There are many ways to stay informed and up to date. Podcasts, blogs, webinars or the classic way: books. How you get informed depends entirely on your personal preferences and how you can best integrate it into your daily life. Many people love podcasts – so, we compiled the 26 best podcasts for you. Even […]
Attracting and retaining top talent is a challenge many businesses face today. If you want your brand to grow and succeed, you need to hire top talent. Your company’s strategies will depend on your size, location, industry, etc. However, certain elements, such as employer branding and making data-driven decisions, are core parts of any great recruitment strategy.
Here are some of the best recruitment strategies that you can implement to attract top employees.
According to LinkedIn, about 75% of candidates consider an employer’s brand before they apply for a job. So, creating a vision and mission for your brand that is relatable can go a long way in attracting prospective candidates. Start by identifying what makes your business or product different and what values underpin what you do.
By promoting your brand’s values and culture, you can attract candidates who are the best fit. The way that you advocate for current employees and celebrate achievements and projects online can give prospective employees some insight into what it’s like to work for your company.
Top candidates often look for companies that:
Defining your ideal candidate persona for a particular role can help your recruitment efforts be more focused and efficient. Consider the educational background, skills, professional qualifications, work experience, and personal characteristics that your ideal candidate would have.
If you know exactly what you’re looking for, you can:
To develop your candidate persona, you can evaluate the career profiles of your current top performers. Interview them to find out more about why they are so valuable in their roles. Looking at job boards can help you to identify what type of qualities other employers look for in similar roles.
An employee referral program is a structured program where employees recommend suitable candidates from their networks for specific roles. When you ask your employees to refer candidates, you can benefit in many ways.
Your referral policy should include your hiring expectations and the incentives you offer. Consider if you will provide successful referrals with an incentive. Clearly communicate when, how, and why employees should refer a potential candidate.
Recruiters and candidates primarily connect and interact online. If you want to attract and retain top talent, using digital hiring strategies and social media is a must. Creating content for your website and various channels is a great way to show prospective candidates what your company is all about.
A digital recruiting strategy includes:
Digital recruitment methods offer you greater exposure and access to a larger talent pool, leading to higher-quality candidates and maximizing your ROI.
Different skill sets require different outreach methods. The best programmers are probably not frequenting the same places as skilled marketers. You need to identify where your candidates are. This may be at professional events, conferences, on LinkedIn, or on role-specific job boards.
Using social media channels enables you to:
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. There are certain metrics you need to track if you want to measure the success of your strategies over time.
Some of the most important metrics you should track include:
Once you’ve started to keep track of your efforts, you’ll be able to identify what’s going well and what might need to be changed.
For example:
→ If you have too many applicants for a position, your job description or qualifications may be too vague.
→ If you get 50 applicants from a paid job board, where only three are qualified, but you get 10 candidates from social media advertising and six are qualified, social media advertising is clearly more effective. You should re-evaluate your job board strategy and focus on the channel that is working.
→ If you have many candidates starting the application process but failing to complete it, there could be a potential issue. Your process could be too lengthy, complex, or have a technical error.
New technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive analytics have made recruitment automation possible. Using these tools can reduce the costs of hiring and the time it takes to find candidates. Your recruiters can stay organized and keep candidates informed, which leads to an improved experience for both parties.
The areas in which automation can help include:
Recruiting top talent and attracting the best employees is essential if you want your business to grow and prosper. In a competitive job market, you have to find a way to stand out from the crowd. Your recruitment strategies should showcase your business as a place where potential candidates would love to work.
If you are looking for job opportunities in tech, click here.
The post Great Recruitment Strategies That Attract Top Talent appeared first on CloserIQ.
Do you know what your customer is looking for? Or what topics move them and what problems they are currently facing? Wouldn’t it be nice if you knew? Intent Data will bring you into the known! With Intent Data, you can recognize the Search and Buyer Intent of a potential customer in no time and […]
As a sales professional, staying on top of selling trends and following successful sales representatives can help you pick up some tricks to add to your selling tool kit. And, adding to your selling tool belt can help set you apart from the competition and close more deals with your qualified leads. Sales training and […]
As a founder, recruiting and onboarding top technical talent to your team is vital. A great software engineer will help scale your product and ensure the growth of your company. But, you probably don’t have a ton of time and energy to build the perfect hiring process and interview hundreds of engineering candidates.
