The Sales Hiring

Hourglass
Recruit better, fill reqs faster, and make
hiring one of your competitive advantages.

1 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 The Bridge Group is a B2B inside sales consulting firm
dedicated to understanding the models, metrics,
and motions that deliver scalable growth.

bridgegroupinc.com

2 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 Introduction
2018-19 has been hailed as the point in time where the pendulum swung
from sloppy growth towards profitable growth through efficiency.

You might think an ebook on attracting and recruiting an odd place to

bring up this point. But to my mind, the two are connected. When times
are fat, companies can ignore slack in their hiring process. Heads for
headsets, paying signing bonuses, and hire-fast + fire-fast mentalities will
put butts in seats when growth trumps profitability.

As the pendulum swings towards efficient growth, rock-solid hiring

becomes important. In fact, it can be a strategic competitive advantage.

Former ToutApp CEO & current Marketo (Adobe) Global Head of

Strategy TK Kader shared:

In this new environment…founders will have to drive their

companies to embrace frugality, focus on operational
ruthlessness, and play the competition game not by
outspending but by outsmarting.

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 I believe that one of the biggest leverage points for profitable growth is hiring.
Operational efficiency (or ruthlessness as TK calls it) in sales hiring means:

Maximizing return on recruiting spend

Boosting traction per job post

Stricter screening from application to interview

Minimizing time lost on go-nowhere candidates

Increasing acceptance rate on offers made

Accelerating velocity from open req to A-player hired

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 To Out Hire; Embrace the Hourglass

Consider the traditional B2B marketing and sales funnel. Leads come in the
top, they’re qualified into opportunities, and customers exit the bottom.
Standard stuff.

As of late, thing have shifted. That familiar funnel has morphed into an
hourglass. The rise of the SaaS model and a growing appreciation for
customer success have played a role. As a result, the importance of
retention and expansion has grown. A simplified marketing and sales
hourglass today might look something like this:

ENGAGE -> QUALIFY -> CLOSE -> RETAIN -> GROW

Now consider the recruiting pipeline. For many companies, it mirrors the
traditional funnel: applicants, interviews, offers, and hires. But to shrink time-
to-hire, capture more A-players, and cut out unproductive recruiting time, we
must shift to an hourglass mindset. The modern recruiting funnel would flow:

ATTRACT -> CONVERT -> QUALIFY -> CLOSE -> ADVOCATE

In the rest of this ebook, I’ll be taking each of these turn. Let’s dig in.

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 Part 1

ATTRACT

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 Know your Role Elevator Pitch
I’m sure you have a good sense of the hiring profile you’re looking for.

Most leaders have a solid handle on the behaviors and competencies that make
for an ideal candidate. But far too few have spent much time thinking about their
role from the candidate perspective. Have you documented, however informally,
your role elevator pitch?

Approach this as you would creating messaging against a competitor. You don’t
need flowing prose or Madison Avenue ad copy. You do need a few
bullets on why this role matters and why your company makes for an amazing
opportunity.

Imagine three overlapping circles.

Circle #1 is what candidates are looking for. Circle #2 is what

competitors are offering. Circle # 3 is what your company brings
to the table.

The overlap between all three circles are points of non-

differentiation. This is what every employer offers, or at least
claims to offer.

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 Focus on the overlap between Circles #1 and #3. The core of your
role elevator pitch should be the intersection of what candidates are
looking for and what’s unique to your company.

That’s your hiring edge.

Often, companies develop tunnel vision and focus too heavily on

what they want in a candidate. You may have a strong brand in your
market, but that doesn’t make you a household name. If your
candidates don’t know your space, you can’t rely on company brand
alone—no matter how famous you, your founder, or your investors
appear.

The role elevator pitch is the basis for your job description, outreach
InMails, and recruiter messaging. It has to pop.

BOOST YOU HIRING ADVANTAGE

Give HR, current reps, and recruiters a consistent, compelling role
message
Attract more of the right people by speaking to What’s In It For Them
Increase hiring velocity

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 Job Description, Not Sleep Prescription

Reporting to the sales development manager, the corporate SDR

is accountable for booking sales demos across all verticals for the
closing representative. They will be responsible for proactive calling
and lead activity management owning the prospecting stage from
. . . zzzzzzzz.

Sorry. Nodded off there.

The above example is how the vast majority of job descriptions sound. In a word:
dreary. They are about as captivating and inspiring as the operating manual for my
toaster. Most of us were taught that a job description should, well, describe the
job. But that’s totally backwards.

A job description should sell the job. If you can’t capture attention
and interest, the fine print is irrelevant.

This is sales content. You’ll be selling the sizzle, while every other hiring manager
will be documenting the chemical makeup of the steak. Job descriptions should
leave candidates with just one impression: this is the place to advance my career.

I can’t stress enough just how rare this is.

