Is your HR person in on the hiring loop?

A while back, during a search for a call center sales manager, an excellent candidate was bypassed (and the company lost out) when the HR person was looking for all the wrong things. How did that happen? How could it have been avoided?

I got a call from Mary at MNO company one day telling me her VP of Sales needed someone with very specific experience to lead their call center sales team. The team made outbound sales calls and their productivity over the previous 2 months had been falling off. They had recently let the manager of the department go and other managers were having to cover his team until a new manager could be found.

The team had 25 people and would be growing rapidly over the next 3 months, so the candidate needed to have experience managing up to 50 people, Mary said. They should be able to motivate, mentor, train, hire and retain a sales force.

I was really excited. I had a guy in her area that just happened to be looking for a new opportunity with growth potential and he was definitely interested in this company. He had managed 10 employees, but had an awesome background in business, including P&L responsibility.

Mary said no - they must have managed 25 -50 employees.

So, I sent over 3 resumes of candidates who had managed 50 - 200 employees. Mary loved them and arranged interviews with the hiring manager. He turned all three down. Hmmmm

Turned out the hiring manager didn't really care how many employees the person had managed in the past - he was looking for the person with business experience including P&L responsibility. Unfortunately, my perfect fit had found a new career opportunity by the time Joe told Mary what he really was looking for.

Are you giving your HR person a wish list of what your ideal sales manager will have done in the past and what you want them to do for you?

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