It is hard to believe that the famous saying, ‘This is the best thing since sliced bread,’ only came to pass 89 years ago, when Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented what was ‘cutting-edge’ technology.
It is astounding that less than one century later we are on the cusp of driverless cars, consumer drone deliveries, and maybe civilian trips to Mars.
Grandiose projects aside, technology has permeated all business sectors – especially human resources (HR). Due to the enormous cost of bad hires -- which Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh estimated has cost his company "well over $100 million" – there has been an HR tech explosion.
Artificial intelligence, predictive intelligence and big data have been in the lexicon for years, but as with any emerging technology, it is hard for business leaders to discern which are practical and cost-effective.
Josh Bersin, principal at Bersin by Deloitte, recently highlighted dozens of companies disrupting the $14 billion HR technology industry. “AI for hiring is hot and it’s competitive,” said Bersin. “I get emails every day from someone who decides they’re going to fix the recruiting market through artificial intelligence.”
HR technology is particularly valuable for industries with high turnover rates such as B2B sales. The most recent State of Sales study released by SalesForce revealed that high-performing sales teams represent a mere 20% of all sales organizations; and SBI found that the average tenure for a new Vice President of sales is only 18 months.
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The good news is that a Gallup meta-analysis results showed companies using big data to hire saw a 20% increase in sales.
At Peak Sales Recruiting, we are working with world-class clients to help them transform their sales force and executive sales recruiting programs.
Here are 5 reasons why you need to leverage data and A.I. to find your next sales leader:
1) Industry Titans Do it and You Can Learn from Their Mistakes: The top 20 A.I. recruiters are spending more than $650 million annually to hire talent. Amazon, Google and Microsoft are leading the way and business leaders should study their methods and learn from their successes and failures. For example, through exhaustive analytics, Google has concluded that any more than four interviews per candidate is counterproductive. That is a good nugget to implement into your recruiting process. On the flip side, and in an ode to Good Will Hunting, Google sought talent by placing difficult math puzzles in Harvard Square and Silicon Valley. If a person solved the puzzle they would receive a URL to submit their resume. Ultimately, this technique did not correlate to success. While not everyone has half a billion dollars to spend, everyone can study what technology and tactics are working.
2) To Help Overcome Subconscious Bias: The best hires should come from Ivy League Schools, have high GPA’s and experience with great firms, right? Well, not necessarily. Using big data, Google found GPA’s to be meaningless and in some groups 14% of employees never went to college. Unfortunately, even the most well-meaning human beings can succumb to subconscious bias. A MIT and University of Chicago study sent 5000 resumes to 1,250 employers and found that “white” sounding names got 50% more callbacks then “black” sounding names. Artificial intelligence is being used to address and solve these issues including SAP SuccessFactors which created a "bias checker" that reads job descriptions and recommends changes such as gender neutral terminology to eliminate bias.
3) To Find the Candidate with the Perfect Sales DNA: The real key to finding your next sales leader is making sure they have the right “sales DNA” for the specific role. To do this, companies must aggregate behavioral data, psychometric testing and uncover connections between certain attributes and job performance. McKinsey’s Periscope conducts a Sales DNA online survey consisting of more than 200 questions in six core sections: intrinsics, skills, motivation, culture, time allocation and coaching. These insights have been applied in their practice and found to have improve a company’ managerial practices while increase profits by up to 20%.
4) Reduce Searches from Hours to Milliseconds: Great sales leaders are not on the market for long so it’s critical to get to them first. Monster has a product called SeeMoreTM that can search 100,000 resumes in Milliseconds versus the hours it would have taken on a conventional database. IBM’s MapReduce manages recruiting in the cloud with massive scalability that allows organizations with extremely large datasets to run queries and analytics on that data much faster than before. Senior leaders that invest in cost-effective technologies will have a faster recruiting process than their competitors and a better chance at recruiting their next A-players.
5) Use Semantic Search Cloud Technology Instead of Keyword Searches: Keyword search algorithms to find relevant resumes is effective but semantic search cloud technology has emerged as the new gold standard. Career Builder’s Resume Database and Monster's 6Sense contextualizes key words and phrases to understand a person’s intent. It weeds through typos and acronyms and can determine what a person means as keywords alone could be misleading.
With 4.7% unemployment, we are currently facing the most competitive war for talent in over a decade. Couple that with the enormous cost of bad hires, it is critical that companies invest in state-of-the-art recruiting programs that rely on new technology such as big data, A.I. and predictive intelligence. While the industry is rapidly emerging, there is enough evidence and tools on the market to find the right solutions for your unique organization.
It is hard to believe that the famous saying, ‘This is the best thing since sliced bread,’ only came to pass 89 years ago, when Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented what was ‘cutting-edge’ technology.
It is astounding that less than one century later we are on the cusp of driverless cars, consumer drone deliveries, and maybe civilian trips to Mars.