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 Last year, I asked a pool of ten up-and-coming Sales Development Reps to look at
one hundred different job postings. If at least two reps said any one of the jobs
looked interesting, I flagged it as a good example. So how many do you think
passed this (admittedly low) bar? Turns out, just about 9 percent. And remember,
each post needed to receive only two thumbs up. Just ugly.

Looking over the 91% that didn’t make the grade, what I found shouldn’t surprise
you. They were buzzwordy, boilerplate, and boring. They did a great job describing
the job and an atrocious job selling it.

In a more recent project, I asked 50 reps to review 15 job descriptions. Their task
was to rate each one as either interesting or not interesting. I then used
statistical analysis to make sense of the data.

I broke the findings into three buckets:

1. Characteristics that hurt (negative effect)

2. Characteristics with no discernable effect
3. Characteristics that helped (positive effect)

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 NEGATIVE EFFECT
• Mentioning expectations around # of dials or quotas hurts- Much as
you might expect, calling out “scheduling 7 demos a week” or “100+ dials
a day” was a major turnoff.

NO EFFECT
• Talking up the growth trajectory didn’t seem to matter- You should
certainly highlight this (if true). But almost everyone else is doing it too
and you won’t get a significant bump.

• Highlighting inbound leads failed to move the needle- This one

shocked me, but those posts that highlighted plentiful inbound leads
performed no better than those that did not.

• Mentioning “cold calling” had no effect- Another surprise as those

posts that highlighted cold calling performed no worse than those that did
not.

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 POSITIVE EFFECT
• Mentioning “career potential” or “promotion track” matters- If
you’ve built a promotion track, mention it in your job posts. This was the
#1 factor correlated with higher ratings.

• Name dropping works- Posts that mention big name customers,

partners, or investors outperformed those that didn’t.

• Giving the company backstory helps- Painting a picture of where your

company comes from gives your posts a leg up.

This is where smart companies outpace their competition. One Boston

company, Rapid7, reported that after making updates like these to their BDR
job description, applications went from 4 to 28 in just one week.

BOOST YOU HIRING ADVANTAGE

Maximize return on existing job board spend
Increase applicant quality
Save on recruiters; let better copy do some of the heavy lifting

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 Job Description, Not Sleep Prescription
Sometimes amazing candidates seem to magically appear and apply. Other times,
the job board fates smile and deliver a wave of amazing talent. And sometimes,
recruiters and hiring managers have to hustle and scrape to source applicants.

One recruiting channel that is fully stocked and sorely underutilized might surprise
you: Instagram.

It should come as no shock that 90% of those under the age of 30 use social
media. What you may not know is that Instagram has surpassed 400M monthly
active users. That’s four times the numbers of monthly active LinkedIn users.

When it comes to attracting recent college grads (and early career talent),
Instagram is target rich. If you can target them on Facebook, you can target them
on Instagram—that means by city, alma mater, interests, etc.

There are three keys to successful Instagram recruiting:

1. Tight targeting
2. Good creative
3. Clear copy

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 1. TARGETING- Let’s say you are hiring in downtown Boston and are looking for
recent grads. Dial in your location, radius, and age preferences. Next, think
about where your best candidates come from. Identify your top 3-5 feeder
schools and target just those.

2. CREATIVE- Think about who you’re targeting. What can you do to catch their
eye? Some employers go the branding route and feature their companies.
While others spotlight members of their team.

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 The biggest bang for your buck comes from school-specific recruiting.
Consider having an employee (bonus points for an alumnus) stand in
front of your company logo while wearing College/University gear. The
caption might read: “State University grads love working at SaaSCo!
Jumpstart your career in tech sales.”

Beyond static images, Instagram also allows 60-second video ads. Don’t
worry too much about production quality here. Remember: it’s playing on
a phone, not screening at Sundance. If shooting a video is too daunting,
even a slideshow of still photos of your team around the office (again
bonus points for alumni gear) will work.

3. COPY- On Instagram, fun, hashtags, and memes are all appropriate. But
not at the expense of your copy. You want to be crystal clear with your
call to action. Have a direct link to the job page, not your general careers
site.

Someone wise once said clarity trumps persuasion. Your goal is to drive
click-throughs. Test a few variants of your copy to see which ones deliver
the best results.

You can use the same social advertising principles to recruit on Twitter,
Facebook, and LinkedIn, too. But in terms of spend, effectiveness, and
low competition density, Instagram is a ripe target.

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 Here is a video example from DemandDrive
featuring Boston College alum Jon Huang:
https://www.instagram.com/p/1lYFrYFGAP/.

I would have done a few things differently,

but I hope you can see the potential.

BOOST YOU HIRING ADVANTAGE

Compete in a less saturated recruiting channel
Hyper-target your candidate pool
Cut the line and be the first to activate passive candidates

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 Part 2

CONVERT

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 Job Postings as Landing Pages
After your persuasive job description, the next step is to build a landing page.
This is where job sites, your social ads, internal and external recruiters, etc.
will direct candidates to “learn more.”

