“There is a science to implementing your sales and marketing strategy and building out the team necessary to execute on that plan. It takes time, commitment, and forward thinking. When you delay until your hiring problem can no longer be ignored, you lose the luxury to wait for the ideal person to grow your business and the capacity to be objective about who is the best.”
Lisa Sacchetti, CEO of The Renaissance Network
When companies hire they often do so in response to a problem: their pipeline may be too large for their current team to handle; they need more revenue in the pipeline and more deals closed; they are losing market share; they are replacing an underperforming member of their team but want to wait to make sure it is the right choice to start over; or they have a new vacancy which needs to be filled. Companies, therefore, begin the hiring process when a problem already exists and needs to be solved in a reactive manner.
The Renaissance Network (TRN) often hears from prospective clients that they are not yet ready to hire but may be looking to add to their sales, marketing and leadership teams in a few months in response to one or more of these problems. With our aggressive approach to hunting, we can uncover candidates at any time to meet our client’s needs. However, had we engaged with our clients sooner in a more proactive approach to finding to a key team member, many of our clients would experience fewer of the consequences associated with reactive hiring. With an eye on commercial sales roles as an example, we are pleased to offer our white paper on “The Top 10 Reasons Why Proactive Hiring Saves Time and Money.”
THE CONSEQUENCES ASSOCIATED WITH REACTIVE HIRING
When companies hire responsively, they are reacting to a problem their hiring manager is experiencing in the present—the hiring manager will be already experiencing some kind of pain within their sales team (vacant positions, unfulfilled quotas, lost market share, etc.). Therefore, by the time a company makes the decision to hire, they are already experiencing diminished customer relationships, depleted team morale, and most importantly, lost revenue and pipeline, and will continue to lose time, resources, and sales, as they execute their hiring strategy.
Once the hiring company starts their search, companies open themselves up to a variety of problems within their hiring process—all of which cost them more time and lost revenue. First the company will post their job; then run incoming candidates through their hiring process (or take the necessary time associated to hunt for the best candidate); and then close a candidate who will give 2-4 weeks notice. As a result, an additional 6-8 commercial weeks will be lost to close their search. By the time a new employee comes on board, has adjusted to the company and has developed a strong pipeline, months more may pass before the new hire is truly making an impact on the hiring manager’s team. This delay is particularly harmful in a traditional sales calendar and with the typical sales cycle for products within the Education space. The cost of responsive hiring process can be high.
TOP 10 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD EMPLOY PROACTIVE HIRING AT YOUR COMPANY
Anticipating future needs and proactive hiring allows you to preemptively put a plan in place for developing a stronger sales team before the hiring manager experiences a problem. Companies proactively hiring can put a strategy in place for their hiring process, identify the competencies necessary to be a successful addition to the sales team, and reduce their search times, revenue loss and other reactive hiring consequences.
1. Reduces Customer Fall-Out:
With a vacancy on your team, or a salesperson who is failing to build client relationships, customers will look to your competitors who are offering them the service and experience they desire. The longer you wait to hire, the more time you give for your customers to reach out to your competitors. Proactive hiring allows you to reduce customer fall out by following through with the hiring process before your customers make the switch.
2. Enables You to Capitalize on Hot Trends and New Funding in a Changing Market:
With a proactive approach to hiring, companies can evaluate current trends in the market, determine opportunities for expansion, and make new appropriate hires to capitalize on hot market movements within the Education space before their competitors.
3. Decreases Your Search Time:
Companies should anticipate their future hiring needs and define the requirements for the position in advance to jump start the hiring process. Through a proactive position definition before pain is felt, teams can work quickly and efficiently to evaluate talent, be selective during the hiring process, and close the best salesperson for their needs.
