This past summer, I worked at a staffing agency called FTSI.Tech. I wanted to talk about this for one of my blog posts because I did some form of sales this summer. A staffing agency is is a company where you recruit people for certain jobs. You’re like a headhunter. This internship had a mixture of human resources (my major) as well as some sales.
You’re probably wondering, how is there sales involved in recruiting? Well, this summer my job was to find people that fit the qualifications for the job and try to convince them to leave their current job and work for the one I’m recruiting for. If I’m being honest, it was for sure hard in the beginning. Having to call people with never talking to them before was super intimidating, especially because I felt so much younger than the people I was calling. I learned though that it’s all about the people skills you have. If you can sound confident, relate to the person on the other end of the phone, and convince them that this opened job is a lot better than their current one, then you’ll do great in recruitment. It’s also about forming relationships with the people on the phone and never forcing them into something that they don’t want to do.
Overall, I’m glad that I did that internship last summer because it allowed for me to realize that people skills are so important, especially in sales. Salesmen for sure have a bad reputation when you think of them as a whole, but the good ones are actually just trying to help people out. 🙂
BoweryJE22
I feel like we underestimate people skills in general, and this is a perfect example why. Everybody thinks a recruiter’s job would just be to ask people if they want a job and then either hang up or give them info, depending on the answer. But we don’t want to take random recruiting offers from people we’ve just met, unless they show us that they care about us. People want to know that they are cared for. If people feel acknowledged, no matter what field you are in, they will always be more co-operative.
I think this recruiting job is a great example of how there are so many different occupations and positions in which you can utilize sales techniques to be more successful. I like how even though you felt intimidated in the beginning, you made the effort to sound confident as this would help you actually feel confident and comfortable in the future when communicating with people on the phone.
What a great internship! Headhunting for a set position absolutely relates to sales. You as the hunter are interested in helping both the hunted and your company have the best possible relationship. If both parties are impacted in a negative manner than overall that will impact on how individuals view your company and those who work there.
Olivia, this post was so fun to read, I really enjoyed hearing about your internship, it sounds awesome! It sounds like you had to do some hard things and use a lot of sales tactics. It sounds like it was a pretty difficult task of trying to connect with people over the phone, but that is impressive that you were able to do pull it off! Well done, this was a great post!
Even things that at first seem like don’t have anything with sales in the end, indeed do have something to do with sales. Like you said at first you would think there would be any sales worth with this internship but heading for the right people definitely needed some sales tactics, great post!