Make no mistake; this a conversion page.

Most companies do a fantastic job of creating a beautiful careers page. But

sadly, the majority of candidates don’t start there. They start on LinkedIn,
ZipRecruiter, or with an email from your recruiter. These candidates bypass
your amazing careers page and encounter a dull, Soviet-esque, wall of text.

Consider these two landing pages at right. Which do you think does a better
job of converting eyeballs-to-applicants?

Thankfully the marketing profession has landing pages pretty much down to
science. From the folks at Unbounce, we have the five essential elements of
any landing page.

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 1. Headline
2. Benefits
3. Hero shot
4. Social Proof
5. Call to Action

When creating your job landing page, the headline should be the role title. The
benefits can be the responsibilities, requirements, etc. written in the non-sleep-
prescription format we’ve already discussed.

For the hero shot, use pictures of your team, your office (if bright and open), or a
company outing. Consider a video including team members sharing what they
like about the company and the job. Or even the hiring manager sharing what
she’s looking for in a candidate.

For example, Glassdoor shared perspectives from reps, the VP of Sales, and the
GM on working in sales at their company in this video.

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 For more social proof, get quotes from your current team and show them next to
their faces. Use stats like “100 sales careers launched here” or “91% of AEs have
recommended us to a friend.” Don’t be shy. Put these visual elements on your job
landing pages.

Finally, the only call to action should be apply now. No need to clutter this page
up with “follow us on twitter” or “join our talent” newsletter. You want candidates,
not fans. I’m fine with either embedding the application on this page or linking out
to another page with the Apply Now call to action.

In terms of putting this all together, let’s return to the folks at Unbounce and see if
they heed their own advice.

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 Clear headline? Check.

Benefits? Check.

Hero shot and social

proof? Check and check.

Obvious call-to-action?
Yes! Five for five.

BOOST YOU HIRING ADVANTAGE

Think like a demand gen marketer (5-second test, bounce rate,
cost per acquisition)
Increase inbound candidate flow
Maximize submissions with existing recruiting spend

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 Leverage Social Proof
I’m sure you’re at least passingly familiar with Glassdoor, the site where current
and former employees anonymously review companies and their management
teams. But are your Glassdoor reviews helping or hurting your recruiting?

When looking for a new job, candidates are reviewing Glassdoor just like one
would check TripAdvisor or Yelp for restaurant reviews. Bad interview processes,
micromanagers, sub-par compensation—they are all detailed out in the open on
Glassdoor. Great candidates are taking note of what they find there.

Take a look at these two actual reviews. Where would you rather interview?

Glassdoor presents three headline metrics about companies. They are

prominently highlighted on the company’s profile and review pages:

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 • Number of stars (out of 5)
• Percentage who would recommend the job to a friend
• Percentage who approve of the CEO

I’ve reviewed hundreds of company profiles, and there is wide variation in ratings.
Here are examples at both extremes:

Put your best foot forward. Influence candidates’ decisions by highlighting their
peers’ words not your own. The old writing tip show, don’t tell applies here, too.

Improvement takes time, but is worth the effort. Once you’ve done that, highlight
your outstanding reviews. Share your rankings. Link directly to your profile. This is
how you leverage social proof to convert interest. On the next page, you can see
how four companies promote their Glassdoor profiles on their job pages.

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 BOOST YOU HIRING ADVANTAGE
Arm internal and external recruiters with persuasive “content”
Let your reputation drive candidates to you
Lower recruiting costs and increase hiring velocity

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 Remove the Friction in Applying
You need to focus on streamlining and simplifying the application process. Too
many organizations claim innovative and dynamic company cultures. But try to
submit an application and you’ll find a process that would make IRS Tax
Examiners queasy.

If your application has 15+ fields, spreads over multiple pages, or requires a
username and password, it’s time to rethink things. You might object that you’re a
“big company” and you have to do things this way.

Well consider Iron Mountain. They are a Fortune 1000 global company with
annual revenues north of $3B. Here’s how they are taking applications for a sales
position in their Boston office.

That isn’t claiming agility. It’s demonstrating

it. Strive for the Amazon experience:
frictionless.

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 Each additional field raises friction. Let’s say you’re dealing with too many out of
region applicants. Rather than ask for Address 1, Address 2, City, State, Zip, and
Country, add one field for “Location/City” and triage based on that.

Now that you’ve removed extraneous application processing fields, you’ve freed
up room for applicant screening fields.

Below you can see how two companies tackle this. Lever, a SaaS Applicant
Tracking System provider, asks “What sets you apart from your peers?”
Inbound marketing and sales platform, HubSpot, asks “Why do you want to
kickstart your career in sales?”

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 Perhaps knowing the applicant’s Twitter handle is useful in pre-screening.
Perhaps it isn’t.

