The Difference Between Rushed And Efficient Hiring

Whether your business is growing, or you recently lost a top performer, companies can find themselves short on sales talent in both good times and bad. When a team is understaffed, management has some hard decisions to make—bring on a rushed hire to fill the gap or count on the existing team to juggle the extra work until you find the right fit. The ideal hiring process, of course, is both efficient and thorough.

Here is some advice on how to expediate the hiring process without sacrificing your ability to accurately evaluate your pool of candidates:

Prioritize Pre-Screening To Save Time:

Every day a position remains vacant can amount to missed sales opportunities, so the pressure is on to fill the vacancy. However, it’s important to give the hiring process and the candidates the attention required to make the right decision.

If you’re pressed for time, efficient pre-screening can expediate the process by significantly narrowing down your initial pool of candidates. A sales personality test can help highlight the best applicants in little time.  Sales personality tests — offered by such leading providers as Sales Test Online — can predict a candidate’s suitability for a specific sales role with 90% accuracy and deliver instant results. They are inexpensive and easy to administer. A sales personality test provides you with an objective assessment of a candidate’s core soft skills and work tendencies, making it an ideal tool for saving considerable amount of time during the screening process.

Conduct A Preliminary Phone Interview:

Once you’ve completed the pre-screening portion of your hiring process, you should have a promising shortlist of candidates. Before conducting in-person interviews, conduct short phone interviews with each candidate. This is a valuable preliminary assessment opportunity. This is the first time that a candidate will have an opportunity to make an impression, so why not see how well they do? Save the big questions for the sit-down meeting but do take the time to discuss the candidate’s interest in the role and get a sense of their responsiveness, communication style and personality. If, in the course of a ten-minute conversation, you get the sense that a candidate is not an ideal fit for your team, then you’re saving valuable time by eliminating from the list of candidates you intend to interview further.

Include Others In The Interview:

Having the additional perspective of members of your sales team during job interviews can greatly increase the odds of finding the ideal candidate. Listening to the input of people you trust can help you see candidates more objectively and identify any remaining doubts about a candidate’s eligibility for the role.

While the necessity of fast hiring is often unavoidable in the sales industry, it is important to ensure that the process is efficient rather than rushed. Trimming valuable time off the screening process by using assessment tests, pre-screening candidates by phone and involving others in the process can help make the process far more efficient and effective. It will also help ensure that you don’t find yourself in the position of having to hire for the same role a few weeks or months down the line.