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Guest post by: Andrew Bailey Become an Author

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All too often, big mistakes are made during the recruitment process which means the best salespeople are not hired. A business needs to have a good recruitment process in place before,during and after an interview. If not, hiring the wrong candidate can be a very costly one. In fact, I have heard of figures like $100,000 as being the cost of hiring the wrong sales person. That takes into account salary, car allowance, the cost of training, induction and any administration work involved too. As a manager, can you afford to cost your company so much money for every ineffective person you hire? I don't think you can I and I don't think you would want to either. So, is there a method to the recruitment process that's easy to implement and avoid those costly mistakes of hiring the wrong salesperson? The good news is, yes there is. However, in saying that, most companies do not even have the most basic of processes in place to make sure you find the best people or even just ok people. Let me explain. When I was working for a small telecommunications company, I noticed that there were a lot of sales people wandering around not really doing anything productive. So I asked around and found out that most of the sales people were hired by one person. So I asked him what process he used for hiring sales people. He said, "well, I place an ad in the paper, people fax their resumes in, I read them, the one that sounds appealing enough I ask in for an interview and if they have the looks and the brains, I hire them". I couldn't believe my ears! We had an office full of wanna be playboy centerfolds hired as salespeople and we were all depending on them to generate revenue for the company when clearly they had no idea what they were doing. I'm not saying for one minute that wanna be playboy centerfolds can't do the job but the ones that he hired had not a hope in hell of doing it. Clearly that system wasn't going to work in the long run because all he succeeded in doing with that recruitment process was having eye candy in the office.

The most basic process you should have in place at least is a process where you have some key indicators in place as to what you are looking for in a candidate. That way you can be assured of a successful interview.

1. Do a simple telephone screening with the candidate before you invite them for a time consuming interview. Get a feel for the person first and ask a few relevant questions about their background.

2. Prepare some tough questions for them during the interview relating to your particular business type. That way you can guage their knowledge and ability to think on their feet which sales people need to do all the time.

3. Use a rating system to score their suitability for the position.

4. Use a profiling tool to assess a persons suitability and which also can tell you who the person really is and if they're suitable for the position. If you were going to buy a second hand luxury car from a private owner, would you just hand over say $70,000 just by driving around the block once or twice and kicking a few tires? I doubt you would. You would get that car independently assessed and see if everything is as it should be. So why shouldn't you do the same with anyone that you hire on behalf of your company? If your company hasn't got access to a profiling tool, maybe you should suggest that they purchase one. They aren't that expensive but when you consider what it could cost if you hire the wrong person, it's well worth the investment. Remember, once you hire a person these days, it's not that easy to get rid of them if they are unsuitable. It's best not to make that mistake in the first place.

If you as a manager are responsible for hiring staff, then it's crucial you have a sound recruitment process in place. If you want to avoid making those mistakes and having your new employee fail on your watch, I strongly suggest you take a look at your hiring process and modify them accordingly. You very rarely get praised for hiring an excellent candidate, but should you hire a bad one, you will soon hear about it.

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