But if it isn’t actionable in helping you sort and rank candidates, then it doesn’t
belong on your application. Your application process should balance giving the
candidate value (in less application friction) and giving the company value (in
actionable screening information).

BOOST YOU HIRING ADVANTAGE

Maximize applications with existing recruiting spend
Decrease time spent screening applications
Increase response time with candidates

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 Part 3

QUALIFY

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 Accelerate the Process with Surveys
Once a candidate has submitted an application, I’m an advocate for sending them
a thank you email and linking to a brief web survey.

This will increase the speed at which you triage applicants before reading a single
resume. You’ll use these surveys to quickly sort applicants into yes, no, and
maybe buckets. At the risk of being presumptuous, you should put this into
practice tomorrow. It’s cheap, easy, and effective.

In your “thank you for applying” email, prompt them to take a five-minute survey.
You’ll notice three benefits right away.

1. Candidates prove they’re interested by investing an additional five

minutes. There are plenty of resume blasters out there—reps who apply
for any position with a pulse. They are unlikely to begin and even less
likely to finish your survey. We’ve just eliminated them in one fell swoop.

2. You’ll see if they’re able to do quick and effective internet research. A fair
portion of the sales role is web sleuthing. Why not test them upfront?

3. Responses allow you to quickly categorize applicants into yes, maybe, or

no buckets. You can shift your time away from the noes and onto the
yeses and maybes.

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 I recommend a mix of open text and pick-list questions. I know I’m adding a step
to your process, but I can promise you it won’t take much effort. Here are a few
sample questions to give you a feel for what this might look like.

Which of our products interest you most? Why?

[Open text]

Which two of the following do you consider our closest competitors?

[Include three competitors and three non-competitors]

In what year was our company founded?

[List with correct and incorrect options]

If you had only thirty seconds, how would you explain what we do to
someone you met in an airport/coffee shop/etc.?
[Open text]

Why a sales career? Why here?

[Open text]

These ideas are just to get you started.

It will likely take a few passes to fine tune your questions. I’m confident that in the
near term, you will be able to bubble up the best applicants and move them to the
next step with speed. Even if you have external recruiters sourcing candidates,
have them use the survey as part of their process.

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 You might have detected a contradiction between this extra step and the “lower
the friction” advice I shared earlier. Our belief is that it should be easy to submit
an application. And it should be difficult to gain an interview. Your time is
precious. You shouldn’t get on a call or even scan a resume until a candidate
was been vetted by the survey.

We all know that screening applications, resumes, social profiles, etc. is tedious.
Great resume writers can make bad reps or vice versa. A brief survey will allow
you to quickly prioritize the candidates. The faster you can prioritize, the faster
you can reach out, and the further ahead of other companies you’ll be.

You might prefer to substitute a commercial sales assessment (OMG,

SalesGenomix, Talent Analytics, etc.) as part of your process. Feel free. Either
way, you want to be spending more time evaluating candidates and less time
sifting through applications

BOOST YOU HIRING ADVANTAGE

Free up hiring team go deep with the best versus wide with masses
Vastly reduce time wasted on “tire kickers” and “resume blasters”
Accelerate the hiring cycle

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 Map Out the Hiring Process
Sales leaders tend to be confident in their hiring abilities. And some, actually,
should be. For many, the reality is that the same traits disliked in “cowboy”
sellers—no process, go on feel, unpredictable—are the exact traits brought to
hiring.

Your recruiting process has to be just that, a process, and not random acts of
hiring. Below, is a six step hiring process. Bear in mind, this isn’t a rigid system.
You can add or remove steps to meet the needs of your organization. I promise
not to take it personally.

1. APPLICATION + SURVEY
We covered these concepts in the previous chapters.

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 2. PHONE SCREEN
Have the initial screener be your talent specialist, recruiter, or HR person. For
candidates currently in a sales role, they can collect basic information:
background, reasons for job change, what they’re looking for in a new role, etc.
This step is about screening for red flags, not evaluating skills. For green
candidates, initial screening questions will be a bit different. Find out if they’ve
held relevant internships, done any phone-based work, have other
applicable/related experiences, etc.

If no red flags were uncovered, the recruiter should tell the candidate to expect a
call from the hiring manager the next day. Make sure your talent specialist
provides the hiring manager’s name and title and sends an email to confirm.

3. PHONE INTERVIEW
The third step is a more traditional interview, but briefer and still phone based. It
should take you no longer than twenty minutes and, hopefully, end by scheduling
an in-person interview. When it comes to inside sales hiring, phone interviews are
as (if not more) important than in-person. Your reps will be making their living on
the phones. They need to be articulate and able to make a connection without
being face to face. These are the first two questions you should ask:

What do you know about our company?

What do you know about me personally?

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 If the candidate doesn’t do an outstanding job in responding, proceed no further.
Great candidates will come prepared. They’ll have used every means at their
disposal to learn about your company, about your market, and about you the
hiring manager. Not being prepared is a big red flag.

