The world of recruiting is changing. It’s no longer an effective strategy for recruiters and employers to only post job openings on Monster, CareerBuilder, or other online job boards.
Instead, they’re using resources like niche job boards and social media to reach out to both active and passive candidates and LinkedIn is quickly becoming a go-to resource for recruiters looking to hire top sales people.
Once a sales recruiter finds a potential candidate on LinkedIn, they will decide whether or not to reach out based on certain selection criteria. If your resume stands out to a recruiter, they will then contact you to see if you’re interested in the position and proceed with the next steps in the hiring process.
So what grabs the attention of sales recruiters on LinkedIn? Keep reading to find out common selection criteria sales recruiters use to determine whether or not you’re a top salesperson and how you can optimize your resume to stand out to sales recruiters.
Tenure
One of the first places sales recruiters look when evaluating a candidate’s LinkedIn profile is their ‘Experience’ section. The recruiter will check the dates, previous companies, and positions to see how long you worked at each job.
Recruiters are often very busy and will evaluate many LinkedIn profiles per day. One way to stand out is to make sure the experience section of your profile is up to date and clearly states the companies you have worked at in the past and how long you were with each company. Even if you don’t think you have the best tenure, it’s better to be upfront about a short stint at a company than try to hide this information and have it come out during the hiring process. The recruiter will appreciate being able to quickly identify this information and not have to search through your profile or cross-reference your resume to find it.
Strategic Connections
Another area sales recruiters evaluate is how many LinkedIn connections you have and the quality of your connections. As a sales professional, you should already be active on LinkedIn for prospecting and staying in front of your current client base, and this should be apparent to a sales recruiter.
When you have valuable connections, it shows you’re able to use LinkedIn strategically and that you have contacts in the industry. If you don’t have a lot of connections, then you should incorporate this activity into your daily sales activities. Not only will this help for prospecting, but it will help get you noticed by sales recruiters in your industry.
Sales Groups
In addition to having valuable LinkedIn connections, it’s also important to join sales-related LinkedIn groups. Many recruiters will be in these groups looking for top salespeople and connecting with them. However, if you only join sales related group and then forget about them, it will be harder to stand out to a sales recruiter.
Instead, you should engage in conversations and ask thought-provoking questions. For example, comment on an article another sales professional has shared or ask a question about a recent post from a recruiter. This demonstrates initiative and creates a more natural progression for a professional relationship and even potential job opportunity.
Include Sales Keywords
Many sales reps use keywords to optimize their LinkedIn profiles to be found by potential prospects, not recruiters. This is a great plan, but you can also include keywords that grab the attention of sales recruiters without detracting from your sales strategy.
Recruiters use specific terms when searching for potential candidates and it’s important to include these terms in both your headline, work summary, and experience. One way to make sure your keywords are seen are to add them in your headline. For example, instead of ‘Sales Director at blank Company,’ you could add ‘Sales Director, B2B, Product Development and Revenue Growth.’ This change prevents the relevant search term from being your company name to the keywords you use to describe your skills.
Complete Profile
One of the easiest ways to impress a sales Recruiter with your LinkedIn profile is to make sure it’s complete! It’s surprising to see so many LinkedIn profiles that aren’t finished yet and don’t have key components like a professional photo or summary.
If you don’t have a professional photo yet, that should be the first item on your list to complete. Next, add relevant keywords and a summary of your skills and experience to your profile. You can even add a company Slideshare, links, videos, or presentations you’ve created to your profile too. Having a complete profile shows the sales recruiter that you regularly use LinkedIn and have put in the extra effort to maintain your profile.
Share Relevant Articles
Finally, make sure you’re sharing relevant articles and posts regularly to your profile. This is an especially good tactic if you have many recruiters as connections, but it also something recruiters can view under your activity to see how active you are on LinkedIn. As mentioned above, recruiters will expect you to be familiar with LinkedIn as a sales tool and the more regularly you use it the better.
You can also use social media tools to automate this process or tools like IFTTT to aggregate relevant sales articles for you to post. Either way, consistency is key and this activity will get you noticed by both recruiters and your professional network.
It’s important to optimize your LinkedIn profile to reach new business, and these activities will help you get noticed by sales recruiters, as well as potential prospects.
For more tips on your job search and sales interviews, check out our free candidate interview guide!