Engineers are inundated with requests for new opportunities daily. In fact, some engineers report receiving as many as 30 messages per day via Linkedin alone. As a founder looking to make early hires in your organization, it’s essential to make a first impression that will receive a response.
Here are four best practices that you should follow when contacting prospective candidates.
Messages that are received directly from a founder or technical leader receive a higher response rate than those sent from other team members. Candidates recognize when they are contacted by the leader of an organization (especially with a pertinent and well-written message).
Your message should be personal and authentic. It should convey that you are interested in building a relationship with the candidate and that you genuinely want to learn more about them. Use this opportunity to highlight your company’s unique value proposition. Mention how it fits into their career goals, and why they would want to work there.
Everyone wants to believe their product is truly revolutionary. A more effective pitch is explaining the problem your product is solving and the future vision of the product. What they will be working on day-to-day is just as, if not more important than year-over-year growth in headcount.
Candidates care about messages that are directed specifically to them. Take 30 seconds to find something in their profile or resume that connects them to the role you’re looking to fill. For example, relative projects or previous companies, expertise in a tech stack, and research. Reference that in the message.
Avoid generic subject lines. While subject lines like “Hi!” or “Looking for someone like you” may seem harmless, they can actually decrease your response rate by up to 50%.
If this role has a range or target compensation, share that in the initial message. It’s better to be upfront with candidates than deal with mismatched expectations after going through the full interview process.
Here are two great outreach templates you can start with. They are short, thoughtful, and feature social proof, which is crucial if your company’s name is not yet recognizable to potential candidates.
Template 1:
Hey _,
I’m the cofounder of { company }, we’re a seed-stage company that’s built a tool to help {{ problem your tool is solving }}. We’ve built the tool using { tech stack }, and after reading about your background in/at {{ personalization }} I’d like to learn more about your career goals to see if they might overlap with some of our major organizational projects.
I’m looking to hire a { Role } ahead of our {{ next fund round }} and while I understand you may not be looking to make a change right now, I wanted to introduce myself. We’re targeting { compensation details } for this role. I don’t want to take your time if it’s not a match, but I’d love to share more details on a quick call! Here’s my Calendly {{ link }}
Thanks!
Template 2:
Hey _,
I’m the cofounder of { company }, we’re a seed-stage company backed by {{ top investors and angels }} who has backed companies like {{ highlight big names if there are some in your investor base }}.
We’re rapidly scaling and I’m looking to hire a founding { role } to join the team ahead of our {{ next fund round }}. Not sure if the timing is right but would love to share more details on a quick call! Here’s my Calendly {{ link }}
Thanks!
Hiring is a critical part of growing your company. It’s important to be thoughtful about how you approach it, especially for foundational hires.
With these best practices and email templates, you should be able to generate interest and connect with great candidates.
If you are looking for job opportunities in tech, click here.
The post 4 Best Practices for Contacting Engineering Candidates appeared first on CloserIQ.
It’s never boring in the world of B2B marketing. Since the beginning of the pandemic at the very latest, lots of marketers have been forced to break the mold and to reflect on alternative methods for lead generation. No more trade fairs or on-site meetings—but what should you do to compensate for the fallout? Over […]
Right now, Google is processing 99,000 searches every single second. A few moments ago you may have searched for “What is Demand Generation?” and ended up here. A Google search is what we do when we want information about a subject, product, or business.Every Google search produces thousands of results, over hundreds of pages. The […]
Leaning on the expertise of an agency is a great option. But if your organization isn’t ready for that, we’re breaking down tactical recruiting steps that you can easily follow.
Over the next few weeks, this series will cover how to scope a role, where to find the best candidates, how to outreach to them, tips for designing a strategic interview process, and more.
You’ve identified the role you need to hire for, the needed qualifications, and the benefits and compensation you can offer. This information should give you a good understanding of your ideal candidate. Use that knowledge to narrow down your target audience. The best way to source top talent is to meet them where they are.
Finding your own candidates can feel like a daunting task. Do you start by posting to a job board? Or should you start within your own network through word of mouth?