4. ON-SITE INTERVIEW
If they’ve made it through the first three gates, it’s time to bring them onsite. On-
site interviews require real time commitments of yourself and your team. It is
much better to disqualify aggressively in steps 1-3 and spare the team from
wasting any time.

During the phone interview, you asked candidates what they know about your
company. Now, take it one level deeper. If you have trials, demos, or webinars
available, ask them if they looked at them and about their impressions. Ask them
what they’ve gleaned about your prospects and your target market.

They don’t have to be flawlessly prepared, but you should feel that they have
made an investment. If they haven’t, it suggests they lack curiosity and interest.
Others have compiled great lists of interview questions. If you’re interested, I
recommend:

HubSpot’s Sales Interview Questions to Recruit the Best Reps

OpenView’s Interview Questions for Sales Hires
RecruitLoop’s Behavioral Interview Questions

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 5. PEER INTERVIEWS
Most companies want a wider pool that just HR and the hiring manager to weigh
in on candidates. One misstep I often see is having multiple (even 4 or 5) one-
on-one interviews where 90% of the same questions are asked. And they all end
with “what questions do you have for me?” Pity the poor candidate who
experiences good cop, same cop, same cop, same cop.

Group interviews can mitigate this “serial firing squad” problem. With either one-
on-one or group interviews, a hiring scorecard is required (discussed in the next
chapter).

6. SHADOW OR MOCK PRESENTATION

If you’re hiring reps with no prior sales experience, you should give him or her an
opportunity to sit with a current rep to see the job firsthand and ask candid
questions. You want the candidate to be comfortable asking:
What is it really like here?
What is the worst part of the job?
How many reps are making quota?

The candidates who make the most of this opportunity are the ones you want to
hire. They’ll be the ones who are comfortable asking hard questions of a peer
who knows the day to day. Ask your reps to be honest—the good, the bad, and
the ugly. Don’t have them sugar coat anything, as it will come back to bite you.

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 Atrium co-founder Peter Kazanjy shared his thinking on First Round Review:

I tell the candidate to treat me like a prospect that has agreed to

a demo. Run the process, from soup to nuts, the way they
would in real life. This means sending me a calendar invite,
complete with screen-sharing, executing a 30-60 minute
presentation and demo, and following up with a proposal.

Because this is essentially a mock funnel pass, it's incumbent on

you as a hiring manager to pay attention to all parts of the sales
and presentation process looking for both excellence and soft spots.

A variation on this theme is to assign homework. As an example, PersistIQ puts

their Sales Development Reps through this “take-home assignment.”

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 Qualify and disqualify ruthlessly. Getting to no quickly is as important in hiring as
in the selling process.

Run the process consistently. It’s tempting to rush and bring people onsite. Phone
interview everyone, without exception. You want to minimize time wasted in
extensive onsite interviews with unqualified candidates. This will free up your
team to dive deeper with the best candidates.

BOOST YOU HIRING ADVANTAGE

Avoid the massive costs of a bad hire
Spend hiring teams’ time more judiciously
Candidates and interviewers know what happens next and when

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 Make Better Decisions with Data

Let’s say you and two of your reps interview a candidate. How do you compare
notes?

Without a defined scoring system, you’re making decisions based on inconsistent

measures. “I liked her. Marissa liked her. Mark said she seemed sharp. Seems
like a good fit.”

But why did you, Marissa, and Mark like the candidate? Was it even for the same
reasons? How do you stack rank your “likes” across multiple candidates? A better
way to evaluate candidates is with a scorecard. A scorecard ensures the entire
team is on the same page when it comes to the characteristics, behaviors, and
competencies you’re trying to assess.

Step one is to determine what exactly to score.

This is hard, but important. What are the strengths you’re looking for? Can
interviewers be expected to uncover and assess them? Can their impressions be
quantified? A scorecard is about standardizing the impressions a candidate makes
on the interviewing team.

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 Literally, nobody is perfect. Everybody has weaknesses; they are just
easier to find in some people. Hiring for lack of weakness just means
that you’ll optimize for pleasantness. Rather, you must figure out the
strengths you require and find someone who is world class in those
areas despite their weaknesses in other, less important domains.

- Ben Horowitz on the Andreessen Horowitz blog

The quote above underscores the importance of figuring out which specific strengths
you require and building a scoring model to help you find candidates who excel in
those areas.

Step two is to design the scoring system.

I’ve tried asking for just “YES” or “NO” ratings. But interviewers felt too restricted.

I’ve experimented with rating on a scale of 1-10, but no one could explain how a seven
differed from an eight. Eventually, I settled on a scale rating of 1-4, but found that most
everyone only gave out twos and threes.

Then I stumbled on applicant tracking system company Lever and found a better way.

Everyone understands the difference between a thumbs up and thumbs down.

