Changes to Sales Talent Recruiting and Onboarding

COVID-19 has transformed the recruitment process overnight.

Talent acquisition professionals and people teams are still adjusting to the new normal.

Three topics are front of mind with this: time of first contact to day one, time from day one to day of full value and successful onboarding in a virtual work environment.

Today, recruitment is almost entirely digital due to social distancing ordinances. As a result, careful communication with candidates is key — especially during a hiring lull.

Nurturing prospects and keeping your talent pipeline engaged with thoughtful employer branding content is crucial to maintaining a presence among job seekers.

The Importance of Employer Branding

The biggest shift to recruitment is the fact that many companies have paused — or at least reduced — their hiring efforts. The result is less competition for those actively hiring, and an urgent need for those facing a hiring lull to get creative.

When you can’t extend an offer to candidates, how do you keep them interested and encourage them to remain available despite the delay?

The answer lies in your employer branding strategy. 

Significantly more than half of job seekers first conduct web searches and consider a company’s brand before choosing to apply to a job.

You can confidently assume that even more sales professional candidates are thoroughly researching your online presence and reputation via both your website as well as other media such as Glassdoor and other sites. 

Further motivating this is that the majority of the world is working virtually from home and online traffic is trending upward significantly since the upswing since the start of COVID-19.

Effective employer branding entices potential candidates and also helps keep your talent pipeline warm while your team adapts to today’s rapidly changing situation.

Seamlessly integrating compelling employer branding content into your candidate nurture campaigns ensures your top prospects stay engaged.

Enhancing the Candidate’s Experience

The candidate’s experience during all the stages of recruitment plays an important role in how far they will go in the process. Candidates who enjoy a positive experience are more likely to continue through the recruitment marketing funnel, more likely to apply, and more likely to make favorable referrals to your company.

Recruiting and Preparing for Remote Work

The transition to remote work is largely being viewed as an inflection point for more prominent virtual working trends in the future.

Recruiters must adjust accordingly, adapting their processes to work remotely. This accommodation allows teams to continue hiring despite social distancing and allows them to cast a wider net when sourcing and opening their talent pool to multiple geographic locations, improving hiring outcomes and effectively reducing cost-per-hire.

Remote work opportunities will remain popular well after we return to the office. Just under half of U.S. full-time employees already say they’d like to continue working from home after the economy reopens.

Laying the groundwork for a long-term, permanent work-from-home policy, even if you maintain an in-office presence when the world shifts back and being able to offer flexible work options will appeal to candidates and help you fill high-priority positions.

Sourcing Candidates

In order to recruit top sales candidates, you need to have an idea of where and how you are going to source them.

Start by creating candidate personas for each of the roles you are hiring for — that includes the roles you plan to fill.

During your research, also do a deep dive into where your competitors are sourcing their candidates. While there may be a lot of competing employers on top job boards, networking platforms and social media sites are sourcing opportunities your competitors may overlook.

Finding these missed opportunities can be as simple as searching “job board for [insert role]” or “hiring [insert role].” Also, do research from a job seeker’s perspective by searching phrases like “fintech sales jobs near me” or “tech sales jobs near me” or “best paying companies.”

These types of searches will show you where candidates land when they are looking for jobs. 

Matching Candidates

In order to recruit top sales candidates, you need to have an idea of where and how you are going to source them.

Start by creating candidate personas for each of the roles you are hiring for — that includes the roles you plan to fill.

During your research, also do a deep dive into where your competitors are sourcing their candidates. While there may be a lot of competing employers on top job boards, networking platforms and social media sites are sourcing opportunities your competitors may overlook.

Finding these missed opportunities can be as simple as searching “job board for [insert role]” or “hiring [insert role].” Also, do research from a job seeker’s perspective by searching phrases like “fintech sales jobs near me” or “tech sales jobs near me” or “best paying companies.”

These types of searches will show you where candidates land when they are looking for jobs. 

Virtual Onboarding and eLearning

Onboarding is the final stage of the recruitment process and it begins the day a new hire accepts your offer, not their first day on the job. With human interaction removed from the equation entirely, recruiters and HR teams must radically change how new team members are welcomed to make remote onboarding as effective as the real thing.

A solid onboarding process can dramatically improve retention rates. A new hire’s onboarding sequence is their first official introduction to your company and team, which is why a poor experience sends some new hires packing within the first three months on the job.

The shift to remote work has created a compelling need for virtual learning, video conferencing and additional digital employee engagement tools. Tailored training courses need to be designed and delivered in a variety of formats that appeal to multiple learning styles. This provides the ability to conduct comprehensive training while best leveraging your time to focus on tailoring each new hire’s experience.

Creating create virtual social opportunities that connect colleagues and support your company culture gives your new team members the best opportunity to adjust to their role, their teammates and company. Incorporating engaging elements of your culture throughout the entire recruitment process creates a remote candidate’s experience that captures the attention of top candidates.

Transform Your Recruiting Marketing Strategy Now

Once you know where and how you will attract candidates, you’ll want to start focusing on your recruitment marketing strategy. Why? Marketers have this concept called The Rule of Seven, which basically states that a prospect — in this case a prospective candidate — needs to come into contact with a brand — or employer brand — seven times before they recognize the brand and take action.

As candidates and companies are easing into the ‘New Normal”, it’s imperative to create that stellar recruitment marketing and employer branding content you’ve been brainstorming about but haven’t had the time to do.  By working on your recruitment marketing efforts now, prospective candidates will be much more familiar with your company as a future employer when as the year gets busier, whereas your competition will be several weeks, if not months, behind. 

Sales Process Design Experts