After working in the staffing industry for more than 15 years, one of the questions I most often hear is, “How do we make our recruiting/sales teams work more effectively together?”
It’s a great question because it’s truly at the heart of every company and determines the success for the firm. I say the phrase all the time, “We are in the people business!” This is very true, and not just on the client side. It’s our internal people working well together that makes the company great.
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So what is that recipe? I believe that creating the best working relationships within the company, and letting them flourish, is a major part of it. All companies are comprised of different people, from different backgrounds, with different likes and interests. As much as people would like to believe that we can drop all of them into a successful “system” and get a positive result, it’s just not the case. While it can be a process of trial and error, I think it’s an important process to go through in identifying, which team members work well together. It’s human nature that certain people will gel together, and that they will feed off of each other’s successes, as well as their failures. But in the end, they will be very productive together and create success for the company.
A good recruiter who cares about the personal success of their sales person can really make them better at their job and assist in several areas. Recruiters are the eyes and ears of the industry. It’s not uncommon for them to know about opportunities before the sales person gets the official word on a project. With that right relationship in place, they can work together to put the company ahead of their competition and ultimately get a leg up on the business.
The key to creating that type of relationship is mutual respect, and a true caring attitude for each other. These aren’t always easy elements to come by in the average workplace environment. Management has to play a role in creating this type of team commitment and passion for what they are doing together.
I have had the opportunity to see several environments where teams were assembled together and they just did not have the compassion for one another to succeed on both a team level, as well as an individual level. Consequently, no matter how good the business opportunity, they were not able to make a success of it.
The core of our staffing business is our people, the people we work to place, and the people that we call our clients. The simple common denominator of all of these groups is that they are made up of individuals. If we embrace that reality, and realize that certain people do work better with other specific people, it can be a pretty simple recipe that tastes oh so good for a long time.
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