There are two main ways to source candidates. You can wait for talent to apply directly with an inbound approach, or you can proactively outbound to your ideal candidates. A combination of both is usually the best approach.
Job boards are a great place to start when you want to reach a large candidate pool. Popular sites such as Indeed and Glassdoor have free options depending on the number of job postings and the duration that they are up.
You can also opt for industry-specific job boards on sites like Angel List, Dice and Stack Overflow. Joining and posting to engineering communities on Slack is also a great way to get in front of qualified candidates.
Outbound Hiring: Search for and contact your ideal candidates directly
This is a more direct way to get in front of your ideal candidates but is often time-consuming. The most popular place to outbound technical talent is LinkedIn. You can filter for people by company, role, school, etc. to compile a list of qualified candidates to message.
To make your candidate search as efficient as possible, it’s best to start by identifying companies you want to hire from. This list will be helpful across your organization. You can share it with recruiting (in-house and agencies), your consultants and advisors, and marketing.
Here are four categories of company types to include:
With this list, it is much easier to build search queries on Linkedin and generate ideal candidates to outbound.
The best way to find qualified candidates is to post your job in places where your ideal hire will see it. Consider a combination of industry-specific job boards and direct outbound messages through filtered LinkedIn searches.
We hope that this guide will help your organization continue its growth and development.
The post How To Find Qualified Engineering Candidates appeared first on CloserIQ.
There are few workplace situations more uncomfortable than providing feedback. When employees know they’re about to receive feedback on job performance, they oftentimes clam up. It isn’t any more comfortable from the manager’s side of the desk either. Though it’s necessary, managers frequently dread giving feedback to team members. Providing your team with performance management best practices is key.
Here are 10 performance management best practices from top HR experts:
Basic questions about feedback include how often to do it and which format to utilize. Most HR experts suggest a light touch when it comes to the formal feedback process, though each company will differ in terms of structure and timetable.
Karen Weeks, VP of People at OrderGroove, suggests that feedback should have at least some structure. Although her company previously utilized a more open system, it is now adding more structure to the feedback process. Once per quarter, employees’ OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) will be evaluated. Weeks emphasized that the process is intended to provide a holistic perspective on employees: “It’s not about a slap on the wrist or a gold star, but more about, ‘What did you learn? What did you accomplish?’ Then we’ll check in on development goals.”
Weeks also said that OrderGroove plans to focus more on competencies. Managers need to be trained in how to clearly communicate necessary competencies to employees so that everyone understands expectations.
Although formal feedback is important, HR experts warn against excessive administration. It isn’t necessary to rate every employee on every skill. Companies should develop a process that fits with their organization. Gordon said, “If process precedes purpose, then that’s the problem. The purpose of performance feedback is to let employees know how they’re doing.”
Some experts recommend doing formalized feedback less frequently. Cindy Gordon, VP of People at PolicyGenius, points to the value of informal feedback as a supplement to formal feedback (which at PolicyGenius occurs twice per year). Managers are encouraged to provide informal feedback when appropriate, including once per quarter in one-on-one meetings. It is expected that managers document the informal feedback they provide.
Gordon explained, “If you’re sitting down and know you’re going to have a performance discussion you may be hyper-focused on what you think someone’s going to tell you. So we try to set a norm where you have the discussion and then follow up with an email. It becomes an automatic reflex.”
Teaching managers how to give effective feedback is critical. One effective way to do this is through modeling. Karen Miller, Chief People Officer at Pond5, said she spent a lot of time trying to teach managers about the feedback model. But they were struggling to provide feedback effectively because they didn’t understand the basics.
Good feedback practices begin at the top. Recently, Miller did an offsite event with the executive team. Part of the agenda was to practice giving and receiving direct feedback. “Doing this as an executive team is good practice,” she said. “It creates an environment where the team gets used to it and then can turn around and do it for other people. They realize they survived it and maybe learned something.”
Other experts agree. Gordon explained that there are ways to practice feedback in a low-risk environment, such as team reflections where everyone reflects on the team’s performance. Through practice, feedback naturally becomes part of company culture.
One of the most contentious questions in the HR world is whether anonymous feedback is acceptable and, if so, when.
Some leaders take a strong position that anonymous feedback should be avoided. Although Gordon acknowledged that anonymous feedback can be more helpful than no feedback at all, she prefers direct feedback. “Anonymous feedback doesn’t breed trust. It can actually breed paranoia,” she explained. “If someone came to me and said, ‘I’m hearing this about you,’ I’d automatically raise my antenna and wonder who else is talking about me. It doesn’t help to foster discussion.”
The reason people gravitate towards anonymous feedback, Gordon said, is because they’re uncomfortable giving direct feedback. But while giving direct feedback is certainly uncomfortable, people need to accept it. They should understand they are helping someone else’s development process.
While other leaders agreed on the value of direct feedback, sometimes getting people to a point where they’re comfortable giving direct feedback can be a process. Miller and Weeks both utilize anonymous feedback for 360 reviews. According to Miller, direct feedback requires an evolution of culture. But she also said, “Ultimately the goal is to get to a place where you’re comfortable giving direct feedback.”
Weeks said that giving upwards direct feedback can be difficult for many people. “Many people aren’t comfortable criticizing their own managers,” she said.
HR leaders should push towards direct feedback, even if the transition can’t happen right away.
Another sticky issue is how to incorporate performance management best practices into employee compensation. Experts propose a variety of methods for performance-based compensation.
For Gordon, it’s important not to have compensation and performance management conversations at the same time. She said, “We carry that out through the structure of programs, but we also have processes in place behind that. First, we have the performance conversation, using skill development rubrics so that people actually know how they’re being evaluated.”
Then, the company utilizes data from databases and networks to determine appropriate compensation in conjunction with performance reviews.
Miller strongly asserted the need to tie performance evaluation to compensation. “If I’m not relying on information about who the best performers are, then I’m relying on who people like and who is nice,” she said.
She calls the system used at Pond5 “executive team validation.” The executive team meets together and goes through every employee, trying to develop a consensus on performance evaluation. She said, “It’s not formulaic, but we use information.”
Weeks pointed out that companies of different sizes need different ways to determine appropriate compensation. When she worked at a larger company, they used ratings as a starting point for adjusting employees’ compensation. However, the organization also gave different departments the option to set their own compensation methods. The engineering team has different preferences than sales or marketing, which should be accommodated.
Now that Weeks is at OrderGroove, a smaller company, she implements a system that is less formula-driven. “We sit down and figure it out together,” she explained.
While compensation should relate to performance, there is no one-size-fits-all method for how to do this effectively.
There are a number of HR tools available that can help to document performance feedback and determine compensation. Here are some of the tools leaders recommend for feedback:
Leaders also recommend using database tools for information on average salaries:
Simple survey tools like SurveyMonkey can also be useful for collecting feedback on employee performance—and the performance management process itself. Ask employees about their feelings on the feedback process itself. Weeks recently conducted a short survey for both managers and employees asking about the relevance of feedback. “We learned that people thought the feedback was rich but didn’t know what to do with it,” she said.
As a result, Weeks is modifying the performance management performance. Gordon said that by asking employees about the feedback process, her team learned that the performance management software program being utilized wasn’t working for employees.
Through surveys, HR leaders can learn what is and isn’t working for employees. Of course, employees oftentimes vary widely in their personal preferences. Some employees want more performance evaluation, others less. That too is useful information that should be communicated to employees. Miller said, “One of the most helpful things about surveys is being able to explain the results to people. You say, ‘Half of you thought it was too dark in here and half of you thought it was too light.’ It helps open up people’s perspectives and helps them realize others may see the world differently.”
Landing on the optimal performance and feedback process is an ongoing struggle for HR leaders. But with these tools and tips for performance management best practices, you can implement a system that works for your company and employees.
If you are looking for job opportunities in tech, click here.
The post 10 Performance Management & Feedback Best Practices appeared first on CloserIQ.
Research shows that healthy competition within sales teams can boost results — often substantially. Sales contests are one way to introduce “healthy” competition into your team. In fact, they can be so effective that the organization who ran that study saw an incredible 45% increase in their bottom line margin the second time they ran a competition. For that, you need sales contest ideas.
But, to have a positive effect, sales contests need to be given careful thought, or they’ll turn into a playground only lets the top performers play. In that scenario, poor — or even perfectly adequate — performers become discouraged and stop bothering to try to win and the contest fizzles.
So, to combat that, you need to understand what a good sales contest should achieve. To raise everyone’s motivation, your contests should meet a few criteria. A good sales contest has 3 main goals:
If an idea doesn’t do these 3 things, scrap it, or at least don’t repeat it.
In line with this, traditionally sales contests reward the best rep in a set period of time — i.e. the rep who generates the most revenue in a month wins. We certainly include that idea, but if you’re striving to achieve those big 3 things, you’ll have to get more creative.
A few ways to do that is to focus on front-end activities and KPIs — the processes of sales — and reward appropriately. Or, focus on specific thresholds, where anyone who reaches the minimum wins some sort of prize.
So, without further ado, here are our contest ideas.
This is a more simplified version of the KPI-based contest and can be a great short-term contest. For example, if your marketing team just ran a very successful campaign and there are lots of SQLs just waiting to be given attention, that’s the perfect situation for this type of contest.
First past the post is typically the rule: the first person to qualify 50 leads a day, or book 10 meetings, or generate $25K in new sales pipeline — you get the idea.
Similar to the objective goals, this one has a twist to ensure that everyone gets motivated: whatever goal you set (X sales, Y revenue, etc.), whoever reaches that metric in a month gets a prize — not just the top or first person. It’s a sort of everyone past the post take on the traditional.
Also known as “Dirty Santa”, this one can be effective around the holidays. Rules are simple: every time a rep makes a sale over the predetermined amount, they can open a gift. Once a gift is opened, anyone else who makes a sale over the set amount can either open a new one or steal.
Ben Jackson, VP of sales at Voices.com, reported that this contest was so successful that his team opened all the gifts the first week, forcing management to restock. They had a 50% increase in larger-than-average deals.
Everybody loves leaving early on Fridays — why not use that as a short-term contest reward? Jackson found that inside sales reps tended to ration their end-of-month deals to get a jumpstart on the next month. So, he spontaneously announced that if everyone met a certain quota in the last few days, everyone could leave early on Friday. It worked.
For this one, set predetermined small, daily goals for your team. If and when a team member reaches that goal, they pick a card from a 52-card deck. Throw in a random bonus card for fairness, and at the end of a 5-day workweek, everyone who reached their daily goal each day has a full hand. The best hand wins.
If you do trade shows, this can a fun 1-day or week-long contest. It’s simple: whoever makes the most sales during the event wins. Just let your team know ahead of time and make an easy way to track their sales.
Like the poker contest, this one focuses on small, daily goals. Make bingo cards with different types of sales or tasks in each square. Every time a teammate completes a task, they can check off a square. When they fill the row or card, they get rewarded.
Typically, contests are run to reward good sales behavior — what about the poor? Imagine that your team has been giving away a lot of free products added to deals to make the sale — too many. While it works in the short-term, it can lead to buyer relationships that are less likely to last. To cut down on this, reward reps for the deals that contain no free products.
To do this, you might consider mounting a board upon which points are added beside each team member’s name for careless sales practices. At the end of the week, the “leader” has to put $20 or $50 in a charity pot or office party fund. It’s a bit of a parody that servers to highlight less-than-optimal practices in a fun, non-accusatory way.
You can also combine the concept of positive and negative points by awarding points for good practices, and removing them for bad.
Every contest needs a goal: so what are you hoping to improve among your sales team? Picking a specific objective is key.
Using this metric, whoever gets the most clients in a set period of time wins.
Again, whoever generates the most revenue for a specific product of your company wins. Which product do you need to improve sales of?
Take a metric, like gross profit, and pick a concrete length of time, like the quarter. You can also do per month or otherwise. Again, whoever has the highest gross profit of that period wins.
Focusing on improving KPIs a process-based idea. What KPIs are lagging? Sales cadences? “50 meaningful calls per day” could be the goal for a contest. Start with 5-10 metrics and keep it simple. Resist the urge to overcomplicate this one.
You probably didn’t need us to tell you that salespeople are competitive — it’s a quality that often makes the top performers just that. But while sales contests have proven to be effective, they’re best when they:
Hopefully, this list helps you get started doing just that.
If you are looking for job opportunities in tech, click here.
The post 12 Contest Ideas to Motivate Your Sales Team appeared first on CloserIQ.
