What Happens When Two Developers Take On Recruiting?
By Glance Technology: A Case Study with RevGen
You get a world class recruiting engine fueled by data driven decisions and incredible employer branding. Learn how (and why) we did it below.
Why did we decide to write about it?
Without a doubt, we believe recruiting is the most important function of a company. If you cannot recruit the best people, how do you expect to be the best?
We were able to accomplish incredible feats at RevGen and want to share how we doubled applicants and achieved a 44% female application ratio, while making 15–20 hires/ month.
Because we are developers at heart, we believe in open collaboration and sharing. We found that many recruiters do not share their hiring tactics and we want to change that. It is a way for us to give back, we call it Open-Source Recruiting.
RevGen is a sales development company that trains people how to become excellent entry level sales development representatives- their product is trained people. RevGen exists so companies only hire sales professionals they know will produce. Their reps have “graduated” on to companies like Citrix, Pendo, Cisco, Lenovo, Total Quality Logistics, Vital Plan, Samanage, Dude Solutions, and Reunion Marketing. Last month marked the biggest monthly class with 21 hires.
Why did RevGen decide to use Glance?
RevGen needed to hire a Recruiting Director and opted to use Glance services instead of hiring a full time traditional recruiter. The decision by the CEO to use Glance was made because Glance combines technology and data to recruit incredible people. The talent market is incredibly competitive and Glance gave a fresh look on many of the problems slowing down hiring today.
It is important to remember we were not the sole team responsible for recruiting entry level sales representatives. RevGen has 1 Recruiter & Marketer, PreShus Lee and 1 Human Resources Generalist, Marci Widen, working on the team. Without their help we simply could not have been successful.
PreShus does an incredible job conducting interviews and creating the videos powering RevGen’s growth in social media presence. She beautifully pieces clips together, records supplementary audio and breaks down lengthy content into digestible bite size chunks. She also contributes extensively in design and marketing with the company and ensures the messaging we put out is inclusive and desirable.
These activities make her immensely valuable to the team and any time we could free up for her from recruiting enables her to make more of the incredible content RevGen is beginning to be known for.
Marci contributes to the overall teams success through her dedication to human resources and is absolutely essential to the functionality of the company. On any given day Marci tackles exit interviews, on-boarding, paperwork galore and volunteers for anything the company needs as soon as it is needed. She frequently goes above and beyond to help with interviews while her own list of tasks continues to pile up and is consistently selfless in enabling the team to succeed. Without Marci the wheels would fall off and we are incredibly lucky to have her.
In thinking about how Glance could best help we realized we could better utilize the teams hours and add value in multiple different roles. We intended on speeding up processes, tracking every bit of data possible and enabling the company to scale their recruiting efforts. For this, PreShus & Marci were instrumental.
Since we are developers at heart, our mission was to take a very subjective, emotional process like recruiting and use data and technology to aid in making the best decisions. Below we will outline how we did it.
Our Goals
- Boost Diversity, Quality, and Quantity of Candidates
- Workflow Automation
- Data Driven Hiring
Boosting Diversity, Quality, and Quantity of Candidates
How we doubled candidates and have a 44% female applicant ratio
Because we are data driven we will do our best to quantify our statements. Below is a chart of the previous months candidates generated by the team’s old legacy applicant tracking system, iCims.
The average candidates per month (excluding month 5) was approximately 54 and RevGen had a target of making 10–15 new business development representative hires a month. Anyone with experience in recruiting will tell you these numbers need to be much higher- especially when you hire up to 20 people per month.
In the first month, we DOUBLED the volume of applicants and believe we doubled the quality- a number hard to measure. Time will show exactly the impact but the preliminary results are looking very strong.
Here are some of the initial results:
- 44% Female applicant ratio (almost twice the 25% entry level sales industry average!)
- 12 of 31 sales representatives are female (39%)
- 2x Applicants
- Lowered overall technology costs
We are incredibly proud of the increased number of females applying & working at RevGen. Females are greatly outnumbered in entry level technology sales and we’re working to close that gap. Watching the number of successful women rise has been one of the most rewarding parts of helping out.
