Think like a CRO

Shortly after I started my business I decided I needed to offset some of the daily activities. I wasn’t trusting enough to hire an EA to be embedded in my email and LinkedIn just yet. 

(Or maybe I didn’t think I needed one).

With the domain regulations that came into effect in February, and the time that it takes for quality business development, I decided lead gen was the way to go. That’s what I would offset. 

I’m shaking my head writing this post because quality over quantity is something I live and breathe in recruiting every day. 

The idea of handing off such a time-consuming task to a trusted partner was glorious. We started getting leads right away, and my calendar was booked with HR and Revenue leaders. 

“We always like using as many recruiting firms as possible”. 

“We’re not getting any candidates”. 

“We’ve never received quality candidates from the firms we work with”. 

“Oh…you’re not contingent”? 

Five months in, enough was enough. The “leads” were not quality leads, they were not qualified and had no interest in recruiting quality. The ‘butts in seats’ mentality is just not something I’m cut out for. 

“What were you hoping to pay”? 

“We don’t have a budget”. 

Okayyyy. Let me stop you there because if you were to place a candidate at a 25% salary fee with a placement firm with no budget in place, you’re either never going to pay them or you’ll bankrupt yourself with that pattern. 

I wasted five months of conversations like these because I chose to offset the business development workload to someone who didn’t know our business and used Apollo to scrape whatever they could. 

The ICP was wrong. 

The locations were wrong. 

My precious time that I don’t have much of was wasted. 

And that’s on me. 

—

If you’ve gotten this far, I promise I’m getting to the point - that quality over quantity always wins. 

When you strategize your sales methodologies, territories and target accounts, you strategically align different business units to lead generation, prospecting, qualifying, closing, and nurturing. 

You have Marketing, Business Development, Sales, Solutions Engineering, Sales Operations and Customer Success running various aspects of a customer’s journey.

Recruiting needs to be approached the same way. 

Job Postings = actively looking candidates, lead gen = Quantity (Marketing)

Prospecting = outbound sourcing, passive candidates = Quality (Bus Dev)

Qualifying = storytelling, behavioral interviews, experts that understand your business and values to entice the right candidates to join your team = Quality (AE + SE)

Interview Process = scheduling and candidate updates + repeatable, scalable process for a strong candidate experience = Quality (Sales Ops)

Future Headcount Pipeline - Nurture, Engage - Quality (Customer Success)

When you have one recruiter managing everything, they’re overwhelmed and quality is impossible.

They forget to reach out to candidates, they don’t see every application, they’re unable to strategically map anything, let alone dig into a candidate’s true intentions of joining the organization. 

It’s chaotic. 

When you throw one role at several recruiters, hoping someone sends you a great candidate, you have multiple recruiters reaching out to the same candidates. 

Your brand is at stake. 

Treat candidates with half as much strategy, care and importance as your customers, and your hiring process will look completely different. 

And so will your results. 

You’ll start to see that you only need to interview 2-3 strong candidates for your roles when you have a quality-focused process in place. 

When you approach recruiting strategically your candidates will be grateful, your time-to-fill numbers will decrease and your retention rates will skyrocket. 

My favorite way to run this play is through a combination of recruiting experts and tools. AI is at our fingertips - use tools to help you sift through applications and reach every candidate that applies. 

If they’re not the right fit for the role, or your company, they still took the time to apply and deserve an email response, at minimum. 

The same way you partner SDR’s with sales reps and SE’s, you can build a cohesive unit (or a recruiting pod, as we call it at my company) of prospecting/lead gen and expert recruiters/storytellers. 

A strong recruiting team of people + technology working together to streamline processes and engage the best-fitting candidates. 

We may be in a ‘company hiring market’ today with many people out there looking for work, but we won’t always be. 

Build your well-oiled machine now and enhance your ‘great place to work’ brand so that you’re ready for when the ‘candidate’s hiring market’ shift happens. 

How to work with me:

Recruiting: contract or per-placement hiring. Reach me here.

Writing: Freelance writing for blogs and publications. Reach me  here.
Recruiting and Interviewing guides are available here. 

Are you seeking a new role? Binge my courses or work with me 1:1 to help you land your next role here.