Build an Interview

Six Core Selling Principles

Lou Adler

1. KNOW THE JOB. To become a top salesperson in any field requires great product knowledge. You must know the job to establish credibility and maintain control. Knowing the job allows you to become a partner with your hiring manager clients and a counselor for your candidates. The best salespeople in the world -- whether they're selling vacuum cleaners, cars, software, or high technology -- know their product lines and the benefits they provide their clients. If you don't know the product, you come across as being either superficial or overbearing. This is not how you recruit top talent.

Knowing the job means you can describe the challenges and growth opportunities in the job and how these relate to the company strategy. This also means you have time to confer with the hiring manager and hiring team to discuss what's important and what's not. The traditional job description is not the job. The job is what the person needs to do to be successful, not the list of skills the person is required to have.

2. USE SOLUTION- OR CONSULTATIVE-SELLING TECHNIQUES. There are two basic types of selling techniques: transactional and consultative. Transactional selling tends to involve goods and services that require little customization. Price and time to close are the keys to success here. Straight contingency recruiters fall within this model, especially if they are competing with other contingency firms.

Consultative or solution-selling is used when customization is required. This involves needs analysis, the development of product specs, and more interpersonal involvement with the salesperson and customer. Retained search is similar to this type of sales model. The likelihood of consistently finding good people using a transactional sales model is low, but with a consultative sales model, it's high.

Using a consultative sales approach, the recruiter needs to have more personal involvement with candidates and the hiring manager. As part of this, recruiters shouldn't look at success as closing the deal but in moving the process forward. They need to first find out what the person is capable of and interested in doing. Then, they need to move the process forward, using each step in the interviewing process as a means to exchange more and more information.

3. CLOSE UPON AN OBJECTION. The key to solution-selling is the ability to overcome candidate and hiring manager concerns with a promise of getting the required information. For example, "If we could demonstrate that this job clearly offers 15-20% job stretch in combination with 5-10% long-term growth, would it make sense to spend a few hours meeting with the hiring manager and a few key members of the interviewing team?" This is a good rebuttal to use when the candidate balks about coming in for a personal interview. You'll need to find out what's holding the candidate back; if she says that the online job description doesn't look like a big enough position, say that the offer to come in is predicated on the fact that the job is in fact bigger than described. Of course, don't waste your time here if the job isn't truly bigger. Alternatively, you can try to get the hiring manager to make the job bigger by adding a few important projects or by expanding the scope of responsibility.

4. PERSIST -- DON'T TAKE "NO" FOR AN ANSWER. When candidates say they are not interested or won't proceed, it's usually due to one of two reasons: either they don't want to talk to you, or they're using incorrect information to make a decision. The "don't take no" advice is based on the idea that you need to consider a "no" as a request for more information, not a "no" decision. If the recruiter accepts the "no" as real, he'll normally go into defensive mode or try to intimidate the candidate in some way.

It's far better to get the person to reconsider her position with the proviso of providing correct information. For example, if the candidate says she's not interested in meeting the hiring manager after you've conducted the phone screen, you'll need to quickly find out why. If she then says that she's heard bad things about the manager, you'll need to say something like, "That's exactly why you need to come in and evaluate the situation for yourself." When she asks why, just say that it's obvious she wouldn't even consider an offer if what she believes is true; however, this is inconsistent with what others say about this manager. Then use the close-upon objection technique and ask, "If it were shown that the manager is really a strong mentor, would you consider coming in and determining this for yourself?"

Not taking "no" for an answer, in combination with the close-upon objection technique, can keep many deals alive which would have normally died were it not for the recruiter's intervention.

5. SWITCH THE DECISION-MAKING CRITERIA. When evaluating career opportunities, most candidates instinctively overvalue short-term tactical criteria (such as location, company name, title, and compensation) instead of the long-term strategic career factors (like job stretch, chance to make an impact, job growth, and visibility). On the evaluation side, most interviewers overvalue skills, presentation, the likeability factor, and one or two narrow competencies, instead of the candidate's ability and motivation to handle all of the broad requirements of the job. To be a good recruiter, you need to change the criteria that candidates and interviewers use to make decisions.

Preparing a performance profile is the first step. This forces the interviewing team to focus on measurable criteria, rather than on vague subjective data. The performance profile also becomes the basis for establishing an opportunity gap for the candidate. This is the difference between the candidate's current job and the new position. You need job knowledge, solution-selling skills, persistence, and the ability to counter rebuttals to switch the decision methodology that both candidates and interviewers use from something superficial and flawed to something more meaningful and predictive.

6. DEFEND YOUR CANDIDATE. By the very nature of the relationship, hiring managers have more influence in the hiring decision than the recruiter. Despite this, recruiters need to be able to counter bad decisions made by hiring managers due to weak assessment skills. Since recruiters don't outrank their clients nor can they outtalk them, recruiters can only do this by providing evidence of competency. Knowing the job is part of this.

During the interview, recruiters need to obtain detailed examples of past accomplishments that compare most directly to those listed in the performance profile. If there is a formal debriefing session, the recruiter can present these facts, dates, figures, details, and points when anyone on the interviewing team presents superficial, vague, narrow, or invalid information. If the recruiter can lead these debriefing sessions, all the better.

Being a successful recruiter is not about presenting a bunch of resumes with the hope that one sticks. It's about knowing the job, finding candidates who are fully capable of doing this work, and then closing the deal. Recruiting is a complex form of solution-selling made more difficult by the fact that both buyers and sellers have to be sold. However, by just using the techniques described above, you'll be able to handle nearly every objection you're likely to hear from your candidates or your clients. As far as I'm concerned, it takes great recruiters to hire great candidates, and it takes great selling skills to be a great recruiter.

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