A founder recently asked me, “Finding top talent has been challenging, and the competition for top candidates is intense. Outbound recruiting methods, such as reaching out to potential candidates, have not yielded significant results for us due to the competitiveness of the job market.“
“Finding top talent has been challenging, and the competition for top candidates is intense. Outbound recruiting methods, such as reaching out to potential candidates, have not yielded significant results for us due to the competitiveness of the job market.“
This motivated me to share my experiences in hiring the top engineering talent at Sendbird, drawing on my experience as a leader in marketing and sales organizations. Here are 10 best practices that world-class recruiting teams can learn from the sales team to strengthen their capabilities.
1. All members of the recruiting team should be excellent salespeople who can effectively communicate the company and job’s appeal.
The founder or hiring manager isn’t solely responsible for making the company and job attractive to potential employees. Recruiters also have an important role to play in promoting the attractive aspects of the company and job. To do this, they must have a deep understanding of the company and the job, much like a salesperson understands their Ideal Customer Profile. To help the recruitment team, it’s important to clearly define the Ideal Candidate Profile. This ensures everyone has a clear understanding of the type of candidate the company is looking for.
2. Recruitment branding, content, and campaigns are necessary, similar to marketing efforts.
Just as marketing requires branding, content, and campaigns, recruitment also needs these elements to be successful. Recruitment branding, content, and campaigns are essential for attracting top talent to the company.
This will increase conversion rates for both inbound and outbound recruiting efforts. As customers are exposed to multiple touchpoints before becoming potential customers, top talent also evaluates a company and job through multiple sources. The recruiting team needs to play a role in branding, content creation, and campaign execution, just as the marketing team does.
3. Companies should build their own candidate databases, much like B2B and SaaS lead generation.
In countries outside of the United States, like APAC, LinkedIn and other database tools aren’t as prevalent. This can make it difficult for companies to find potential candidates. To overcome this, companies must build their own databases of potential candidates, similar to the way B2B and SaaS marketing teams generate leads.
This requires the recruitment team to independently discover and manage their network of potential candidates, much like the B2B marketing team creates a database of potential customers through landing pages with webinars and whitepapers. The recruitment team must be proactive in finding and reaching out to potential candidates without relying on readily available tools.
4. Just as a sales process is divided into stages to track the conversion rate and sales cycle, the recruitment process should be structured similarly.
It’s important to understand what stages your company’s hiring process consists of and how long it takes to move from one stage to the next. Additionally, it’s helpful to track the conversion rate between the different stages of the hiring process, especially between the stages that tend to have lower conversion rates. If you don’t already have a structured hiring process in place, it’s recommended to implement one and start tracking data like a world-class sales team manages their pipeline.
5. Just as sales planning, recruitment planning should also consider when to hire based on the company’s goals and demand.
Hiring managers may have a tendency to prioritize hiring needs as ASAP, but a well-planned recruitment process should make informed decisions about when and why to hire based on the company’s sales forecasts and capacity model.
By understanding these factors, such as demand and capacity models, as well as the length of training period for new hires, the recruiting team can effectively operate without getting overwhelmed by immediate hiring demands. By approaching the recruitment process from a demand and capacity perspective, the recruiting team can make strategic decisions that align with the company’s overall goals.
6. Manage the candidate pipeline long-term, similar to building a sales pipeline with long-term forecast
Are you just writing a job description (JD) and posting it on LinkedIn with the aim of completing the recruitment within two months? Recruiting top-level positions, senior candidates with over seven years of experience, or manager-level developers should be treated with the same long-term approach as sales and marketing organizations with enterprise-graded customers. Just as sales and marketing teams discover and nurture potential customers in long-run, it’s essential to develop and manage a recruitment pipeline to attract the top talent.
Think of it like preparing for winter. Hunting for game when everyone else is will be difficult, but if you have a steady supply of food grown in advance, you’ll have an easier time getting through the winter.
7. The recruitment team should understand that its role is also diversified, similar to the modern sales organization.
The recruitment team can increase efficiency and success by dividing roles into sourcers and recruiters, just like the field teams in the sales organization are divided into SDR (Sales Development Rep) and AE (Account Executive). There is also a need for Recruiting Operations to manage data effectively or handle recruiting operations, similar to Sales Ops in the sales team. Recruiting Enablement or Recruitment Branding Team can handle recruitment content and training, similar to Sales Enablement in the sales team.
8. The recruitment team should adopt software and automation to modernize their operations, similar to the sales organization.
Just as Salesforce is widely used in sales and workflow design and automation tools like Leandata, Zapier and other tools like Salesloft and Highspot are used on top of it, the recruitment team should also utilize software to streamline their process. This includes investing in automation and building data with the help of programs like ATS (Application Tracking Systems) and HRIS (HR Information Systems).
In the US, popular ATS systems include LEVER and Greenhouse, while BambooHR and Rippling are commonly used HRIS systems. While some countries in Asia Pacific still have room for improvement in this area.
9. Early-stage startups should approach hiring like founders approach sales.
Just as there are more reasons for customers to ignore a product than to use it, there are more reasons for potential hires to pass on a job than to accept it. Founders need to leverage all available channels to find, persuade, and refer potential candidates, just as they would with prospects.
If you’re the founder or CEO of an early-stage startup, schedule at least three customer meetings and three talent prospecting meetings per week, and make sure to personally manage and encourage your current staff to refer talent.
10. Maximizing talent retention is the key to long-term success in the recruitment
Acquisition of new customers alone is not enough to achieve sound growth. The cost of acquiring new customers is growing exponentially every day. This is why many sales organizations focus on renewing contracts with existing customers and renewing contracts.
The world-class recruitment team also understands the importance of maintaining and growing existing talent. They focus on the life cycle of talent and the resulting LTV (Lifetime Value). Onboarding is also important for successful talents to settle in the organization, and specialized onboarding programs are operated for each company.Regenerate response
Finally, while taking inspiration from sales and marketing operations, it’s important to keep in mind that hiring may differ in its approach. While a customer’s purchase decision may not be solely based on a company’s vision, recruitment can be heavily influenced by the job and company culture.
While compensation is a crucial factor, job and company vision often play a larger role in attracting and retaining talent. On the other hand, one negative customer contract may not have a significant impact on other contracts. But, a wrong hire can have a damaging effect on the entire team. So, it’s crucial to exercise care and make informed decisions when it comes to hiring.
We hope the ten insights outlined above will aid you in reaching your recruitment goals and strengthen your recruiting team’s capabilities.