Similarly, two thumbs up versus one doesn’t require explanation. I switched to this
system from the 1-4 rating scale. The percentage of double-ups (essentially 4 points)
and double-downs (1 point) increased fivefold.

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 I can’t explain why, but people are more comfortable rating 1s and 4s as thumbs
than numbers.

(Screenshot from Lever ATS)

Step three is tracking makes and misses.

Say your scorecard is rating candidates as “strong hires” who, later, end up
underperforming. It might be time to revisit your criteria and confirm that the skills
you’re grading on are the skills that matter for doing the job. (From our experience,
cultural fit is one of those criteria that is equally likely to produce bad and good
hires.)

For example, one company used participation in collegiate team sports. As you’d
expect, the majority of their hires played a college sport. But when they examined
performance at the six-month mark, those who played collegiate team sports were
just as likely to be C-players as A-players. And when they looked at their top reps,
more were non-athletes than athletes. Without keeping score, “what we know but
just isn’t so” can rule the day.

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 Here’s a bonus idea for the bold.

If your peer interviewers have a track record of scoring candidates highly (who turn out
to be great hires), keep them interviewing. If you have an interviewer who consistently
rates reps highly (who turn out to be bad hires) excuse them from future interviews.
You can build a simple spreadsheet to figure out who is overly harsh, who is wildly
inconsistent, and who is remarkably accurate in making hiring recommendations.

Tracking makes and misses requires being ruthless on both your hiring criteria and
who makes up the interviewing team. It is much harder to do either of those without
keeping score.

BOOST YOU HIRING ADVANTAGE

Improve your ability to screen for future performance
Increase accuracy of peer interviews by keeping score
Only take reps off the floor who make exceptionally accurate hiring
recommendations

41 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 Part 4

CLOSE

42 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 Two Weeks from Application to Offer

Take a look at some of the most highly rated employers on Glassdoor, and you’ll
notice a common thread: their interview processes are lean. Many run, from soup
to nuts, in just two weeks. If you want A-players to choose you, you need to move
quickly. Here’s my (admittedly aggressive) timeline:

STAGE DAY
Receive Resume + Send and Review Survey 1-2
Phone Screen 3
Phone Interview 4
On-Site, Peer Interviews, Shadow/Mock Call 6–12
Extend Offer 14

It’s fourteen days from application to offer.

I prefer the offer to come from either the CEO or the VP of Sales—as high as you
can go. This is a final opportunity to make the candidate feel special. Just like with
job descriptions, add some personality and sizzle to the offer letter. It is a sales
tool, and until the candidate signs on the dotted line, you are still in selling mode.

On the next page, I’ve shared four reviews taken off of Glassdoor. Notice two
things. One, initial contact to offer accepted was fast. Two, the hiring process was
structured and run like a sales process. That’s what you’re looking for.

43 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 BOOST YOU HIRING ADVANTAGE
Eliminate uncertainty as candidates wonder what’s taking so long
Increase hire rate with A-players
Be the David of agility and beat the Goliaths of brand

44 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 Beyond Offer Accepted
Having an offer accepted shouldn’t be thought of as marking the opportunity
Closed Won. At best, it’s nearer to a deal that’s In Procurement. You still have
their current employer and the other companies they’re rejecting left to beat—not
to mention second thoughts, fear, and spousal vetoes.

Most startup companies I’ve ever worked with make one crucial
mistake: They assume that their recruitment process is over
when that person accepts his or her offer. The truth is the
process isn’t over until after the employee starts with the
company, updates her LinkedIn profile and emails all her friends.

In fact, it’s worse than that. The moment your future head of
sales, marketing, product or even junior developer says “yes” is
the moment you’re most vulnerable of losing them.
- Mark Suster on his blog Both Sides of the Table

Assuming two weeks’ notice and a six-day buffer, that means we have on average
20 days from offer acceptance to start. Stay in touch over that period.

Here are four touchpoints you might execute:

45 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 • 18 days before start- Have the team members who they’ve met start
connecting with them on LinkedIn. Messages might include “so glad you’re
coming on board” or “pumped that you’re joining the team.” You get the
idea.

• 12 days before start- Ship them some logo’d company gear (e.g.,
stickers, water bottle, hoodie, etc.)

• 7 days before start- Mail them a printed, detailed orientation agenda. The
what, who, and when of it. You don’t want them harboring any second
thoughts one week out.

• 3 days before start- have the hiring managers’ manager send a “looking
forward to meeting you” email. Tell them the team has been working all
week prepping their workspace. Maybe even send along a picture of their
desk with a small welcome gift on it.

This isn’t about social pressure, excessive flattery, or manipulation. It’s about
confirming for the candidate that they’ve made the right decision. To have a
candidate accept an offer and then rescind is an enormous waste of energy, time,
and money. Do everything you can to prevent fumbling on the goal line.

