'Sales & Marketing' in 'Recruitment Process'

The most important phase of career of any person is of the first exposure to the corporate world, the time person searches for a job. This is the time when a person gives more than his 100% to get a job he desires.

Let us bring a new perspective to the whole selection process of companies, by bringing analogy in 'recruitment' and 'Sales & marketing

Let's first look upon the selection process of any company, which can be understood from the theory of 'purchase behavior' of customer. If we take the perspective of a company (customer) going for buying new products(employees), the process which is adopted is same as the purchasing behavior of any customer.

The selection starts from the step of need recognition, where companies have the demand from different departments for workforce, to handle the increasing pressure or requirement of better skills.

Then the next step is information search by respective company, about the potential candidates, their requirements and expectations from the company. 

The third step is evaluation of alternatives (candidates), by following the process of Group discussions and Personal Interviews. In this step, companies churn out non suitable candidates out of the process.

Next step is purchase decision, where companies decide which candidate will be fit for which job and recruit accordingly. 

Post purchase evaluation is the process of performance evaluation  of the recruited employee and accordingly decide whether to keep the employee or not.

Thus Recruiting & marketing have an analogy, but is there any similarities between getting selected in the recruitment process and sales and marketing?

Now I am talking from the perspective  of a candidate, who is willing to get a job. He is not a candidate for the recruitment process, but he is selling his services to the company which is recruiting him. He is not sitting for the interview, he is doing sales and pitching himself as a product or service provider to the customer (recruiter sitting in front of you). 

He is selling his skills and ability to the company and thus there also exist analogy between getting recruited and sales and marketing.

The interesting fact here is, whether you look from the company's perspective or from a candidate's perspective, the market is always a buyer market, where the seller can only hope to sell his product or services, as there is no guarantee that every seller will be able to make sales. This is because supply is more than demand and that too of 'unmatched' products and services.

Therefore, if you want to become a good marketer, first market yourself successfully, then think about marketing any company's product or services.