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Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently said, “If humans are to survive, we must merge with machines.”
This is especially true in B2B sales where a mere 20% of sales teams are considered “high-performing” based on the latest study from SalesForce. To hire great reps, companies need to modernize their recruiting efforts.
Millennials might not believe it, but once upon a time you searched for jobs in the print edition of newspapers.
Today, the digital landscape has given job seekers unprecedented avenues to find their dream job. Couple that with only 5% unemployment and job candidates hold all the cards. The war for talent, particularly in sales, is on and the rise of new technology, such as A.I and big data, has fostered a recruiting arms race.
While companies are smart to invest in new technology, the executives that find the right mix of robots, humans and creativity will have a big edge in the years to come.Subscribe Now: Forbes Entrepreneurs & Small Business Newsletters
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Based on our work recruiting elite salespeople for some of the world’s most innovative and disruptive companies, here are 5 ways you can modernize your recruiting efforts:
- Create Interactive Videos: This new technique can help bring your company to life and allows candidates to navigate their own experiences based on their interests. Do they want to know about company culture or the history of the company? Deloitte created “Will You Fit Into Deloitte,”a gamified interactive recruitment video that gave candidates an inside look at the company and educated them about the different business units. This not only resulted in greater candidate engagement, but it allowed corporate recruiters to collect user preference data to inform future searches.
- Invite Candidates Behind-the-Scenes for a “Day in the Life”: It is hard to glean what your work day would be like at a new company based on an introductory interview. However, more employers are copying the tactics used in real estate by hosting “open houses”. This gives candidates a real taste of your company, by letting them experience your sights, sounds, work ethic, and culture. This can not only work to deepen ties to your employer brand, but help weed out candidates who are not aren’t the right fit.
- Merge Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Humans: A.I. and big data are game-changers that can greatly reduce administrative work and maximize ROI. Mya is a widely lauded A.I. created byFirstJob to automate up to 75% of the recruiting process; sales assistants like ‘LISA’ (Learning Intelligent Sales Agent) can contact, engage and follow up with leads using natural conversation; and X.ai can handle all the rescheduling that takes place during the laborious interview scheduling process.
So why do we need humans again? Because machines succeed at repetitive tasks, while humans have irreplaceable skills such as the ability to judge emotion. In short, bots have blind spots, a point perfectly illustrated by Stacey Harris, Vice President at Sierra-Cedar – a company that conducts an annual HR Systems Survey, “AI analyzes and learns from patterns, there is a danger of the software replicating biases in the recruiting or promotion process. If a company’s top performers historically have been white males between 30 and 40 years old, that bias can inadvertently become built into algorithms.”
As of 2017, the best recruiting practices are merging technology and human oversight.
- Be Mobile Optimized for Google Searches: There are now more mobile devices than people in the world. Googlemade an important change to its search algorithm and ranks companies that have mobile-friendly career sites higher in searches. Those that don’t suffer a significant hit in their rankings. A Global Web Index (GWI) study found that on average people own 3.64 connected devices each. The best people are actively employed so to have a chance at hiring them, make sure you have a best-in-class career site that is optimized across all devices.
- Bonus Tip / Ancient Technique: Amidst all the technology and innovation, good old fashioned word of mouth can your best recruiting tool. Glassdoor reported that 84%of employees would consider leaving their current jobs if offered another role with a company that had an excellent corporate reputation. Top “Best Places to Work” companies such as Bain & Co., Google and Facebook offers perks such as free meals, onsite gyms, massages, free laundry services and generous parental leave. Wise business leaders adopt these philosophies and policies because employees become their biggest brand ambassadors. Word of mouth can be the most powerful publicity there is.
As the economy evolves and workforce’s change, the world’s best companies understand the importance of investing in their recruiting process. The companies that find the right mix of technology, human intelligence and old-fashioned creativity, will have the best probabilities of hiring great people.