What does it mean to hire the best for your team? How to identify, interview, and hire sales talent who can become top performers for your organization?
Find the answers in this episode of The Shape of Work podcast where we talk to Kristen Halliday, Recruiter at internal communications platform, ContactMonkey.
Kristen shares a few top strategies she follows to hire the best fit for her company and throws light on ways to test and verify the qualifications & cultural fit of various sales candidates.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
Recruitment Parameters in a Growing Company
A growing company or a startup needs to consistently get its recruitment right. Kristen says that recruiters must be mindful of skilled growth in the growing companies.
“They should set priorities and decide whether they want a volume-based or specific recruitment approach.”
Volume-driven recruitment is risky because it is challenging to get the right fit, and candidates have a slow learning curve. Despite the volume, a recruiter may end up hiring only one or two candidates. Specific recruitment helps in hiring sales people with a personality fit that is in alignment with the needs of the company.
Recruitment Strategy for a Company Lesser Known in Talent Market
Organizations should not rely solely on their website for digital footprint. They should also have a strong social presence to build an employer brand and make it easier for talent to find them. Headhunting through LinkedIn is an excellent recruitment strategy. Most salespeople have a profile on LinkedIn. Word of mouth is another way to reach out to the talent.
“Organizations and recruiters should be able to meet the talent where they are.”
It is crucial to build a talent pipeline and consistently have people on the bench. This is recommended because nothing is guaranteed, and recruiters can run out of candidates quickly.
Alignment with Hiring Managers
It is essential for recruiters to connect with hiring managers at least once a week as an organization’s hiring needs change continuously. It enables recruiters to tailor the talent search accordingly. It also gives an opportunity for recruiters to learn about the status of onboarding of new candidates and understand team dynamics in terms of age, gender, professional development, etc.
Recruiters need to define standards with hiring managers on ‘what they must have’ vs ‘what they would like to have’ as every new hire impacts the culture of the company.
Cultural Fit of the Talent
Kristen says that if hiring is optimized for culture, organizations will have many people of the same kind. Culture fit can be a discriminatory approach at times.
Hence, it is necessary to keep an open mind regarding cultural fit for workplace diversity. Recruiters should dig deeper into the sales background of the talent to ensure that their personality is the right fit for the team.
Elimination of Hiring Bias
Hiring managers do not have the luxury of time to go through every resume. They tend to evaluate the new talent with a biased eye at times. Hence, recruiters should have standard practices in place to eliminate hiring bias.
Every time they reject a candidate, they should ask themselves these questions – “why am I saying no to this candidate?” and “what assumption am I making for this candidate?”
Recruiters should hold themselves accountable for every candidate and look at every talent profile with level-headedness.
Follow Kristen on LinkedIn
Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Abhash Kumar