In the fevered competition to recruit and hire “A-player” job candidates, many recruiters and HR departments are turning to a different model to get the job done. Imposing the structure of a sales process offers a new way to look at recruitment in general, and how to better position their own companies in particular. This approach might well be the answer to your own recruiting challenges.

Here’s a look at how taking a sales approach to hiring can work for your business:

Adapt elements of sales to recruiting. Your sales team follows a rigorous process of cultivating, nurturing and converting sales leads. With a little imagination, your in-house recruiter can adapt many of these same elements for the hiring process. HR thought leader Kim Shepherd advises following these “sales-like” steps:

Define the value proposition of your company for job candidates.
Reconfigure that value proposition into an appealing message.
Disseminate that message to targeted prospects via job boards, social media, etc.
Qualify and manage “candidate leads” as they come in.
Pursue the most promising candidates and close the deal.

Look at your applicant tracking system as “more than storage for archiving resumes,” Shepherd writes. Use it to “build and manage a pipeline, including measuring leads, tracking conversion rates and even creating the recruitment version of a sales forecast.” In this way you develop clear-cut metrics, including job candidate targets and deliverables.

Act like a high-performing salesperson. The best members of your sales team diligently stay on top of everything happening in the industry—reading blog posts and articles, reviewing trade publications, looking closely at potential clients’ websites and so on.

They also maintain an active presence on social media, passing along helpful links, connecting with influencers and sharing news about your company without openly engaging in a “sales pitch” to job candidates. “Don’t fall in the trap of tweeting sales jobs! Jobs! and more Jobs!” warns Live and Learn Consultancy LTD. “It’s not authentic and guess what, no one listens.”

Become a pro at selling your company. Here’s an area where many businesses can improve their odds of “bagging” the candidates they truly want. Look at the situation from the job-seeker’s perspective and develop compelling answers to these questions:

Why should I want to work for your company?
What does your company offer that I can’t find at one of your competitors?
What growth opportunities do you offer?
How do you foresee the company growing in the near future in ways that benefit me and other potential employees?

These are variations on the types of questions prospective clients ask of any company seeking their business. You’ll see greater interest among job applicants if you answer these questions in an authentic and inspiring manner.

Show off your culture. Just as a salesperson might give a potential client a tour of your business—in order to demonstrate how the culture is geared towards serving customers’ needs—so a recruiter should be prepared to show off your culture to achieve similar results.

Of course, candidates will get a taste of your workplace environment when they show up for an interview, so it’s imperative that they leave with a favorable first impression. Put together a “package tour” so candidates meet your best, most outgoing employees, get the chance to see your technology at work and get a feel for what’s going on. In many ways, this experience might be the “close” to your sales approach.

Finally, even if things don’t work out, be sure to end the budding relationship on a positive note. No one wants a disgruntled job applicant tweeting and posting unfavorable comments about your company based on a bad interview or recruiting experience. You never know when a candidate who wasn’t the right fit might (because he or she remembers how pleasant and approachable your recruiters were) refer a friend or colleague who turns out to be precisely the A-player employee you’re looking for.

Need more help finding top talent? Join us Tuesday, November 22, 2016, for our Business Owner Success Series webinar on “Recruiting When People Are Scarce.”

5 Tips for Effective Digital Recruiting

In the increasingly cut-throat world of employee recruiting, businesses that fail to devise effective digital recruitment strategies face the threat of getting left behind in the dust. That’s because, as the vast majority of prospective job candidates are soon to come from the millennial generation, digital technology is the best way to “speak their language” and draw the interest of this highly sought-after talent pool.

Here are five tips for crafting a digital hiring strategy that yields better results than more traditional recruitment efforts:

1. Focus on creating a memorable first impression.

Before undertaking any other efforts, it’s critically important that your business website—and particularly, your “Careers” page—impress job seekers from the instant they land on your site. The look and feel should be engaging, upbeat and informative (and of course, easy to navigate). A cluttered or amateurish site instantly conveys the notion that a business doesn’t have its act together—and can discourage candidates from looking any further.

Think of your site as a “company storefront” where visitors are treated to a display of your culture and products. Such a storefront must “deliver a cohesive brand image that reflects the company mission, vision and values,” notes HR expert Amber Hyatt. The brand experience, combined with in-depth job descriptions and online applications, “engages job seekers and helps them determine proactively if they are a cultural fit to the organization, and whether to apply.”

2. Showcase your brand on multiple platforms.

Remember, prospective candidates come to your business from a wide array of online sources. Putting together a noteworthy company profile on LinkedIn is a necessary first step—with special attention paid to highlighting your company culture—but no business can afford to stop there. Your brand must have a significant presence, and following, on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram as well.

Maintaining a consistent message across various platforms is key. Since it’s your brand that “gives you the ultimate credibility,” be sure to “use the same banners, icons and style across the platforms and continue this theme into your website.” This way, your brand and messaging are familiar wherever job seekers encounter them.

3. Focus on providing content that engages and informs.

Both on your business and career sites, and in your social media outreach efforts, pay close attention to the kind of content you offer to followers. Tweets, posts, articles, etc., should reflect your company’s upbeat, employee-friendly culture. In order to reach the widest possible audience, mix things up with a blend of images, short videos, surveys, and so on that engage job candidates and keep them coming back for more.

4. Make the online job application process quick and easy to complete.

If you successfully grab the interest of a prospective candidate, don’t make the mistake of putting obstacles in the way of completing your online job applications. A variety of technology options should be considered, from dedicated candidate job portals to employee referral networks—anything that leverages integrated platforms to ease the application process. (Additionally, this will impress job seekers looking for companies proficient in digital technology.)

5. Incorporate big data in your recruiting efforts.

The same “big data” technology used to attract new customers can be applied to your recruiting efforts. Look into high-quality recruitment analytics programs that gather key data such as:

Typical applicant online behavior
Job website visits
Job description searches
Favorite social media platforms
Profile updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

“In the near future, most HR departments (many large companies already do) will have access to considerable pools of data that can tell a recruiter more about candidates than they know about themselves,” writes marketing specialist Aleah Radovich.

Adding a “digital dimension” to your recruiting strategies will broaden the range and scope of potential candidates, including the right type of talented individuals you want in your business.