By Patrick Kellenberger, President, Betts Recruiting
There’s a strange contradiction happening in the hiring market right now. Companies are laying people off. LinkedIn is full of candidates. Job postings can generate hundreds, or even thousands of applications. And yet, when I talk to CEOs, CROs, and talent leaders, I hear the same thing:
“Why is it still so hard to hire great people?”
The answer is, because candidate volume and candidate availability are two very different things.
At Betts Recruiting, we hire GTM talent every day across sales, marketing, customer success, solutions engineering, and leadership titles. And what we’re seeing right now is a growing scarcity problem at the very top of the talent market.
There are plenty of candidates but there are very few A+ candidates. And nearly every great company wants the same ones.
The Talent Market Is a Pyramid
To understand the problem, start by thinking about any GTM role.
You might start with a pool of 2,000 people who look like they at least check the core boxes on paper.
Once you apply the actual requirements, such as industry experience, deal size, buyer, performance, tenure, geography, compensation, and stage experience, that pool shrinks quickly.
Then you ask the questions that really matter:
- Who has consistently exceeded quota?
- Who was actually responsible for the results on their résumé?
- Who has sold the same complexity of product?
- Who can articulate how they win?
- Who has strong references?
- Who has demonstrated progression?
- Who would the best CROs they’ve worked for hire again tomorrow?
Suddenly, you aren’t looking at 2,000 candidates.
Now, you might be looking at only 50. And maybe 10 of those are genuinely exceptional.
The problem?
Your competitors are looking for those same 10 people.
That is candidate scarcity.
A+ Candidates Rarely Need to Apply
There is one major misconception we see across recruiting today. Companies post a role, receive 500 applications, and often assume they have a strong candidate pool. But the best candidate for the job may never apply.
Great GTM people are usually employed. They’re performing. They’re being paid well. Their leadership team doesn’t want to lose them. And they’re probably already being messaged by recruiters every week.
Less than 10% of sales reps often drive 70% of revenue growth in tech. Some elite sellers are being paid, or offered, a bigger comp package than some executives.
That means recruiting an A+ candidate isn’t primarily an applicant-screening exercise.
It’s a market identification and conversion exercise.
You have to identify the right person, get their attention, convince them to have a conversation, understand what could motivate them to leave, sell them on the opportunity, qualify them properly and then keep them engaged throughout the process.
And that’s a very different job than sorting through résumés.
The Recruiting Funnel Has Changed
The way I think about recruiting is increasingly similar to how we think about enterprise sales.
At the top of the funnel, you need great targeting:
- Who are the companies producing the talent you want?
- Who are the individual performers within those companies?
- What backgrounds correlate with success inside your organization?
That’s your market. Then comes outreach. And this is where we see a lot of recruiting processes fail.
An A+ Enterprise Account Executive isn’t sitting around waiting for another message saying:
“I came across your impressive background and thought you’d be a great fit for an exciting opportunity.”
They need a reason to care.
- Why this company?
- Why this product?
- Why this market?
- Why this leadership team?
- Why should someone performing well today take the risk of leaving?
Your recruiting process has to answer those questions.
Getting the Candidate Interested Is Only the Beginning
Finding great candidates gets most of the attention in recruiting, but it’s only one part of the problem. Once an A+ candidate enters your process, you’re competing for them until the day they actually start. They’re evaluating you while you’re evaluating them. Every interaction matters.
- How quickly did you respond?
- Did the hiring manager understand their background?
- Did the interview process feel organized?
- Could leadership articulate the company’s strategy?
- Was compensation clear?
- Did the role sound the same in interview three as it did in interview one?
- Did they meet people they were excited to work with?
And, perhaps most importantly:
Did the process create momentum?
We’ve seen companies lose incredible candidates simply because they took too long: A candidate has a great first interview on Monday. The company schedules the next conversation for the following week. Meanwhile, another company schedules three conversations, introduces the CEO and makes an offer. The first company may have had the better opportunity. But in the end, it doesn’t matter anymore.
The Offer Is Not the Finish Line
Another part of recruiting that companies underestimate is the pitch
An accepted offer does not mean the recruiting process is over. For exceptional candidates, it can actually be when the competition gets most intense.
Their current employer suddenly realizes they’re leaving.
Now comes the counteroffer.
More money. More equity.
A promotion. A new territory.
A conversation with the CEO.
Then another company they’ve been interviewing with accelerates its process.
This is why understanding candidate motivation throughout the recruiting process matters so much:
- Why did they respond to the recruiter?
- What are they trying to change?
- What would make them stay?
- What other opportunities are they considering?
- What does their spouse or family think?
- What would their current employer have to offer to keep them?
Recruiting isn’t just about determining whether someone can do the job. It’s also understanding whether they are actually prepared to make the move.
References Matter More Than Résumés
AI is going to dramatically change recruiting. At Betts, we’re investing heavily in it ourselves. Technology will get increasingly good at finding people who match a specific profile. It will analyze career history, companies, industries, skills, performance indicators and millions of other data points faster than any recruiter ever could.
But identifying someone who looks like an A+ candidate and determining whether someone is an A+ candidate are different things. Some of the most valuable information in recruiting still comes from humans.
Would their former manager hire them again?
Were they really a top performer?
Did they create their sales pipeline, or inherit it?
How did they behave when things weren’t going well?
Were they good for the culture?
The closer you get to the top of the talent pyramid, the more valuable those signals become.
Companies Need to Start Recruiting, Not Just Hiring
There’s an important distinction between “recruiting” and “hiring.”
Hiring is filling an open seat.
Recruiting is continuously building relationships with exceptional people.
The best companies understand this difference. They know who the top performers are in their market before a position opens. They know which companies produce great talent. Their executives maintain relationships with people they’d love to hire someday. Their recruiting teams build talent pools instead of starting from zero every time a requisition opens.
This is increasingly important because the competition for exceptional GTM talent isn’t going away. AI may make sourcing dramatically more efficient. It may make matching dramatically more accurate. It may eliminate enormous amounts of administrative recruiting work. But it won’t manufacture another top 1% Enterprise AE.
Technology can increase access to talent, but it can’t increase the supply of exceptional talent.
The Companies That Win Will Treat Recruiting Like Revenue
For years, companies have built increasingly sophisticated revenue teams.
- They define their ICP.
- They map markets.
- They track conversion rates.
- They build their own sales pipeline.
- They measure velocity.
- They invest in technology.
- They obsess over the customer experience.
I believe GTM recruiting is heading in exactly the same direction:
- Define the candidate profile.
- Map the talent market.
- Identify the highest-probability candidates.
- Create compelling outreach.
- Measure conversion through every stage.
- Move quickly.
- Deliver an exceptional candidate experience.
- Understand motivation.
And don’t stop closing until the candidate is sitting at their desk on day one. Because when truly exceptional talent is scarce, recruiting can’t be treated as an administrative function. It needs to be treated as your competitive advantage. There may be thousands of people who could fill your open role. But there might only be a handful who could fundamentally change the trajectory of your business.
The companies that figure out how to consistently identify, attract, assess and close those people are going to win.