When recruiting to fill a position, employers find themselves faced with the question of whether to hire experienced workers or new graduates for an optimal ROI. Recent graduates can offer some advantages, especially in rapidly evolving fields such as sales, over their more experienced competition. As a high quality recruitment process can filter out the problems associated with new recruits, these benefits deserve full attention from anyone filling sales positions:

Learning Ability

Fresh graduates bring with them a primed pump for learning. Their ‘skill’ for learning has yet to dull, so they can pick up new ideas and information faster than someone who has been out of that environment for a while. There is also the innate understanding of modern technology recent graduates bring with them-with social media and mobile technology becoming so large a part of marketing and sales, a worker for whom a smartphone is as familiar as a PC can be a major advantage to your business.

Communication Skills

Changes in the education process and the ubiquity of communication technology has created a generation primed for team efforts and technological coordination. Recent graduates will, on average, be better at communicating in more forums than their seniors, and will have grown up with the sort of coordinating technologies which modern companies run on.

High Performance

With the right recruitment process, you can find real uncut gems in the pool of recent graduates and acquire superior workers for less than someone who reached the same skill level through years of experience. It’s also worth considering the value of youth itself-in a sales position, it can be hard to beat the raw energy, flexibility, and charisma of a younger worker with any amount of experience.

Shapeable

By recruiting fresh graduates, a company can shape those graduates to match their needs and corporate culture without having to fight ingrained habits from other workplaces. Company culture can play a major role in the success or failure of an enterprise-the attitudes and habits of sales workers in particular can greatly impact your bottom line. Hiring older candidates always carries the risk that you will find someone who looks great on paper but works poorly within your company’s structure.

Salary

Compensation is the most obvious difference between new graduate hires and experienced workers in any field. In theory, you pay experienced workers more because that experience can bring the company more profit, but in some industries, such as sales, new workers can produce just as well should you recruit wisely and take advantage of their strengths.

These are just a few reasons to consider taking on fresh graduates the next time you need to fill a sales position. Depending on the nature of your business, you might value some of these traits more than others, but regardless of industry or goals recent graduates have a value that can meet or exceed the experience they lack.