Technology and Workflow Automation
With limited resources it was imperative that we delegate responsibilities in the most efficient way possible. Raising the number of qualified applicants would become a key driver in business success over the next few months. With such limited employee bandwidth and the high number of hires needed per month there was no room for inefficiency.
Breezy HR
We needed to improve the top of the funnel before refining processes impacting the bottom of the funnel. After reviewing the budget for recruiting we determined we would be able to implement a new ATS(applicant tracking system) that aligned with the new business initiative. We recommended the use of Breezy HR, a mobile first ATS with a kanban board style user interface. The switch to Breezy saved us money, added additional needed functionality and the support has been incredible.
Breezy would allow the team to move fast and stay nimble while handling the additional volume of applicants we were planning on bringing in. It turns out the team hated their old ATS (iCims) and were overpaying to use roughly 10% of the systems capabilities. As a team we avoid systems with complex and convoluted pricing models restricting different features & flexibility.
Breezy was easy to use and comprehend. It would enable us to fully ramp the team on its features in an hour and distribute our job listing across all of the top job boards with ease.
Textio
Next, we chose to examine the job listing and enlisted Textio, the augmented writing platform, to help us improve and encourage more applicants to apply.
Using Textio was an enormous help in optimizing the job listing and being inclusive towards quality candidates of all backgrounds. The job listing used previously was rated a 34 (out of 100). The listing leaned heavily towards masculine phrasing and unintentionally deterred females from applying. We quickly updated the listing and raised the rating to a 96 (out of 100).
A Textio score is derived from a number of factors that take into consideration like time to hire, use of industry jargon, and how well it appeals to candidates from diverse backgrounds. Textio provides an incredible graphic to demonstrate how important the scoring is to the outcome of the position. A position with a score of 50 results in 30% qualified applicants vs a 90 score returns 41% qualified applicants. Our company brand enabled to be much higher and hovered around 55%.
Without the use of Textio, the recruiting team would have needed to expand just to hit the number of hires, let alone any other initiatives we were working on farther down the funnel. Textio enabled the team to stay lean and focused on driving success in our efforts.
With the new job listing completed we posted the job using Breezy and immediately saw an incredible hike in applicants. Over the first month our applicants approximately doubled.
Workflow Improvements
With our increased reach, we ran into the problem that sometimes candidates do not spend enough time researching the company and opportunity. This raised our no show rate and resulted in more candidates being less informed about the position.
In order to combat this we deployed an automated questionnaire after the initial application to immediately reach out to candidates.
We wanted to accomplish 2 things with this touch point. We wanted to evaluate the level of commitment and research a candidate had prepared and to which monthly class they would be a best fit for. RevGen hires and trains in monthly classes because it results in faster learning.
In the spirit of Open-Source Recruiting and transparency here is an example:
This is a standard example. Responses vary across length and content. For this, we are mostly checking to confirm the candidate is not mass applying via Indeed or another one click apply site. This immediately cut down on almost all ill-prepared candidates.
Glance Proprietary Communication Technology
To continue to optimize the recruiting process, we are continually thinking of ways to get better, faster and stronger. Out of this came the idea to develop a proprietary tool to remind candidates of their scheduled interviews. This tool highlighted one of Glance strengths. We are software developers at heart and used these skills to create the needed business applications to streamline RevGen’s recruiting operations.
With these automations deployed we were able to drastically reduce the work on the team prior to interview decisions and streamline our flow once the candidate had applied. More below on Proprietary Technology.
How To Become A Millennial Friendly Workplace
It’s 2017, we are fortunate enough to have social media. Social media allows you to tell your story to those who care. RevGen does not have the marketing resources Citrix, Red Hat, Pendo, and Lenovo have to drive applicants, but hire a similar number of entry level sales representatives. So our only option was to build a strong social brand. Our biggest time investment was into the RevGen brand. Prior to rejuvenating the brand, RevGen was seen as the “little sister” of other tech companies.
