The Bad Sales Hire

Indeed’s research reports only 22% of the working force being passive candidates. -Indeed

(This excerpt is taken from "The Ripple Effect" white-paper. You can download here)

This analysis by Indeed was very interesting in how they broke down job seekers. 22% are “super passive,” 16% are “tip-toers,” explorers were 44%, semi-active were 10% and finally the very active pool clocked in at 8%.

It’s not to say that some incredible people can’t come from Indeed or LinkedIn posts but if we were to hire account executives that are in roles currently vs ones that aren’t, we know what team would drive more revenue.

Thinking back to figure A, this is all about minimizing mistakes and hiring more B players instead of C’s. You do that by having a higher quality funnel of candidates.

Should we increase volume of candidates to create a bigger funnel? More options means better decisions, right?

Let’s think about a business development process. Ashley, a great prospector, understands that setting up demos for her account executive is not the job. The job is to set up demos with qualified buyers. Have you ever worked with a BDR that set up 10 meetings for the month but 7 of them either didn’t have budget, wasn’t the correct buyer persona, had no authority or any other disqualifier?

This analogy is the biggest issue for hiring teams. The “bad BDR” is the recruiter. First off, it’s incredibly easy to set meetings for interviews compared to setting discovery calls. There are plenty of candidates open to having a conversation with you from the very active pool. The recruiter sets up more interviews and focuses on more streams of candidates. The world is full of recruiters that love job boards, AI software, copy and paste messages that burn through the world’s best job candidates and your best matches.

I’ve seen it over and over again. Leaders taking on a funnel of candidates that “look good” because they have a decent conversation once in a while.

Unfortunately, your hiring process is as strong as your recruiters. And if your recruiters don’t understand that your ideal matches are passive, tip-toers and explorers, you’re going to miss the mark and your sales team will suffer.

Do not let sub par pipelines also lower your standards.

Are the 10 interviews you’re having taking place with candidates in the top 20? Top 50? Or are you just having more conversations and casting your hook out there waiting for that bite to finally come.

So how do you create a better candidate pipeline?

1. Referrals. Tap into your market on LinkedIn and your personal network of sales directors, founders and more. Especially here in 2021 with plenty of great talent on the move, create a post or ask directly if someone knows any great candidates for your sales roles. This is not going to be your source of 250 qualified candidates. But when you get 5-10 referrals from a leader you trust, the candidate quality is much higher.
2. In House. The biggest thing I tell my recruiters on how to be successful is extremely simple. Their success is going to be based on their ability to strategize, target and create relationships. We can talk about automated LinkedIn messaging software that may give you some results but the way we’ve made partners extremely happy and generated long term growth was in the outreach. I’ve worked with over 450 on my platform and there are around 20 people I trust to actively find passive talent. They produce candidates that are great matches consistently. They do this by simply identifying the top 100 candidates for a specific role. Next, they personalize their outreach and get creative. There is a short and long term advantage to this. First of all, you’re getting more responses once candidates know you’re not just blasting out messages. This is how our partners take 10 interviews and are excited about all of them. Even if it’s not the right time for them, you’re in their corner for all future opportunities. In 12 months from now, it’s me that stays top of mind to hear about something new. Your action needs to be to either change how your in house recruiter works and get them to build those relationships or find someone who does. It’s a slower process but you’ll have much better conversations with candidates and you’ll hire better teams.
3. Outsource to 1-2 Agencies. Make sure you’re finding recruiters that operate exactly how I mentioned above. The best part is they’ll have existing pipelines with passive candidates looking for exciting new challenges (that’s you). It’s very likely there are some good matches to go already if they have a good niche or focus. But let’s take it a step further: don’t work with more than 1 or 2 agencies. You’ll have too much activity coming in and it can be overwhelming. The bigger reason to only work with a maximum of 2 agencies is the best recruiters won’t be in your corner if they see you’re working with multiple. Personally, I have no problem competing against 10 other recruiters. All of the best sourcers are more concerned about your ability to handle the volume. It’s happened to all of us. We get to work, create relationships, introduce the existing pipeline to your opportunity. Then we’ll see all the job postings from other agencies. At that point, the best recruiters turn their focus elsewhere. We know that you’re dealing with hundreds of resumes and we can present you an A+ person and you may not even get around to them. Find 1 or 2 agencies that fit your specific need and source the correctly way. Then expand with them.
4. Inbound Candidates. If you’re going to primarily operate off of job boards or software to generate candidates, have the right steps in place. One mistake that is very common is introducing speed bumps early. Putting a candidate through a test or survey too early is a great way to lose out on talent. It’s like getting a sales prospect to agree to a discovery call then having them fill out a long questionnaire. There needs to be excitement for these candidates to get though even a 20 minute test. The ones with the urgency to do it won’t be the passive candidates. The pool will mainly come from that 8% very active pool. Getting the candidate to a first interview shouldn’t take longer than a week either. If you gain interest from a great potential hire, they’re applying to other companies as well. The team that doesn’t make them sit around two weeks for their first phone screen will capture that relationship and be expanding it before you even get on a first touch.
5. Existing employees. Do you know who sales professionals hang out with? Other sales professionals. Former colleagues, their equals at other companies and acquaintances at networking events. Incentivizing them to introduce open roles to potential hires is a great way to find unbelievable talent. When I was with Gartner, they had a bonus program for employee referrals. It was something around $3K if I remember correctly. I loved working there and any time I ran into an AE or BDR, I let them know how much I loved it. Fast forward around a year, I had referred 4 new employees. 3 of them were excellent performers. Acquiring a new sales professional that produces for $3K is a no brainer. Do not sleep on your existing staff.