Determining the number of applicants required to ultimately fill the vacant positions is needed.
The following formula can be used to determine the scope of the recruiting effort:
Where
R = recruiting
H = new hires required
S = percentage of recruits selected
A = percentage who accept
An illustration will help:
–Company X needs 25 new salespeople
–Past experience indicates 20% of those who apply will be offered positions
–HR statistics suggest that 75% of those offered a new position will accept:
Based on these statistics, a minimum of 167 people would need to apply if the company wants to fill the twenty-five positions.
With salespeople filling a vital role (growing revenues, profits, and customers), identifying and recruiting the best talent is one of sales management’s most important tasks. Sales management may lead its own recruiting effort or, more likely, they will work with the HR department to coordinate the recruiting efforts.
Recruiting is an important activity and sales management must carefully plan the time and people resources required to do an effective job. In this basic example, 167 applicants may be a large number of applicants to review if your organization is small or medium sized. On the other hand, if you are IBM, then the number of people available from HR and field sales is large enough that the responsibilities can be distributed with lower disruption from regular work activities. No matter how large the organization, recruiting requires a keen sense of the following:
–The company’s culture
–The personalities that would fit your company’s culture
–The skills of recruits sought
–A clear process for the recruit that is explained upfront
–A thoughtful description of the job
–A set of interview questions designed to identify the best possible candidates for your company
–The professional will to stick to your overall recruiting standards and not settle on talent less qualified than you need
iAdapted from W. L. Cron, T. E. DeCarlo, and D. J. Palrymple, Sales Management (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004), 324.