At first, John, the CEO was apprehensive towards the social branding strategy. He knew it would be valuable but did not expect the magnitude of value it would bring. At the start we asked him to try it out for 6 months and see what happened. He has been nothing short of blown away, it has led to better hires and inbound new business.
Thanks to our branding strategy RevGen is now one of the most desirable places for millennials to work.
Open Source Recruiting
These are the exact steps we took to transform RevGen into one of the hottest places for millennials to work. Here’s how we did it!
Articles Direct from the CEO
Every CEO needs to be seen online. John tries to write an article every other week and has written about some topics like:
- “Why I Hire From the Service Industry”
- “Don’t Chose a Job, Chose a Leader”
- “Why Gratitude Is Important”
He frequently receives exposure to new communities through how often his content is shared and has quickly become a well known influencer in the sales community. His profile is viewed thousands of times a month and companies looking for sales help now come to him for RevGen’s services. These are incredible results after just a few months.
Office Culture and Gus the Wonder Pup
Our office is “Dog Friendly” and Gus the Wonder Pup has become a bit of a celebrity. These are fun videos we put out for a couple reasons. First, PreShus Lee, our videographer loves making them. Second it gets people in the community sharing video as every millennial likes funny dog videos. And most importantly it shows the very unique culture at RevGen. We care more about learning and working hard than corporate bureaucracy and bad dress codes.
Live Guest Speaker Sales Training
We broadcast on Facebook Live our weekly guest speakers for the community to learn how to be a better sales representative. They include the best seasoned sales execs from local companies including Citrix, Pendo, BitSight Technologies, ArchiveSocial, and Stealz.
Sales guest speakers get to meet potential new employees, build their personal brand as a sales leader, and build their company brand as a great employer. Just recently we reached over 2,000 and engaged with over 500 people! You can watch it here.
Free Sales Training Videos
Clients work with RevGen because of the world class sales training our employees receive. It only makes sense to put out short snippets and advice for the community to learn more about sales.
Giving our proprietary training away for free to anyone to copy is risky but we decided the value we gain in brand recognition and quality of applicants outweighed this risk. This helps our incoming hires get a leg up on sales training and is a great way for us to give back to the community. We are coining the term Open Source Sales to lead the push to making world class sales training free!
Open Source Sales is about creating the most comprehensive training for sales professionals available today. We intend on doing that by sharing the training and asking for reviews, opinions and continuing to iterate. There are incredible ideas out there waiting to be heard and many will change the way we onboard new representatives enabling us to be more efficient and continue to scale. The first portion of this training is being released now. And can be found on RevGen’s YouTube channel. Subscribe to be alerted when new content is added.
Videos like this one below show tips and tricks to improve your close ratio as an inside sales representative and are sourced from industry leading professionals themselves.
Too many large corporations pump millions of dollars into unsuccessful, superficial, and dilutive branding strategies. By creating an authentic, transparent, and inviting culture, RevGen has become a very desirable place to work.
With authentic and pure content, any employer can build a successful brand and attract the best talent in the marketplace.
Data Driven Hiring Decisions
Increasing the top of the funnel while saving money each month allowed us to begin to focus on the middle of the funnel. We decided to implement a standardized interview guide enabling the team to move as a cohesive unit and prepare for growth and scalability.
Proprietary Scoring and Prediction Systems
Because we created a standardized, scalable hiring process, we could implement a proprietary scoring system to rank and evaluate incoming candidates. This allows us to predict how successful a candidate will be.
Here is what our tool looks like, it is easy to use and intuitive.
To date we have seen great results on this standardization and scoring and are actively tracking the data to determine where our best hires come from. Looking back on this hiring class we have retained 80% of the new hires and they are producing as a class at an all time high! Remember industry average retention rate for entry level inside sales hires is 50%.