BOOST YOU HIRING ADVANTAGE

Eliminate waste/cost from accepted-then-rejected offers
Foster positive and excited attitude before Day 1 of employment
Create highly engaged employees that ramp faster and perform better

46 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 Nurture Missed Connections
Picture the traditional sales and marketing funnel one more time. What happens
when an opportunity is lost? Is the account banished from the database? Do we
refuse to ever sell to them again? Of course not.

For most companies, sales “recycles” the account back to marketing. That is the
exact approach you should take with candidates who voluntarily drop out of your
recruiting funnel. Perhaps they decided to remain at their current employer. Or
maybe they (foolishly!) took another offer.

Fine.

Some managers act like jilted lovers and harbor ill will towards the candidate.
That’s a mistake. A great candidate who says “yes” and a great candidate who
says “no thanks” have one thing in common: they’re both great. These missed
connections aren’t locked up for 36 month terms with a competitor. You need to
keep them in your funnel. Perhaps 5, 4, or even 2 months down the line they’ll see
the error of their ways.

If a candidate took another offer and find they regret it, most won’t come crawling
back. But if you’ve stayed in touch and (refrained from salting the earth), you can
pick right back up where your hiring process left off.

47 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 You needn’t architect a complicated nurture sequence. A call at month 1, a text at
month 2, and quarterly emails from there on out are sufficient.

BOOST YOU HIRING ADVANTAGE

Reduce hiring time with recycled candidates
Lower recruiting costs
Leverage nurture as a high-value candidate source/channel

48 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 Part 5

ADVOCATE

49 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 Make Candidate Referrals Pay
Nearly every hiring manager agrees that referral hires are amazing. They bring in
a higher caliber of talent, they move through the hiring process faster, and these
hires stay longer. According to Jobvite, 1 out of 10 employee referrals will get
hired. For job boards, the figure is worse than 1 in 100.

In terms of lower-cost and higher-quality, referral recruiting can’t be beat. And

yet, most reps don’t refer other candidates. The problem isn’t that the referral
bonus is too low, it’s that it is paid too late. Think of it this way.

Did you pay for your wedding cake on your one-year anniversary?
Did you put the down payment on your car after your first oil change?

Ridiculous, right? Yet companies often pay months after the fact for candidate
referrals. That length of time doesn’t incent immediate action and leads to little or
no referral effort. Even if the bonus is high ($1K+ per), long odds encourage little
effort. Here’s a better idea: pay on valid applications submitted.

Think of your referral process as you would qualified appointment setting. If an

SDR sets a meeting that meets the proper criteria, they’ve done their job—
whether or not the deal ever closes. When generating referrals, the goal is the
same: put qualified candidates in front of hiring managers.

I advocate holding a monthly drawing.

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 Each month, reps who referred candidates get their names in a hat. On the 1st,
draw for the previous month. Perhaps last month’s winner is ineligible. Or maybe
multiple referrals mean multiple chances to win. You can work out the fine print.
But two factors are critical. One, every month someone wins something significant.
Two, there’s a short lag time between action (referral) and reward (the drawing).

Perhaps group thank you events or branded swag are more appropriate for your
team. Fine by me. Salesforce shared how they give recognition for participation,
not just for hires.

This past year we surprised dozens of employees with a pair of

San Francisco Giants tickets...just for submitting a referral.
Recognition shows our appreciation for participation in the
program, regardless of whether a referral is ultimately placed.

On paper, doubling the referral bonus should increase participation. But, as

Google found out, it doesn’t. In practice, a monthly drawing combined with
prompted referrals (discussed in the next chapter) are the best way to make
referrals happen.

BOOST YOU HIRING ADVANTAGE

Lower recruiting costs
Increase pipeline of higher caliber candidates
Increase employee loyalty as referrals rise

51 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 Prompt Employee Referrals
Now you’ve primed the engine by reducing the time between referral and reward.
Next, you’ll want to step on the gas pedal. Enter the prompted referral.

Mark Roberge has lived the hiring reality. From 2007 to 2013, Mark served as
HubSpot’s SVP of worldwide sales and services. During that time, he expanded
the sales group from a handful of reps to more than 450 people. Mark shared:

I call this the forced referral. It was by far the best technique we
used to find talent. It is tougher to do when you have only one
or two salespeople on staff and you are not growing quickly. Once
you start scaling, it works beautifully.

When a new rep has been in the role for roughly three months, I
tell them that tomorrow we are going to sit together for twenty
minutes. And that tonight, I’m going to go through all their LinkedIn
connections and find people that are early on in their careers at good
companies. I’ll build a list that we’re going to go through together.

At the meeting, Mark would show up with a list of names to review with his reps.
He shared that, upon seeing the list of names, his reps would exclaim, “Why
didn’t I think of these people?”

