before changing recruitment procedures, hiring professionals should audit the current process. Consider the kind of end-to-end candidate experience they are create, including whether they are reaching candidates on multiple preferred channels, providing them with real-time updates and timely feedback, and how easy it is for candidates to get answers to questions.

Talent acquisition professionals should identify the skills gaps in their current workforce. This will inform which employees they can upskill to meet the business needs and for which roles they'll need to hire outside talent. This process helps recruitment marketing professionals write clear and compelling job descriptions, as they'll know exactly how the work connects to broader company objectives.

It’s essential for hiring professionals to track metrics and goals. For example, they may reduce the cost-per-acquisition or time-to-hire by positioning the employer brand well and implementing improved processes for quick candidate feedback.

Action Steps

It’s helpful for the talent acquisition team to build a cross-functional relationship between the hiring, sales, and marketing teams. Sales and marketing experts can share the company's messaging,  help create marketing materials to attract candidates, and show them the methodologies that work for their company to attract customers.

Additionally, measuring and tracking results is essential so hiring professionals know they are achieving their goals. This also helps iterate and improve strategies, demonstrating which aspects of the recruiting process need more work. 

Tip: Recruitics' programmatic job advertising platform uses advanced algorithms to adjust job ad placements based on results and visual analytics for easy analysis.

Implementing a sales and marketing recruitment approach helps talent acquisition professionals gain a competitive advantage in tight labor markets. It targets the right prospects with compelling messaging in the channels where they spend the most time. Additionally, it ensures that the entire process remains candidate-focused from start to finish.

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To develop a more modern approach to talent acquisition, Recruitics offers solutions to improve the employer brand, develop an employee value proposition, and create content that gets conversions. Contact our team today.