Our software client had four regional sales reps in\u00a0North Texas up until\u00a012 months ago. They push their people pretty hard and the VP is a \u201cmy way or the highway\u201d type of guy. He\u2019s been with them for 10 years and worked his way up. He is a pretty good guy and certainly knows his company and products very well. He\u2019s not particularly fun to work for and he lets people know he\u2019s the one on \u201ctop of the heap\u201d and as long as you perform, he\u2019s your distant friend, but a bit of a solipsis.<\/p>\n
Two of the company\u2019s salespeople really were not doing all that well so about a year ago they left. The company was in the middle of being sold to a larger organization so management decided to postpone hiring until they had been integrated with the newer company. At least that was their excuse for not hiring. With the new company came a \u201creorganization\u201d of the sales effort into more of a \u201cteam\u201d approach. This team approach would have a sales team led by more of a client\/delivery type person, one salesperson and two consultants. (Not a particularly efficient sales model.)<\/p>\n
The hiring process now\u00a0became that the client\/delivery manager, who was never really a salesperson, would start the interviewing process with the candidate and then move the candidate along to the consultants who would interview, then to the VP,\u00a0 (all\u00a0video interviews) then a group interview with all of the same people and the one candidate. As with all processes like this the \u201cplanning fallacy\u201d applies\u2026 things always take longer and are always more expensive than you think they\u2019re going to be.\u00a0 \u00a0The client\/delivery manager was a nice enough guy and pretty much past every candidate on to the next level. But organizing everybody else took an average of at least three weeks.<\/p>\n
What the company was looking for in a candidate was hard enough to find, but between the VPs hard-nosed \u201cnow this is the way it is\u201d rather adversarial interview, organizing everybody to be able to meet as a group and the relative disaster of group interviews, in the last six months they had initially interviewed six of our candidates, lost four\u00a0 because they\u2019re interviewing process took too long, and eliminated two\u00a0at the last step of the group interview because everyone in the group could not come to a \u201cyeah, we really want to hire this person\u201d conclusion. They didn\u2019t really dislike the candidates but they couldn\u2019t come to an overwhelming \u201cyes.\u201d\u00a0 (This kind of thing happens more often than not with group type interviews.)<\/p>\n
In the meantime, the two salespeople that were still there didn\u2019t like the new management matrix, so they left the company over the past two weeks. So, there is now a $5 million territory with no salespeople in it at all. Everybody in the organization is pointing fingers at everyone else.<\/p>\n
The VP decides that he\u2019s going to take control and do what they should\u2019ve done to begin with, have him initiate the first interview, pass the candidate along to the group and do it within three or four days, get the groups input but not have them in essence, \u201cvote\u201d on the candidate. If the candidate passes this test, the VP simply decides.<\/p>\n
Now, we have just started this new process, but it is guaranteed to work a whole lot more efficiently. Even the candidates that we have found for them this past week are asking why it is taken so long for them to find salespeople. One of the candidates we have presented told me that he had heard about this opportunity six months ago and he\u2019s anxious to hear \u201cwhat\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure this will work out all right, because these really are good people. They are just what Teilhard de Chardin\u00a0called, \u201cspiritual beings acting human.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most people think that our biggest challenge as recruiters is with our candidates. It\u2019s not! 60% of our challenges are with our clients. Most companies and the people in them don\u2019t really like to admit that they create their own problems with the processes they come up with to protect themselves from hiring the wrong people.\u00a0 But they get in their own way.<\/p>\n
In spite of what people might be reading in the newspaper, really good candidates are hard to find<\/strong>. The longer the interviewing and hiring process takes and the more convoluted it becomes the harder it is to fill positions.<\/p>\n The lesson<\/strong>, as we have preached ad infinitum is to: keep the interview process simple\u2026 only involve the people whose livelihood depends on the candidate\/prospective employee\u2019s performance (no more than three, may be at the most four)\u2026and\u00a0do it quickly.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our software client had four regional sales reps in\u00a0North Texas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n