Two decades ago, a people person who could draw others out to talk about their work challenges made for a great salesperson in the staffing industry. Today the industry asks for techsavvy subject-matter experts who understand the client’s need. To be successful, salespeople need to embrace the new reality. Here’s how.

The Beginning

Back in the day, someone with an engaging personality and innate ability to get people to talk about what they do had a very successful career selling staffing services. It was a feel-good job where you could see first-hand how you affect the lives of others. The best salespeople had access to their client offices could talk with hiring managers about the challenges of getting their projects done while you assured them you could find just the perfect candidate to make their life better.

Today’s Role

Now, the role of the staffing salesperson is significantly different. From preferred vendor lists to vendor management systems (VMS) and at the time dreaded managed services providers (MSPs), the salesperson is left to spend his days in the office hovering over several different VMS systems thanks to the advent of technology. The popularity — not to mention the convenience of VMS — has led to widespread adoption. A salesperson needs to understand the technology landscape and learn to use systems that can make them more efficient. For instance, they must manage the number of candidates that are submitted for each requisition by recruiters who are motivated by placements not by submittals via a VMS with little to no feedback from the hiring manager on the candidates. The salesperson gets discouraged, the recruiters get discouraged, and the worst is the candidates get discouraged and stop putting their faith and trust in the recruiters. The old way of selling no longer works.

Know Your Client

How can staffing firms grow their business in today’s arms-distant world? What can they do differently? There is still a need for the high-touch oriented service, and that can be achieved through specialization. Specialization among the sales force where the salespeople truly understand their client’s business enables the staffing firm to be more efficient in providing candidates — whether there is direct contact with the hiring manager or not. Utilizing available technology can make demonstrating your knowledge of the clients’ business more efficient than the old way giving more time to support multiple customers with similar needs. From the recruitment side, the same holds true; through specialization and technology that supports a more “social” relationship, the recruiter can build virtual communities of candidates with similar skills sets and be seen as the expert in delivering project opportunities to the candidates in their community. Altogether, the addition of technology was and will continue to be intended to support a higher level of productivity in a people-oriented business.

Successful salespeople and recruiters have found the ways to max out the possibilities with technology and tools. Use Twitter to push hot opportunities to a pre-qualified group of workers with a particular skill set. Create social media groups for candidates to share latest experiences, post questions to support resolving a problem, and most importantly provide continual care and feeding to every candidate you will need to support your clients.

A career in staffing can continue to provide the level of personal satisfaction and lucrative income like it did in the past, you just need to embrace the changing times and imagine the possibilities. z