- April 21, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One company kept statistics so that they could show me that 450 candidates viewed their ad, only 22 took our assessment and only 2 were recommended. Of course, from the client’s perspective, this could only mean there was something wrong with either the assessment or the process we helped them build. However, I know from experience that this kind of ratio can only point to the ad they posted on the internet.
The ad can often be blamed for a lack of recommended candidates when it is inadvertently written to attract the wrong candidates. In this case, they had a significant number of candidates who eliminated themselves prior to taking the assessment. Why would that happen?
The company fell into two traps:
1) They wrote their ad in the traditional fashion – describing the opportunity rather than the candidate they desired to hire and his experience;
2) They are in an unattractive industry but rather than a blind ad they allowed candidates to find them on the web and opt out.
Now you might argue that they would find out about an undesirable company sooner or later so why not sooner? Once the recruiting process begins candidates will be trying to get invited in for an interview and selling the company on them. When it’s finally time for the company to sell the opportunity and the benefits of working for the company, the candidate is fully invested in the process.
If you want to take full advantage of the power of the assessment, you must be certain that the ad will attract, not repel, the candidates you targeted. For more information about building a world-class sales recruiting process and the more accurate, customizable sales specific pre-employment assessment available, see Objective Management Group’s web site.
