Why Do Recruiters Do Well in Sales?

Well for starters, recruiting is sales.

If you’re a strong salesperson, it rarely matters if you’re pitching technology, insurance or ice cream. Whether it’s on the phone or in person, if you know how to reach out to a complete stranger, anticipate their pain points and provide them with a kick-ass solution, then you’re a strong sales person. How is selling a candidate to a hiring manager any different? Or an opportunity to a prospective candidate?

It’s not.

A lot of recruiters have experience in the agency world and this requires a ton of prospecting and cold-calling. This is a skill that is easily transferable into a lead generation or inside sales position where you are required to make X amount of dials, have X amount of conversations, set up X amount of appointments, which should lead to X amount of opportunities per day, week, month, quarter and year.

Recruiters operate in the same way. Their performance is also measured on how many prospects they reach out to, how many resumes they obtain, and how many phone screens, interviews and placements are ultimately made. It’s this metrics and results-driven mentality that both recruiters and salespeople share which make the skills incredibly interchangeable.

Understanding the existence of these parallels has enabled me to place both agency and corporate recruiters into lead generation, inside sales and even a few outside sales roles. Over the past year, just about 1 in 5 sales hires I’ve made have had experience in recruiting. So when finding top talent to push your product, don’t limit yourself to the same cookie-cutter profile and consider giving us head-hunters a look.