The art & science of recruitment (as seen through a sales pair of binoculars…)
By: Steve Jessop
Background.
I’ve worked at all levels of the sales discipline – mostly in business services – for well in excess of 30 years. A large proportion of that time has been as a business consultant advising and directly (i.e. hands-on) helping companies to improve sales performance. High on the list of subjects which raise their heads again and again is recruitment….
The challenge.
Firstly, the people doing the recruiting often do not give anywhere near enough thought to what they are doing, and why they are doing it.
Secondly, the recruitment fraternity contains a depressingly high number of shallow, mercenary, one-dimensional operators who care only about making the placement for which they are paid. As we all know, low ‘entry barriers’ (quite literally) open the door to these poor industry standards.
Supporting rationale.
In the sales discipline a poor hire – or worse, a ‘bad apple’ – can do enormous damage. Just in case this needs embellishing, allow me to clarify…..
I imagine you get the picture…?
The antidote.
Given that NOT recommending an inappropriate candidate is a RESULT for you – it makes no sense at all to pay for the placement and thus incentivise only the placement. As soon as we do this we compromise the recruiter and encourage candidate bias.
For this reason when I recruit I am paid for the process – not the placement….
The process.
Prepare a thorough job specification which describes the role as well as a clear and concise list of responsibilities and accountabilities. Very often all I see when I ask to look at a job spec is a loose list of tasks and a sales revenue figure…. The job spec needs to describe the role in the round — spelling out how the job should be done (route to the results, not just the results) and clearly describe what your expectations are — i.e. what ‘good’ looks like in your business environment. It should also give a clear indication to the new recruit of how he / she can expect to be managed.
If the job spec is often inadequate – the person spec is very often missing altogether…!
It’s hard to understand why this is the case. In a reasonably precise and objective fashion, we need to template the kind of human being most likely to succeed in the role. If we do not capture this we are quite clearly leaving too much to chance. I recommend that we capture:
These we group into a matrix, and, using descriptive paragraphs, categorise them under the following columns:
With the above in mind we agree where our most suitable candidates are likely to be found, and the best means of accessing them. We then agree the route/s to them.
Summary.
In addition to ensuring our short-listed players can ‘walk the talk’ by putting them through their paces, we also test them in an unprepared fashion in areas of critical capability which are often completely overlooked.
Interestingly, over the years we have had much positive feedback from unsuccessful candidates (as well as successful ones) who have expressed their thanks for what they have learned from our recruitment & selection process.
Contact Steve at Advantage Business Ltd