Do you want the best of the best sales professionals on the market for your growing business? As European Director of a global recruiting firm, I’ve worked with countless hiring managers and typically the answer is yes.
Here are our top 5 tips on how to win top talent in a competitive market:
- Create brand awareness. First things first: in order to attract top talent, your company needs to position itself as a leader in your space and a great place to work. Answering important questions will help along the way: why is your company unique? What’s exciting about your opportunity? Why should a candidate work for you? Once these questions are answered, getting the desired message through on your website and job descriptions will help in creating a holistic image of the company brand and attract the right talent.
- Cultivate a diverse culture. More companies nowadays value culture fit on the same level as experience and past successes. From “No Jerks” policies to culture books, businesses are paying a lot of attention to the kind of work environment they are creating. In Europe especially, there is one important factor to keep in mind; the variety of countries that people come from. It is important to recognize that the type of person who is successful in the DACH market may vastly differ from one crushing sales in Iberia. Understanding this difference and adapting your company culture to suit different personalities will allow top talent from any background to feel comfortable.
- Partner with an agency. What makes a sales manager successful is knowing exactly who to hire to drive the success of their team. But, with a full time sales and management job, it can be tough to balance team success against running a full hiring process. From my experience, the best talent is usually happily employed and not actively looking elsewhere for a new role. Leveraging a recruiting agency will allow the manager to retain ownership of the hiring process without stretching too thin. Having recruiters visit your office, being clear on what the hiring needs are and giving detailed feedback will all go a long way towards adding sales gems to a company.
- Refine the interview process. I cannot stress enough just how important the interview process is when hiring top talent. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: the days of three month long, ten-stage interviews are long gone. Time kills deals and time kills great candidates. Making your process shorter and keeping up momentum is vital to keeping candidates engaged and interested. Having a clear vision of the key decision-makers that the potential hire will have to meet before offer stage, as well as setting timelines early, will help to keep the interview process quick and transparent.
- Do onboarding right. Onboarding is something that should not be undervalued – it should be used earlier in the process to attract the top candidates. If your company offers excellent training, opportunities to learn from sales leaders within, or sends new hires to headquarters for training, you should use these benefits to add weight to them to attract talent. Having solid training structures in place can be positioned very lucratively to add value to an opportunity.
Top sales talent is out there, seeing success in their current role, but most likely keeping their eyes peeled for their next big career move. Make sure that your organization is ready to catch their attention and keep momentum throughout the interview and onboarding process.
Article by Emily Mattos and Karina Podkladneva
Connect with Emily on: LinkedIn
Tweet Emily at: @EmilyMattosBREU
Connect with Karina on : LinkedIn