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 Your reps have a perspective that you can’t get from LinkedIn or a resume. That
inside scoop can separate “They would be awesome!” from “A bit of a nightmare,
steer clear.” Either way, you walk out with intel you couldn’t gain otherwise. The
value is in the employee referral, but the referral meeting is what primes the pump.
Take action to get the most from your employees’ networks.

Prompting referrals—I prefer that over calling them forced—may just become your
best source of candidates.

BOOST YOU HIRING ADVANTAGE

Maximize average number of referrals per sales reps
Lower total cost of recruiting
Increase hiring velocity

53 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 Build a Hall of Fame
Nothing in this world can be said to be certain, except death, taxes, and reps
departing for greener pastures.

When a great rep leaves it stings. For most companies, the relationship ends with
the exit interview. For extremely gifted managers, the departure is on good terms.
But one company actively publicizes when reps move on: memoryBlue.

memoryBlue specializes in lead generation, full

sales cycle management, and recruiting. Their
website does something I’ve never seen
anywhere else.

It highlights their Alumni.

The pride they have in their people, their

training programs, and the careers they’ve
launched is evident.

With offices in San Jose (CA), Austin (TX), and

Washington, DC, they hire a dozen or more
SDRs every month. I spoke with Co-founder
and Managing Partner, Chris Corcoran, about
their approach.

54 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 Sales development representatives have a relatively short shelf life
in that role. Great reps will ultimately elevate into a position with
more responsibility and more earning potential.

One alum got 18 months of experience and exposure. He then went

to work for the CEO of one of Washington, D.C.’s fastest growing
tech companies. When 18 months prior, he was on a college campus
and that same CEO wouldn't even interview him.

Our goal is to provide the opportunity in high-tech sales that we

wish we had been given when we first got out of college. Part of
that means embracing the fact that people will leave us.

The flip side of that coin is the Alumni network. This network connects former
employees to memoryBlue and boosts recruiting efforts.

A real bottleneck is getting the right people. Our Alumni, because of the way
we fast-tracked their careers, refer younger siblings, roommates, and friends.
A very high percentage of our hires are referrals.

Our alumni continue to serve as advocates for the company and the
program. They are an ongoing recruitment marketing resource. When we're
interviewing people, I like to tell them, ‘I challenge you to go find another
hiring manager who's going to truly care what you're doing three, four, five
jobs from now. I will because you'll continue be an ambassador for the
program.

55 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 Chris and the team take it one step further. Each year a panel of outside
advisors reviews submissions for their Alumni of the Year—highlighting
one Alum for outstanding accomplishments in their high tech career.
Beyond the honor, the winner receives a $5K prize to spend on a
vacation anywhere in the world.

Think about that.

They are essentially awarding a SPIF to a rep who doesn’t work for
them any longer. What they are doing is playing the long game and
cementing a career-length connection to the company. You needn’t
adopt the memoryBlue program in its entirety. But I hope you can find
one or two pieces to put into practice at your company.

BOOST YOU HIRING ADVANTAGE

Launch a low-cost, Alumni recruiting army
Building advocates, not burning bridges
Driving inbound candidates by marketing how you change lives/careers

56 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 Parting thoughts

Being a sales leader means thinking strategically, architecting process,

and maximizing resource utilization.

Those are the exact skills you’ll need to master to make hiring a
competitive advantage. Do so and you’ll build a world-class (and
operationally ruthless) recruiting engine.

Here is this ebook’s advice one more time:

Lower recruiting costs with a better message

Know what your ideal candidates are looking for and what will make
your message unique. Work hard on job descriptions and they’ll work
hard for you.

Treating hiring like a sales process

Given the choice between being a little more accurate in hiring and a
little faster, I’d choose speed every time. The costs of a bad hire
already stacks the deck in favor of thoroughness. A little more speed
is what will leave your hiring competition in the dust.

57 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 Think about sourcing candidates like a marketer
Parting thoughts
Measure your candidate “lead sources.” Keep track of conversion rates.
Calculate cost-per-applicant and cost-per-hire across channels.

Recycle and nurture; not one and done

This might be the single hardest advice to follow in this ebook. But
when you lose a great candidate to another offer, don’t lose your cool.
You can reap the benefits of recycled candidates or you can salt the
earth. It’s entirely up to you.

Build advocates; not burn bridges

Turn your recruiting arm into an advocate army. Treat your people well
when they leave and you’ll earn the right to ask for referrals.

Thank you for listening and good luck.

58 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group

 Inside Sales Consulting & Execution

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don’t just research sales strategies, we live them.

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No two companies are the same, especially when it comes to sales.
Our team identifies the key variables that will make your go-to-market
motion unique. We’re here to help take the guesswork out of growth.

About the Author

Matt Bertuzzi is Director of Research and Operations at The Bridge Group. He is a
Salesforce MVP alum and leads the research and data team. Outside the office,
he volunteers with non-profits serving veterans and hikes with his rescue dogs.
59 The Sales Hiring Hourglass | The Bridge Group