8 years ago
January 11, 2016

What to Do if You Are Unsatisfied with Your Sales Job Applicants

Hiring for sales is notoriously difficult. Sometimes, you just won’t get any qualified applicants. What should you do? Keep reading to find out.

Rhys Metler

What_to_Do_if_You_Are_Unsatisfied_with_Your_Sales_Job_Applicants

Recruitment is one of the most important aspects of hiring. You might have great metrics, you might have excellent interview skills, and you might have an effective and unbiased hiring process, but if you’re not recruiting the right sales job applicants, you’re not going to hire top talent.

How can you hire the best if the best aren’t applying? When you’re unsatisfied with your job applicants, you might think that you have to choose the best of the mediocre. But this is no way to build a stellar workforce. It will only result in disappointment and higher costs due to turnover. You don’t have to hire out of desperation. Instead, you can choose not to hire any of your applicants, and take the steps below instead.

Implement Continuous Recruiting

You can’t really expect A-players to apply to your job posting if you’ve only opened up applications for a one-week period. People aren’t on job boards every day. Top performers might not even be on the job search at that exact moment. You’ll miss out on great talent when you only offer a limited window for applicants.

Give them more time to apply by implementing a continuous recruitment program. Don’t turn down applicants because you’re not currently hiring for open roles. Conduct a few interviews every week and build a database of talent. This way, you’ll be able to keep recruiting until the right candidate comes along, without being under a time crunch.

Focus on Passive Candidates

The only people looking at job boards are active candidates. But the best candidates out there are passive—they already have jobs, so they’re not actively looking for new employment. However, if a good opportunity came knocking, they’d consider moving companies. Passive candidates take longer to find and recruit, but if you put in the time, effort, and resources required to seek them out, through networking and on social media, you’ll find yourself with a better sales team.

Change Your Job Description

You might only be attracting mediocre job applicants because your job description isn’t effective. It doesn’t make top performers want to apply. Take a long, hard look at your job description and consider what your applicants might think of it. Is it boring? Does it get them excited to learn more and to apply? Does it list all of the important factors that top performers care about, such as location, compensation, and perks?

If you re-write your job description, you might find yourself with better applicants.

Work on Your Employer Brand

If you want top talent to work for you, you have to be an employer that these great candidates want to work for. Your employer brand consists of your company’s reputation as an employer. If people in the industry are always hearing that you provide low compensation, that you don’t offer encouragement, that your sales process isn’t effective, and that your management style makes people want to quit, then the best candidates aren’t going to want to apply to work for you. And if no one knows about your company to begin with, you have the same problem on your hands. Work on changing your employer brand. Use your website and social media to your advantage to highlight the great aspects of working for your company. Change your reputation.

Engage a Sales Recruitment Firm

If you’ve worked on the above steps and you’re still only getting mediocre job applicants, consider engaging a sales recruitment agency for help. These agencies specifically work in the sales field, continuously searching for and recruiting the top ten percentile in the industry. They have the resources, means, experience, and expertise required to find and recruit the best sales talent in the country. An agency can help you build a strong team.

 

Rhys Metler

Rhys is a tenacious, top performing Senior Sales Recruiter with 15+ years of focused experience in the Digital Media, Mobile, Software, Technology and B2B verticals. He has a successful track record of headhunting top performing sales candidates for some of the most exciting brands in North America. He is a Certified Recruitment Specialist (CRS) and has expert experience in prospecting new business, client retention/renewals and managing top performing sales and recruitment teams. Rhys enjoys spending quality time with his wife, son, and daughters, BBQing on a hot summer day and tropical vacations.

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