Sales recruitment in the 21st Century
The majority of businesses regularly need to fill sales
vacancies; in a global competitive market the need to hire
the best sales people is increasingly critical to business
success. In this first article in the series we take a look
at the different options, the respective costs, the time to
recruit and the probability of success.
Direct hiring ' small and medium sized business managers
and owners frequently take on the recruitment process in an
attempt to minimise cost, however without human resource
management expertise and qualifications, they are often at
risk of failing to make impartial decisions and ultimately
being in breach of the plethora of employment laws.
Effective assessment of a sales person's competence and
suitability to sell a specific product or service in a
specific country and to fit the culture of the organisation
is a complex process and one that line management all too
often get wrong, unfortunately past performance is no
guarantee of future success.
Direct hiring can still be successful provided a few basic
steps are taken, make the process consistent by using a
standardised set of questions at each interview. The
questions should test the person's competence at each stage
of the sales process, this is best achieved using situation
based questioning and by making sure that the question is
fully answered and the answer recorded for comparison
against other candidates. The use of psychometric testing
can add value and objectivity to the hiring process, as can
tests for numeric and verbal reasoning, this decision is
mission critical so why not minimise the risks.
You have chosen to go down the direct hiring route, but in
this highly competitive market finding applicants for sales
positions is increasingly challenging. The number of
unemployed people in many western markets is at an all time
low and many successful sales people are enjoying high
levels of success, how are you going to get you sales job
noticed? The alternatives include placing an advert in the
local paper, national paper, specialist publications,
unfortunately the response rates can be depressingly low,
producing few if any suitable applicants. Print media is
still an expensive from of advertising and with such poor
response can prove expensive and futile.
Online recruitment has become increasingly popular; a quick
search on Google for "sales jobsites" reveals over 5
million results worldwide, so where do you begin in the
challenge to find an appropriate online source of sales
candidates for your sales job? As with many things
recommendation and referral are a good place to start, but
this is not a night out, do you know anyone else with
experience of recruiting sales people online? Regardless of
whether or not you can get advice on which site or sites to
use, there are some important tests that you need to carry
out before choosing your online recruitment partners. But
don't be fooled by biggest is best, in the UK the two
largest jobsites, Total Jobs and Monster have less than 7%
market share, are they going to attract the right selection
of sales people to fill your sales job? I doubt it, in my
next article I will explain the various means of assessing
if a jobsite or website is likely to meet your specific
needs.
----------------------------------------------------
Louise G is a highly experienced sales recruitment
professional with over 20 years experience in all areas of
sales recruitment and is currently Sales and Marketing
Director of The sales Recruitment Jobsite.
Find out more about The Sales Recruitment Jobsite the place
for sales jobs and sales recruiters all around the globe at
http://salesrecruitmentjobsiteblog.blogspot.com or go to
the new site http://www.salesrecruitmentjobsite.com
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