How to Recruit Salespeople Using Social Media: Tips for Different Platforms

This is part four of a four part series about how sales managers and recruiters should hire salespeople using social media.
So far we've covered:
1. catchy job title that either describes the position, or captures attention
2. don't use industry jargon in the ad-not all jargon is the same
3. be clear about the duties and expectations you are looking for in this person

There are other basics that need to be in place,
(I'll save those for later when you become my client, I can't give away all my secrets for free), however the tips above and below should be enough to get you started.

Now that the basics are out of the way, how should you best use social media to recruit salespeople? There are lots of ways, however I'm going to give you some different ideas to take advantage of for three popular social media sites:

Twitter:1. Make sure if you tweet that you are looking for salespeople, you include a link to a job posting or job description rather than a homepage or any other place that doesn't talk specifically about the job. Remember that most people check Twitter while on the go somewhere, coffee shops, lunch, so they want the information right away.

2. Tweet the job description with different titles. Remember you only have 140 characters to get your message out. Some words will resonate with some job seekers and some will not.

3. Shorten the link to your job posting to save you character space on your messages. Sites like http://bit.ly/ are great sites to do this.

4. Use Job Angels to spread the word about your job. For more information how it works: http://twitter.com/JobAngels


Facebook:For recruiting on Facebook many of the same things that are listed above for Twitter will apply, but used in a different way. Try the following:
1. Post the job regularly on the wall with different titles to draw attention of different job seekers.

2. Shorten the link to your job posting. With Facebook apps more people receive their updates on their phone. This helps save space when reading the message on their screen. A sites like http://bit.ly/ can help.

3. Use the photo albums to post pictures about the company, company outings, the job, the other salespeople. Use the photo captions to help explain the job and the culture. Make sure the pictures are realistic if it involves the duties of the job, but positive when it comes to the culture.

4. Post video messages about the job. Maybe a message from the sales manager, testimonial from a customer, anything that gives the feel for the job. These videos can also be shared on YouTube.com so if the candidate searches on YouTube (as of this writing it is the second biggest search engine behind Google) they can find you there as well.

5. Make sure there is something new posted about the job on a regular basis. In the event the job is sent to a job seeker by several different people the job seeker will have a reason to look because there is something different.

LinkedIn:
Once again there are some things that will be in common with Twitter and Facebook, however unlike those two sites, LinkedIn tries to be more of a business and business networking site as opposed to a social site.

1. Use the status tool to update every few days something new about the job. Post the job title one time. A few days later post one quality needed or one benefit about the job. Continue to do so until you have a good pool of candidates. Changing the status keeps the job top of mind in the network.

2. Link with others who do the same job or in the same industry. Birds of a feather hang out together and they can spread the word about the opportunity.

3. Use the applications section to post information about the job and company. Post a power point with details about the job, list books you want the salespeople to read or have read, post videos, link to the company blog.

4. Post the ad in the job section

5. Anytime you mention the ad, have a link to the ad available.

6. Shorten the URL of the ad (I'm not getting paid to endorse bit.ly but they are the one I use the most, I'll take two checks please!). It is not as critical on LinkedIn I believe because the title can help people see what the job is about since this is a site for business, however the status box does limit the amount of characters so a shorter URL can be helpful if it is a long job title. Twitter and Facebook are now tied into LinkedIn so it can help as you cross post from LinkedIn.

I hope you have enjoyed this series of tips on how to recruit salespeople using social media. Try them and see how they improve your results!

Everet
A Heck of A Nice Guy
To read the other parts of this four part series click on the link below:

how-to-recruit-sales-people-on-social media: Creative Title

recruiting-salespeople No Jargon

hire-salespeople: Tips for Different Social media Platforms
Recruit-salespeople-on-social: Be Blunt

How To Recruit Salespeople with Social Media Tip #3: No Jargon

This is tip #3 of 4 about how you as a sales manager or sales recruiter can be effective recruiting salespeople on social media. While I'm using sales as my example, these tips can be used to recruit ALL kinds of positions.

Here is tip #3: Use plain English when creating the title and in the job description, NOT company jargon.

Sometimes the temptation is to use industry or company jargon. People think that qualified job seekers with industry experience will know what the position is because they will know what the jargon means. While that does have some validity, don’t forget that companies or industries don’t always speak the same jargon as your company.

One recent position on a social media site was titled:
Financial Sales Representative II

What is this position?
A Stock broker? Financial planner? Life Insurance sales?
In reading the description it was a bank teller who could open up new saving/checking accounts.
A better title would have been: "New Accounts Teller" or "New Checking/Saving Accounts Teller"
Including the word "teller" is simple, easy to understand, everyone knows what it is, and it doesn't confuse the position with an outside or inside sales position (on a separate note, when did the word "teller" become a bad word? No bank or credit union uses it anymore).
People inside the banking industry might know what a "Financial Sales Representative II" is, however as a company you might get candidates clicking on the position that are not qualified or think the position is something it is not. To me "Financial Sales Representative II" sounds like someone that sells mutual funds or bonds. As a salesperson I was interested in it. I clicked on the posting as was surprised at what I saw.
As a candidate you've wasted my time by having me click on a posting that I'm not interested in. It is also a waste of your time if I apply for the position and I'm not qualified.

Avoiding jargon, using plain language, and being blunt can also avoid confusion and save everyone time.

Try the above tip the next time you advertise a sales position and see the difference it makes in your results.
So far I've given you three tips for recruiting salespeople using social media.

To read the other parts of this four part series click on the link below:

how-to-recruit-sales-people-on-social media: Creative Title

recruiting-salespeople No Jargon

hire-salespeople: Tips for Different Social media Platforms
Recruit-salespeople-on-social: Be Blunt
Thanks!
Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy