10 years ago, when I was a senior in college, I remember spending hours of time on Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and CareerBuilder. I had uploaded my résumé to each platform and scoured the medical device job postings daily, submitting my résumé with the click of a button to any position that seemed relevant to Sales. Several weeks into my search, my email inbox was littered with auto-generated denials from recruiters and spam emails from the job site platforms I was using. The majority of the companies I had applied to hadn’t even bothered to send me a rejection letter. I felt frustrated, lost, and dejected.
I then pivoted to a new strategy. I stack ranked the top 10 companies I was most interested in throughout my job search. For each of those 10 positions, I went on LinkedIn and typed in keywords that included the company’s name, the job title I was interested in, and either the keywords “sales recruiter” or “talent acquisition”. I connected with any individual that populated from my search that also currently worked for the company I was interested in. In most cases, I was able to connect with an actual sales recruiter. In some cases, I was able to connect with a sales manager or a sales representative for that company and kindly asked that person for contact information for their recruiting team.
Each time I sent a “connect” invite, I included a personalized message to that individual expressing my interest for an open position I found on their website and why I believed I would be a good fit as a candidate. Out of the 10 companies I targeted on LinkedIn, I received responses from an individual working for that organization in 8 of them. Out of those 8 responses, I was able to get phone screenings with 5 of those companies, which led to 3 in-person interviews. I received a job offer from one of those companies, and that is still the medical device company I work for today.
So, why does the LinkedIn method work better than using other job platform sites or even applying on the company’s website directly? One, sales recruiters often receive hundreds of candidate résumés for a single job posting. Because of the sheer volume of résumés they receive, they often sort through these by searching for keywords in the résumé. Or, they spend roughly 5-10 seconds glancing at each résumé to stack rank their top 10-15 candidates that they wind up responding to. I know this because I work very closely with the talent acquisition team at my company, and I often do the same thing as the hiring manager. Second, as a sales leader, I am looking for candidates who take initiative. I am much more inclined to respond to someone who sends me a personal message on LinkedIn of why they are interested in my job posting rather than seeing just another résumé.
Recently, I hired an entry level associate that came from a service-oriented background working for an orthopedics company. This is the first time I hired someone from this background for reasons I explained in Part 1 of this series. This individual not only sent me a personalized message on LinkedIn, he also did his research and uncovered who the 6 sales representatives were that worked for me and sent them a personalized message as well. Most of my sales team responded to him and gave him a phone call. Within a couple of days, members of my team were calling me telling me I had to interview this guy. Before even meeting him or speaking with him on the phone, this individual showed me that he had a strong passion to join our organization, and that he can certainly take initiative to go after something that he wanted. Despite not having the strongest background out of our candidate pool, we hired him for the job as he continued to show the level of grit and persistence that he was capable of during the interview process. In most cases, that grit and persistence can go a lot further in providing you a seat at the table for a job interview rather than what’s on your résumé.
Speaking of résumés, more to come on how to have yours stand out in the next part of this series.
Sincerely,
S.M.K., The Sale’s Mentor’s Playbook