Grandiose projects aside, technology has permeated all business sectors – especially human resources (HR). Due to the enormous cost of bad hires -- which Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh estimated has cost his company "well over $100 million" – there has been an HR tech explosion.
Artificial intelligence, predictive intelligence and big data have been in the lexicon for years, but as with any emerging technology, it is hard for business leaders to discern which are practical and cost-effective.
Josh Bersin, principal at Bersin by Deloitte, recently highlighted dozens of companies disrupting the $14 billion HR technology industry. “AI for hiring is hot and it’s competitive,” said Bersin. “I get emails every day from someone who decides they’re going to fix the recruiting market through artificial intelligence.”
HR technology is particularly valuable for industries with high turnover rates such as B2B sales. The most recent State of Sales study released by SalesForce revealed that high-performing sales teams represent a mere 20% of all sales organizations; and SBI found that the average tenure for a new Vice President of sales is only 18 months.
The good news is that a Gallup meta-analysis results showed companies using big data to hire saw a 20% increase in sales.
At Peak Sales Recruiting, we are working with world-class clients to help them transform their sales force and executive sales recruiting programs.
Here are 5 reasons why you need to leverage data and A.I. to find your next sales leader:
1) Industry Titans Do it and You Can Learn from Their Mistakes: The top 20 A.I. recruiters are spending more than $650 million annually to hire talent. Amazon, Google and Microsoft are leading the way and business leaders should study their methods and learn from their successes and failures. For example, through exhaustive analytics, Google has concluded that any more than four interviews per candidate is counterproductive. That is a good nugget to implement into your recruiting process. On the flip side, and in an ode to Good Will Hunting, Google sought talent by placing difficult math puzzles in Harvard Square and Silicon Valley. If a person solved the puzzle they would receive a URL to submit their resume. Ultimately, this technique did not correlate to success. While not everyone has half a billion dollars to spend, everyone can study what technology and tactics are working.
2) To Help Overcome Subconscious Bias: The best hires should come from Ivy League Schools, have high GPA’s and experience with great firms, right? Well, not necessarily. Using big data, Google found GPA’s to be meaningless and in some groups 14% of employees never went to college. Unfortunately, even the most well-meaning human beings can succumb to subconscious bias. A MIT and University of Chicago study sent 5000 resumes to 1,250 employers and found that “white” sounding names got 50% more callbacks then “black” sounding names. Artificial intelligence is being used to address and solve these issues including SAP SuccessFactors which created a "bias checker" that reads job descriptions and recommends changes such as gender neutral terminology to eliminate bias.
3) To Find the Candidate with the Perfect Sales DNA: The real key to finding your next sales leader is making sure they have the right “sales DNA” for the specific role. To do this, companies must aggregate behavioral data, psychometric testing and uncover connections between certain attributes and job performance. McKinsey’s Periscope conducts a Sales DNA online survey consisting of more than 200 questions in six core sections: intrinsics, skills, motivation, culture, time allocation and coaching. These insights have been applied in their practice and found to have improve a company’ managerial practices while increase profits by up to 20%.
4) Reduce Searches from Hours to Milliseconds: Great sales leaders are not on the market for long so it’s critical to get to them first. Monster has a product called SeeMoreTM that can search 100,000 resumes in Milliseconds versus the hours it would have taken on a conventional database. IBM’s MapReduce manages recruiting in the cloud with massive scalability that allows organizations with extremely large datasets to run queries and analytics on that data much faster than before. Senior leaders that invest in cost-effective technologies will have a faster recruiting process than their competitors and a better chance at recruiting their next A-players.
5) Use Semantic Search Cloud Technology Instead of Keyword Searches: Keyword search algorithms to find relevant resumes is effective but semantic search cloud technology has emerged as the new gold standard. Career Builder’s Resume Database and Monster's 6Sense contextualizes key words and phrases to understand a person’s intent. It weeds through typos and acronyms and can determine what a person means as keywords alone could be misleading.
With 4.7% unemployment, we are currently facing the most competitive war for talent in over a decade. Couple that with the enormous cost of bad hires, it is critical that companies invest in state-of-the-art recruiting programs that rely on new technology such as big data, A.I. and predictive intelligence. While the industry is rapidly emerging, there is enough evidence and tools on the market to find the right solutions for your unique organization.
About Keith Johnstone:
Keith Johnstone is the Head of Marketing at Peak Sales Recruiting, a leading B2B sales recruiting company launched in 2006. Keith leads all marketing activities and has successfully grown revenue and lead volume every quarter. He plays a key role in driving Peak Sales Recruiting which leads the industry with a success rate 50% higher than the industry average, working with a wide-range of clients including boutique, mid-size and world-class companies including P&G, Gartner, Deloitte, Merck, Taser and others. Follow @KJ_Peak