4. Decreases Distraction for The Hiring Manager:
Hiring is time and energy consuming and can be even more so for the inexperienced hiring manager. Making a decision to hire or not can be a distraction in itself, and the time needed to hunt candidates, create an interview schedule, conduct interviews, close a candidate, and finally train a new hire can take a hiring manager away from their important day-to-day business. In a proactive approach, the hiring manager can more quickly and efficiently solve a hiring problem by designating internal and external resources up front and decrease the time necessary to focus on and make a hire.
5. Invigorates Your Sales Team:
Companies looking to proactively hire can take advantage of the market earlier and beat their competitors to securing growing clients and channels by making smart, systematic talent and competency adjustments. Pre-emptive hiring invigorates your team, as they know their employers want to intelligently support and grow their business.
6. Allows You to Hunt the Right Candidate for Your Needs:
While you may receive some great candidates by posting a job on your corporate page or on job boards, often the best candidates are not actively looking for a job; instead, they are busy closing business for your competitors and are outside of your network. Proactive hiring allows for you to secure resources, often external, to hunt for “hidden” and “passive” candidates.
7. Gives You the Time to Thoroughly Evaluate All Potential Candidates:
By proactively hiring, companies can take the time necessary to evaluate their potential candidates and uncover their true competencies. For example, TRN sends sales candidates through a five-step process, including chronological and behavioral based interviews, sales history verification, custom assessments and 360 degree reference checks. Interviews are conducted over multiple days to gauge personality, fact-check their statements, and evaluate the true characteristics of candidates. Each step is conducted by specialists who know how to ask the appropriate questions to uncover the best candidates.
8. Increases Your Hiring Success:
Companies that are proactively looking to grow their business with new talent will have the reputation that they care about building their company and are constantly working to improve their teams. These companies are networked and use innovative external and internal hiring resources. Further, these attractive companies will be able to consider more candidates and not miss out on candidates who may move on to other opportunities if the process had been delayed, reactive or slow.
9. Allows You to Capitalize on Industry and Company Milestones:
In a proactive approach to hiring, companies have the capacity to bring on new hires when they can have the most impact or can be the most successful. External factors include industry funding/buying cycles and trade events like those in the Education space. Internal timing or events include new product launches, company sales conferences or funding rounds. Another factor is the efficiency of proactively hiring in a cohort of new sales employees before one of the events above for improved training effectiveness and market impact at scale.
10. Allows You to Fill the Pipeline More Quickly:
Hiring proactively allows a company to pull forward the natural adjustment period it takes for a new hire to build their pipeline. Opportunity costs associated with waiting will affect your business over the long term; by limiting the gap to ramp-up time, proactively hiring companies can see a market impact in a quicker, more efficient timeframe, and ideally beat their competitors to market.
WHY USE THE RENAISSANCE NETWORK AS YOUR TRUSTED SEARCH PARTNER
This white paper highlights the important advantages of proactive hiring and utilizes the example of sales hires to illustrate the impact of this approach.
As the Education Talent Expert, TRN partners with our clients over the long term to help them grow their business; because we principally work in the Education and Learning space, we have the capacity to gauge the market and help guide our clients around the world make the best hiring decisions possible. Even when a company works proactively to hire, they need the services of a strategic search partner A) to best understand the market, B) to uncover candidates outside of their reach and C) provide the data-driven rigor necessary to secure a great talent.
For 25 years, TRN has uncovered executive talent and built goal-driven teams in Education. We begin each partnership by devoting time and resources to understanding our client’s needs and market strategy. Our goal is to utilize our resources to uncover the best candidates to build our clients’ businesses. We aggressively hunt top talent outside of the reach of our client’s network; send potential candidates through a multi-step interview process; utilize the experience and knowledge of the industry to determine candidate’s true competencies; confirm conclusions through data-driven tools; and then help our clients close their top candidate. All the while, we enable our clients to continue focusing on and growing their businesses rather than putting their time and resources towards an internal search process.
“We leverage our longevity in the sector to expertly access candidates both inside and outside of the industry and believe our processes and tools make for a specialized and elegant solution that is difficult to match.”
Lisa Sacchetti, CEO of The Renaissance Network
