Month: September 2022

Hiring Your First Sales Leader? Here’s How to Handle the Process Strategically.

Posted on by hiredna

Choosing your first sales leader is exciting, but it can also be a little nerve-racking. With so much riding on their success, it’s a critical position you want to find the ideal candidate for.

In this post, I’ll explain how to handle the process strategically and provide helpful tools to dramatically increase your chances of choosing the right sales leader.

Identify Critical Traits

Before you do anything, it’s important to figure out exactly what you’re looking for in your first sales leader, as this will impact your job ads, interview questions, and more. While what is considered ideal traits will vary from company to company, there are nine attributes to look for across the board, including trustworthiness, being a natural motivator, and being an excellent communicator.

This graphic is a great starting point for coming up with your list.

9 Traits of a Sales Leader | The Sales Hunter

Keep in mind that you’ll also want to consider cultural fit and what type of personality will mesh the best with your existing sales team. Once you’ve got a tangible list of traits ironed out, the rest of the hiring process should be a lot easier. This brings us to the next step in the process.

Create an Ideal Candidate Profile

Based on the information you’ve generated from identifying critical traits (which you can think of as a rough draft), use it to create a fully fleshed-out ideal candidate profile. The more detailed the better, as it will provide a clear template to draw from when later assessing sales leader candidates for a position.

Along with the attributes I discussed earlier, some elements to include in your ideal candidate profile can include:

  • Education
  • Selling and leadership experience
  • Industry experience
  • Candidate demographic
  • Location
  • Hard skills
  • Soft Skills

One thing I’d like to point out here is that some sales recruiters get too hung up on looking for candidates with industry experience that they miss out on potentially A+ talent. I’ve found that, in many cases, candidates with proven sales and leadership abilities can make for excellent hires even if they don’t necessarily have direct industry experience. My philosophy is that it’s easier to train on products than it is on sales and leadership.

So this is something to keep in mind if you find a candidate who looks promising but lacks direct industry experience. Check out this article for more info.

Build Your Talent Pipeline

Now that you have a clear idea of the type of candidate you want to be your first sales leader, it’s time to build a talent pipeline to help you procure a true rockstar. There are several ways to go about this, including:

  • Recruitment marketing on job boards
  • Paid advertising on search engines and social media
  • Recruiting internally
  • Getting referrals from current employees
  • Email newsletters
  • Engaging passive candidates

Like any other aspect of sales recruiting, building a talent pipeline will likely require trial and error until you find the right formula. A great way to streamline this part of recruiting is to use a platform like HireDNA.

HireDNA used powerful technology that identifies and engages both active and passive candidates that match your ideal candidate profile, allowing you to cast the widest possible net with maximum efficiency. With it, you can tap into a national network of experienced sales recruiters to quickly fill your pipeline.

So if you’re struggling in this area, using a platform like HireDNA can be a huge help.

Screen and Assess Candidates

At this point, you should know the critical traits you’re looking for in a sales leader, have developed an ideal candidate profile, and have a talent pipeline in place. And that’s half the battle. Now, it’s time to screen candidates and evaluate them based on your specific criteria to find the right fit for your unique selling environment.

Given how overwhelming this phase can be, I usually suggest using technology to streamline it to A) save time and B) increase your odds of success. One way to go about this is by using an applicant tracking system (ATS) to filter through candidates and organize them so you can narrow your talent pool down to the best of the best. G2 has a great resource that covers some of the top applicant tracking systems.

Another way is to use HireDNA to screen and assess candidates using data and science to better predict the likelihood of success. This looks at numerous core competencies like motivation and desire to determine the top candidates for a sales leadership role to ensure you’re never “going on a hunch,” but rather making assessments based on concrete data.

To save even more time, HireDNA delivers qualified candidates right to your inbox for maximum convenience.

Interview and Hire

From this point, the heavy lifting is done. Now it’s just a matter of shortlisting the cream of the crop and interviewing the candidates that check the right boxes.

Note that interviewing for your first sales leader position will likely look a little different than if you were interviewing for a regular sales rep position and will be more extensive. Venture capital firm Stage 2 Capital suggests conducting two interviews, with the first being with your CEO/founder and marketing leader.

Then, if they pass their first round, the second interview will be a group meeting with your sales team and executive team and another with your CEO/founder.

This, of course, may not be the exact formula you want to take, but I think this is a good template to borrow from. And you can always refine your strategy later on when you hire again.

Finding the Perfect First Sales Leader

A sales leader is a pivotal position, and whoever you hire will have a ripple effect throughout the rest of your company. So you want to get it right. By taking a strategic approach as I’ve outlined above, you can methodically move through the process to ensure a strong candidate pool and narrow it down until you have a winner.

To learn more about how HireDNA can help you find sales leaders and schedule a live demo, reach out to us today.

