Sales Candidates - How to Get the Ones You Want Part 2

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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
Last week I posted on How to Get the Candidates You Want.  You'll need to review that to follow today's post on the same subject.

The tally as of this morning was 243 resumes.  We assessed nearly 100 candidates and half of them were hirable.  I still have a surplus of 12 more hirable candidates I can screen by phone should the need arise. I interviewed 5 candidates yesterday and have 1 scheduled for Tuesday.  The client already has 2 perfect candidates to choose from.

I don't even look at resumes until it's time to bring the candidates in for the interview.  I don't look at resumes before the candidates are assessed.  I don't look at resumes before they are screened by phone.  I start marking up the resumes prior to the interview. The big lesson for the client and you is this.  If you'll just stop using resumes as a filter and use the assessment  and phone screen to filter the candidates, you'll have many more hirable candidates.  This strategy will usually result in the following conclusion.  "If I was looking at the resumes prior to the interview, I wouldn't have brought any of these candidates in for interviews."  Exactly.

You'll end up interviewing a totally different pool of candidates than you would by selecting candidates to interview from their resumes.  When you filter by resume you'll get candidates that have the background you want but not necessarily the selling experiences and skill sets you need.  When you filter by assessment and phone, you'll get candidates with the skill set and experience specific to your criteria, but not necessarily the background.  In my opinion, the background never helps anyone sell effectively.

© Copyright 2007 Objective Management Group, Inc.

Posted by Dave Kurlan on Sat, Jul 21, 2007 @ 08:45 AM