The other day, I was talking to a friend who leads a team of sales development reps (outbound prospectors).

She was mentioning how tight the market is for reps with 1-2 years of experience. To paraphrase her predicament:

I asked, “Have you looked at hiring recent grads?” As it just so happens, we are in the thick of career fair season for many colleges & universities.

She asked if I had any tips. My reply: nope.

So over the last few days I’ve been giving it some thought and wanted to share what I’ve come up with.

Hiring Recent Grads: what doesn’t work

First, the bad. Much of our traditional questions, at least as they relate to selling, are ineffective. “Tell me about a time you pitched an idea to a peer group” is very different from “tell me about the last time you booked a meeting from an outbound call.” [Side note: here’s a great audio interview with Kevin Gaither on his philosophy for interviewing.]

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you, this Inside Sales hiring market is on fire. Companies are cannibalizing each other’s Reps with top-tier candidates pretty much sitting on a Lazy Susan and waiting to be served up to the next highest bidder.

Clients are constantly asking me, “How do we compete? What can we do to recruit A-players?”

Here’s my response, “If you want the best Reps, make a strategic investment in your front-line sales managers.”

The ever-wise Tom Peters shares:

If you are evaluating candidates, here are 8 Inside Sales Manager interview questions that will tell you a great deal about your candidate.

Theme A: Orientation & Approach

 
Hiring great Inside Sales reps has never been harder.

Increased competition for top talent and supply lagging behind demand means that when we land that great rep we have to make their experience with us outstanding! It is as much about retention as recruitment, right?

Our recent hiring infographic noted that 41% of reqs take 45+ days to fill. This is creating quite a revenue gap.

I recently shared my thoughts about how you have to be interesting and different to draw talent to you. But let’s say you are successful, what then?

• How do you close the revenue gap by onboarding these reps as quickly as possible?
• How do you ensure a great experience for them and for the buyers that are going to be working with them?

Let’s start with the underlying problem

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Earlier this week I was lucky enough to listen in on a Focus.com roundtable billed Bigger, Better, Faster: Inside Sales in 2011. Moderated by Chris Snell who lead the panel through a range of topics around Inside Sales & Inside Sales Management. (The recording [MP3 file] has been made available, so you can give it a listen when you have some time.)

I thought it would be interesting to highlight three questions that the panel addressed:

Geoff Alexander over at Geoff Alexander & Company is today's guest blogger. He is kindly sharing an excellent post on "How to hire a superstar inside salesperson".

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Garth Moulton of Jigsaw recently wrote on the very same subject: Profiling the Perfect Inside Sales Person-Part One.  What follows is his Myth #2.

There is no doubt that Inside Sales has to be an integral part of every technology company's strategy - see IDC's Sales Barometer and Top Ten Predictions for more on why. 

Our 2009 Inside Sales Metrics & Compensation Study shows that the average level of experience when hiring an Inside Rep is 2.8 years.

Introduction:  This is the 2nd post in the series "How to Successfully Build an Inside Sales Team in Technology Companies". 

Making a hiring mistake is extremely costly. Consider:

Update: We've shared a new list of sales interview questions (+ a video).