You’re focused on recruiting top sales talent. The only problem is — you need all your open positions filled immediately. To accomplish this now and in the future, you need a sales talent pipeline full of engaged and right-for-the-company candidates.
However, attracting and sourcing sales talent in a competitive market is a never-ending task. That’s why it’s critical to ensure the talent in your pipeline remains engaged and interested in your openings, above competitors’.
Below, we’ve detailed three steps to help you shine and create the best sales talent pipeline:
1. Use the right technology for you
In a recent Hubspot report, 75% of recruiters said technology would play a larger role in their company’s hiring process in 2019. This prediction may have come true for you. However, if you’re implementing new tools that aren’t right for your specific needs, they’re essentially useless.
Before determining what technology you need most, you must first answer three questions:
-Where does your current process lack efficiency?
-What are your target recruits’ expectations?
-Where are your target recruits spending their time?
The first question is personal. And it’s one you can only answer this after a critical and honest review of your time. Are you spending hours responding to emails? How often do you take time to reach out to candidates in your pipeline? How much time do you spend sourcing candidates, attempting to weed out unqualified talent? Basically, how much time are you wasting?
Once you’ve determined where your process needs help, analyze your target recruits’ expectations regarding communication and where they’re spending time. For example, candidate respondents in Talent Board’s 2019 Candidate Experience Report who communicated with a chatbot were 80% more likely to increase their relationship with the employer.
Chatbots, like Mya an AI-powered personal recruitment assistant, keep candidates in the loop in real-time with meaningful text conversations while giving you more time to spend with quality candidates face-to-face.
2. Leverage your current talent pool’s data
The best sales talent may be hiding in plain sight — already in your talent pool. Unfortunately, if you’re like many healthcare recruiters in Hubspot’s Recruiting Automation Trends Report, accessibility and the quality of data is the biggest barrier to leveraging data.
Review your current talent pool to determine which candidates should remain, who needs nurturing now, and who you should remove from the list. If you don’t have the right data, use intelligent tools to turn data into actionable insights. Then, the most critical next step is taking time to review and implement changes in your talent pool.
One KPI to consider is the communication type that booked the most interviews and how quickly interviews are booked based on communication. Also, dig deeper into the data. Does the success of email, text, phone, or social media message differ based on gender or generation?
Put this data to use to improve candidate nurture campaigns and improve connections with talent already in your pipeline.
3. Build your passive sourcing strategy
Hubspot’s talent acquisition respondents (76%) find higher-quality candidates through passive sourcing. The challenge, however, is effectively sourcing passive candidates when the job market is wide-open.
Winners of Talent Board’s Candidate Experience Awards (CandE Awards) say one of their top recruiting initiatives for 2020 is employer branding. If you’re an external recruiter, focus on how you can better portray your own brand in coordination with clients’. To improve employer branding and attract passive talent, you must think like a traditional marketer.
Top passive sales talent is more informed and intentional about potential future job offers than ever. In fact, Talent Board’s report found nearly 40% of candidates want even more information about company culture and nearly 30% wanted more information on why employees want to work for an employer.
Create day-in-the-life videos to give candidates a glimpse of what it’s like to work for the company. Ask current employees to walk candidates through their daily schedules, including lunches with co-workers or check-ins from company leaders.
Be realistic. Experienced sales talent knows there are ups and downs to every sales role. Highlight an employees’ biggest struggle of the year and how they overcame it or show them in real-time resolving a client issue.