While compiling the data for who top performers were, what backgrounds they came from and how to replicate the success we had, our metrics started to make a lot of sense. For context, to name some of the numbers we tracked are total number of applicants, total number of phone interviews, total number of in person interviews, total job offers extended, total job offers accepted, the ratios of these above, total number of candidates who no showed for their first day of work and those who quit within the first month.
Proprietary Reporting Functions
Prior to discussing the data specifically, Glance recommended & built a proprietary reporting function based on RevGen’s hiring numbers. This reporting functionality tracks the flow of applicants through the entire hiring funnel & enables the team to immediately determine problems as they emerge. As a team we are addicted to making information real-time and empowering those around us to make decisions based on these powerful insights.
This tool has enabled the team to determine when the top of the funnel needs additional candidates and better project through the funnel what the retention numbers of each hiring class will be. Like a VP of Sales projects revenue over the course of the year the team can now project to an incredibly small margin of error how many candidates will move through each stage of the funnel, the time allocation needed to hire x vs y people & accurately predict when employees will move on to their next opportunity.
The next step in this prediction algorithm will be building in real-time tracking so the team knows exactly when the numbers are going to miss for the month and is able to get ahead of it strategically. Similar to sales we have found the applicants & hires most often apply on the weekend and a large portion apply late in the month. We intend on enabling the team to see exactly when we need to boost a job listing and remove the guess work associated with this.
As RevGen begins to scale with new business this algorithm enables the team to quickly see bottle necks with recruiting & on-boarding prior to setting a hiring target with new contracts. To provide more context into the power of this I will provide an example.
For a new account the typical deal size is 3 representatives. To bring on an additional 3 representatives in a hiring class the time commitment can be mapped to meaning RevGen needs to make an additional 6 job offers, conduct an additional 9 in person interviews, perform an additional 12 phone screens and receive another 20 job applications.
This time commitment is roughly 1 hour per in person interview and 20–30 minutes per phone interview. This equates to 9 hours in person and 4 hours on the phone. For the additional 3 hires the team needs to dedicate roughly 13 hours of time to complete. This includes only recruiting time and does not include transition times or on-boarding time requirements. Today, we are incredibly efficient and only getting leaner.
This algorithm provides RevGen with a strategic advantage against their competitors in the 3rd party lead generation business and enables them to scale their recruiting efforts with data backed decisions.
This chart shows how candidates flow through the hiring funnel with May 2017’s data.
Let’s now explore the numbers that led us to these conclusions. Today, RevGen receives about 110 monthly job applications. After factoring in resume review and the candidate response to our required questionnaire we conduct phone screens with 53.2% of all applicants. After this stage we advance 79.25% of these candidates to an in person interview.
Following an in person interview we extend job offers to 62% of the candidates who made it that far in the process. Of the 62% of the candidates who receive a job offer 65% accept the offer (versus 55% industry average in entry level sales.)
Reflecting on this data we learned that 10% of the candidates we hire will be no shows on their first day of work. One way to combat this problem is by sending personalized welcome videos directly from John prior to a sales representative’s first day. The feedback has been incredible and employees say it makes them feel welcome and less anxious for the first day.
In addition to the 10% who do not show, it is typical for RevGen to lose another 20% of new hires in the first month on the job. Entry level sales roles have a 50% washout rate. Candidates without sales experience are harder to predict whether he/she will be comfortable in a sales environment and we are still exploring ways to lessen turnover. But RevGen exists so companies only hire sales professionals they know will produce.
Conclusion
The strides Glance and RevGen were able to make have been nothing short of miraculous.
By combining best-in-class available tools, propriety technology and algorithms, and an unwavering pursuit using social media to tell the world how RevGen operates, we have successfully revamped RevGen’s recruiting efforts. By starting at top of the funnel along with automating the monotonous, and making data driven hiring decisions we are proud to have created the industry’s best recruiting engine.
Proprietary Software + Premier Data Tracking + Innovative Social Media = Best in Class Recruiting
That’s what happens when two developers take on recruiting.
