I’ve got a quick salesperson recruiting tip for you today. You know, it’s really hard in today’s market to just put advertisements out there on job classifieds and HOPE that you’re going to get a strong salesperson candidate. The reality is, many (not all!) of the great salespeople are working, and so we need to do a combined strategy of hunting and fishing if we’re really going to get the best candidates. One of the best places to look for salespeople today of course is LinkedIn. (You can watch the video or scroll down for a Transcript)

The problem with LinkedIn, is it can be a bit cumbersome to work with. Because it is meant to stay personal, it is difficult to automate. The other day, I was working with Jeff, one of the clients in our my program. Jeff and I were going over his personal LinkedIn profile and updating it because what we want to do with his profile right now is make it magnetic to candidates who are currently working, but who might at least be considering looking for another job (PASSIVE CANDIDATES).

What we did was tweak his profile, and that is one of the first things you need to do. You need to tweak your profile and think about what you want your sales candidates to see if they come to your profile. If you look at their profile and they in turn look back at yours, what are they seeing? Does anything in your LinkedIn profile tell them that you’re interested in a new salesperson that might fit their description?

The question of the day is:

What does your LinkedIn profile say to the people that you’re trying to recruit?

I hope that’s helpful. I hope you go back and take a look at your profile and make some changes.

If you’d like to request a copy of our LinkedIn optimization for salesperson recruiting tips, go ahead and email me at: wayne.herring@theherringgroup.com and I’ll send you a copy. And we’re not connected on LinkedIn I hope you look me up!

Thanks!