MLM Lessons From a Professional Recruiter

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 1:33 AM

At my day job, I am the Recruiting Manager for a software engineering company. It’s not terrible as jobs go, but it is a job, and therefore it is evil and must be destroyed! Whew, sorry, I had to get that out! Anyway, there are a few lessons I’ve learned in 10 years of recruiting, which apply directly to this business. Grasp these concepts, and you can be well on your way to success in network marketing. Fail to grasp them, and you can roll the dice on Social Security and your 401(k).

POSITION DESCRIPTION – Capturing the requirements of the position allows me to capture a vision of what my ideal candidate looks like, and compare every candidate I come across against that standard. It allows me to clearly identify their strengths and weaknesses, and evaluate where my opportunities to learn new things to help my new employee may come. Do you know what qualities you want your next distributor to have? At one point in my business, my only qualifications were a pulse and a social security number, and the pulse was negotiable! What a surprise that I wandered in the wilderness for so long!

RECRUIT QUALIFIED APPLICANTS – My employer’s primary business is software engineering, so I target my recruiting efforts to people who either; are software engineers, were software engineers, or want to be software engineers. I can’t make bee keepers into software engineers, no matter how hard I try, no matter how nice they are, and no matter how sharp they seem. If you have non-negotiable qualification traits in mind that your prospect doesn’t have, THEY ARE
NOT QUALIFIED, AND YOU CANNOT MAKE THEM QUALIFIED. If you sponsor that person, more than likely, they will end up being the “If THIS person can build it, ANYONE can build it” story of your business.

FIND PEOPLE INTERESTED IN YOUR POSITION – Cold calling, at work or in my business, is the bane of my existence. Reason being, cold calling provides the greatest chances for failure of any activity that can be performed, and for no other reason than the person is just NOT INTERESTED. If you want to hunt for whales, you have to fish where whales swim, it’s just that simple. If the candidate is not interested in my position, it’s not my job to make them interested, or convince them about how great my company is, tell them how many levels deep the commission structure pays or how many celebrities are on our team. Conversely, if they are interested, it is definitely my job to find out what it is about my opportunity that they need, and highlight how we can help them achieve it.

ASSESS THE CANDIDATES WANTS – In particular, assess them against the available role. Does the person want additional training that we offer? Does this candidate want to be a part of a team, and have a personal mentor, and does our opportunity provide them both? When this is in place, there’s little to no selling involved. You’ve identified that person’s needs, and how you can meet them.
Recruiting for my job, just like what we do in network marketing, is not a sales function, but a marketing function. This business becomes easy when we keep the main thing the main thing: build a network of qualified people, and market our opportunity to them. Keep this in mind, and the rest will come easy!