82% of Companies Use a Pre-Employment Assessment Test: Should You?

Posted on by hiredna

A pre-employment assessment test is nothing new for high-level sales positions. They’ve been used for years to analyze candidates like account managers, regional sales managers, chief sales officers, and so on.

But in recent years, a growing number of companies have been using pre-employment assessment tests for nearly all positions, such as basic sales reps. The question is, does this make sense for your company? And if so, how should you approach it?

82% of Companies Now Use a Pre-Employment Assessment Test

A few years back, SHRM wrote a fascinating article about the rise of predictive assessments that referenced multiple studies on the topic. In it, SHRM writes, “according to the Talent Board’s 2016 Candidate Experience Research report, 82% of companies are using some form of pre-employment assessment test, and how they use assessments is evolving.

20 Reasons to Use Skill Assessment Tests | TalentLyft

Two particular types of popular screens are job simulations (54% of respondents are using these, according to the Talent Board study) and culture fit (51% using, a 22% increase from the Board’s 2014 study. While assessments once primarily were used for executive and mid-level leadership positions, today they’re commonly used for hourly and entry-level jobs.”

Note that the data SHRM referenced was from 2016. So it’s likely that even more companies are using a pre-employment assessment test in 2022. And with screening technology continually advancing and improving, this is a trend that’s likely to continue.

This brings me to my next point.

Is a Pre-Employment Assessment Test Right for You?

Let me first say that there’s no magic bullet for sales hiring, and you can never be 100% sure that a candidate will work out. That said, a pre-employment assessment test is pound-for-pound one of the most effective tools available for improving your sales hiring success rate.

When utilized correctly, a pre-employment assessment test offers a wide range of benefits, including:

  • Quickly testing a candidate’s true abilities
  • Determining how good of a fit they are for a particular sales position
  • Determining how good of a cultural fit they are
  • Differentiating between two similarly skilled candidates to figure out who’s better
  • Efficiently filtering through a high volume of candidates
  • Reducing or even eliminating bias
  • Spending less time performing manual assessment tasks

Not only that, pre-employment assessments often improve the candidate’s experience because it gives them a fair chance to showcase their talents. When you put it all together, it’s easy to see why this is such a popular sales hiring tool and why an increasing number of companies are choosing to use it.

For that reason, I truly believe the vast majority of sales recruiters can benefit from using a pre-employment assessment test. If you’ve been considering using one but haven’t gotten around to it, now is a great time to do so.

How Should You Approach Pre-Employment Assessment Testing?

There are several ways to go about it. SHRM lists some specific types of tests and testing methods, including:

  • Cognitive ability tests
  • Personality tests
  • Aptitude tests
  • Honesty and integrity tests

For some companies, a pre-employment assessment test could be something as simple as asking a few cognitive questions regarding IQ, verbal ability, and deductive reasoning, along with some basic personality questions involving motivations, communication skills, and attitude. If you’re simply looking to uncover the essentials to better determine how good of a fit a particular candidate would be for a sales position, this can be sufficient.

But if you want to go a bit deeper (which is ideal in today’s competitive sales world), it’s usually best to use pre-employment testing software, as it streamlines the process and adds a level of objectivity that’s hard to achieve with conventional, manual techniques. Also, today’s software is highly advanced and capable of producing detailed data to help you make the best choice through visual reports.

Using HireDNA as an Assessment Tool

One particular platform that’s helpful for many sales recruiters is HireDNA, which both generates and screens candidates.

First, HireDNA uses intelligent matching that analyzes 20 key data points to find top-tier candidates that are perfect fits for the specific role and your hiring criteria. For example, this software looks at things like role, culture, and experience fit and provides a quantifiable number of how qualified a particular candidate is.

From there, HireDNA screens the candidates using a science-backed assessment and matching algorithm to objectively predict success before hiring. This takes the guesswork out of the process and is a highly accurate way to assess each candidate’s selling skills and overall capabilities. In turn, this filters out individuals who wouldn’t be a good fit and ensures only the highest quality standards.

In terms of effectiveness, 92% of candidates recommended through HireDNA go on to reach the top of the sales force during their first year, and 96% of hiring mistakes are eliminated. Besides, that turnover is reduced by a third on average.

Wrapping Up

Candidate testing has evolved dramatically in recent years. It’s gone from primarily testing higher-level positions to testing candidates at all levels. With 82% of companies now implementing some form of candidate testing, it’s clear that it’s working and can be quite effective. It’s just a matter of finding the right pre-employment assessment test for your company.

While simply asking a few questions can certainly work for making a basic assessment, most sales recruiters see the most success using a technology sales recruiting platform like HireDNA that features intelligent matching and science-based assessments because of the high accuracy and ability to consistently predict success. To learn more about HireDNA and see it in action, you can request a live demo today.