COMMENTS
Start-ups here in Silicon Valley spend almost $500,000 to market their new technology, $150,000 on PR and $75,000 on their website. All to reach out to external customers. Yet they spend 10 minutes cutting and pasting a job description to an internet employment post expecting waves of unemployed or unhappy salespeople to come knocking on their door.
Great salespeople aren't looking for a job. They're doing just fine in their current position. And they'll cost you a fortune to hire them.
Newer unproven salespeople with lots of potential (Hey, I used to be one of those a long time ago) aren't responding to the traditional sales opportunities either. They're too busy trying to figure out what they are doing and how to make a solid living to be concerned with perusing other traditional sales opps in case they fail. Because failure isn't an option that ever occurred to them.
Writing a traditional ad to target experienced sales people that are essentially resigned to failure with their current opportunity is a great way to recruit unhirable candidates.
At least congratulate the company you mentioned for having the foresight to assess these predictably poor candidates before making an offer!
Choosing top salespeople requires an entire company effort. PR, marketing, Internet employment ads and an intensive recruiting effort from the CEO to the receptionist should be mandated. The stakes are just too high. The incidental cost of assessing candidates should be the insurance, not the final criteria.
I recommend that my clients preferably have at least 3 hirable candidates after the assessment process in order to hire one. They don't like to hear it. But usually one candidate won't fit for some reason that everyone in the department agrees on and then they're left arguing about which of the remaining 2 will knock the ball out of the park. What a nice argument to have!