Why Using Resumes When Hiring Salespeople is a Huge Mistake
The Sales Collective
No Guesswork. Just Science. Sales Growth Done Differently.
Hiring nobody is better than hiring the wrong salesperson. Bad sales hires are quite possibly the single highest hidden cost in any business.
Do you know that for every company that hires ten salespeople, only TWO become top-half performers??Two!!?Clearly, traditional recruiting and hiring techniques don’t work.
For starters, companies and hiring managers place way too much weight on resumes when hiring salespeople.
But before I share my feelings on the subject, a huge reason why most companies can’t seem to solve the sales hiring puzzle starts with the job post or job ad. Most job postings or ads for salespeople are comprised of the internal job description with duties and requirements and then it’s cut and pasted into LinkedIn, Indeed, or whatever other job boards you use.
They’re usually written by someone who has no training, background, or expertise in writing creative copy that will speak to their target candidate and attract top-level talent.
And because they’ve written such a poor job ad, they’ve now attracted way too many poor candidates, and have to somehow screen through an endless list of unqualified people. Think about how much time this takes, how many endless hours are wasted, trying to weed through the resumes of candidates who don’t have the qualifications you’re looking for.
Hiring managers will scour through 50 or 100 resumes, to somehow attempt to distinguish facts from fiction. Heck, some companies are now using software to somehow vet keywords, commonalities, or whatever other reasons they got sold on the software.
I certainly hope people realize that if I lie and polish up my resume by putting in the keywords I know you’re looking for, the software won’t be able to screen me out. Do you know what percentage of resumes have some level of falsehood, embellishment, or fabrication? It’s a high number.
Frankly, I think resumes are almost useless in determining whether or not a candidate will have success in sales with your organization. Why would anyone ever think a resume would somehow predict future success with your company?
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For some reason, hiring managers think that a candidate’s PRIOR experiences, successes, wins, accolades, and whatever other claims they made, will somehow transfer over to their organization. However, where, and how did all these amazing things happen?
But for some unknown reason, you think their resume is a look into the crystal ball of future sales success at your company??Hello, McFly, anybody home?
There’s a much better way to source, attract, screen, and begin the hiring process with amazing sales candidates, and it starts with something we call The Sales DNA Test.
I’ll share more in a future article, but let’s just say that most companies are typically using the wrong assessment that has no bearing, scientific proof, or predictive validity when it comes to assessing sales candidates.
The Sales DNA Test has been successfully determining the future success of sales candidates for more than 30 years. We have scientific data from more than two million salespeople in 36,000 companies that have allowed us to have a success rate of more than 90% when this tool is used in sales hiring. Forget two out of ten, how about nine out of ten?
If you’d like a free trial of The Sales DNA Test to use on a candidate, please click here: