Be Quick or Be Dead: Sales Hiring Research Reveals Massive Disconnect Between Applicants and Hiring Organizations on Time to Offer

When hiring the best sales team, many sales hiring managers, recruiters, and organizations take roughly eight weeks to make a job offer to a qualified candidate. This includes everything from getting the job posted and accepting applications to conducting interviews and talent assessments, narrowing the field, and making the hire. 

That’s a really long time, and based on data we’ve received, it could result in you losing out on good candidates.

Sciolytix recently partnered with SellingPower® on a survey to identify challenges and best practices in sales hiring. To gain the most comprehensive insight possible, we surveyed sales leaders, recruiters, and sales reps to better understand their unique — and at times opposing — perceptions, expectations, and preferences.

According to sales reps, a reasonable amount of time from the beginning of the interview process to receiving a job offer is approximately four weeks. Some would love to see the job offer process move even faster than that at 1-2 weeks.

What is a reasonable amount of time from the beginning of the interview process to receiving a job offer?

Needless to say, this is a warning to hiring organizations near and far.

Receiving a Job Offer and the Candidate Experience

The candidate experience refers to what it feels like to be an individual going through the hiring process. Highly skilled applicants know their skills are needed now more than ever; therefore, they have higher expectations on their end. That mindset is so ingrained that good candidates are less likely to accept an offer from you if they don’t feel your processes are up to snuff. This includes the time it takes to navigate through the sales hiring process and net a job offer.

If you are lax in any of these areas, they’ll only view you as a short-term fix as they keep looking for another job.

• They don’t want their time wasted.
• They don’t want to be treated like machine parts.
• They’ve been through both bad and good experiences already.
• They know other companies are competing for talent.
• They know they have a right to interview the company, too.

If they don’t like the sales hiring process, they won’t accept your job offer. And if they do take the job because they’re desperate for a paycheck, they’ll look at you as a short-term fix as they keep looking for another company to jump ship to.

For this reason, it is important to shore up your sales hiring process and look for ways to be more efficient, timely, and candidate-friendly. This will lead to top candidates viewing you as an employer of choice and getting people hired faster.

Please check back with us as we share more about this insightful survey. Download the full survey report here!

What are you doing to improve your sales hiring process?

Sciolytix Sales Performance Predictor (S2P2) is an award-winning candidate assessment tool that utilizes 3D avatar-based simulations to measure and predict a candidate’s performance in an unbiased manner. Think of it as a video game — sales candidates play a video game that reflects the real-world selling situations they will face in their new sales role and, through artificial intelligence, predict their effectiveness. This groundbreaking technology helps sales leaders:

1. Hire top-performing reps quickly
2. Minimize the risk of bad hires
3. Position themselves as an employer of choice with applicants 

Bottom line, we are revolutionizing the way organizations hire, onboard, develop talent, and create a fair hiring process for all. Predictive simulations are the latest enhancement we’re adding to that arsenal of products.