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Recruitment of a Sales Executive

How we recruited a Sales Executive for a news and information provider

Our client

Our client has been a trusted source for news and information about commerce and industry in Western Australia for over 25 years. They aim to be the best news and information service, providing the insight, connections and opportunities of doing business in WA.

Location - Perth, WA
Industry - news and information
Size - 50 employees

We applied our three-phase service delivery model for this recruitment drive.

How we recruit superstars

Video job advertisement

Social media algorithms favour videos over still content, so we create video advertisements for all vacancies to help source our candidates.

We take full advantage of this unique and highly effective form of candidate sourcing in order to reach the right candidate at the right time.

We post our videos on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. They are posted on these platforms 10-20 times, based on relevance. Our videos typically receive over 1,000 views within the first 24 hours.

Job advertisement

We constantly refresh, rewrite and reformat our job advertisements to optimise the quality of applications received. Our approach is aggressive - we post around 20 advertisements for every permanent job. Advertisements are posted on:

Job boards - Seek, Adzuna, Glassdoor, Indeed and Jora
Social media - LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter
11 Recruitment's website

On average, our advertisements receive over 100 applications and perform well above the market benchmark for Seek, shown in this graph.

Sales Executive

Join a highly respected company in corporate solutions
Provide solutions to top Executives of the largest 500 businesses in WA
Business intelligence, information, advertising and marketing campaigns

The role

You will join a small, highly successful sales team with the aim to take advantage of the improving Perth business conditions. Your desire is your key to success.

The duties for this role will include:

Hunting for new business
Building relationships with current and new clients
Conducting meetings and sales presentations face-to-face and online
Engaging with external stakeholders and service providers to promote the company
Up-selling and cross-selling to help clients enhance their profile, deliver their message, execute their campaigns and gather business intelligence

About you

The successful candidate will need:

B2B sales experience
Experience successfully building relationships with executives and upper management
Experience in tailoring conceptual sales proposals
Great organisation skills - able to prioritise work to meet deadlines 
Excellent verbal and written communication skills
A commitment to providing first class service and innovative solutions 
A bachelor's degree

About our client

Our client - WA Business News - is an award-winning company that is strongly established in the WA business community. They are highly respected and extremely well-received with a large customer base. They aim to be the best news and information service, providing the insights, connections, and opportunities of doing business in WA.

As an old "bricks and mortar" business, they have managed to transform in the past 5 years into an impressive online service, news and business intelligence provider. The next 3 years will be challenging, but also exciting and rewarding for its employees and shareholders.

They are seeking an experienced B2B Sales Executive to provide solutions to the top executives and upper-management personnel in Western Australia.

Assessment Matrix design

Our in-house designed, custom made software generates an Assessment Matrix, which is our blueprint for the recruitment process. Our process consists of screening, interviews, document verification, skills testing, personality profiling and reference checks.

Ticks indicate the point at which each criteria is addressed. More importance criteria are checked multiple times throughout the recruitment process.

Selection criteria	Screen	Interview	Docs.	Skill test	Profiling	Refs.
Education
Bachelor's degree	✓		✓
Experience
B2B sales	✓	✓				✓
Long-term account management	✓	✓				✓
Selling to executives	✓	✓				✓
Small-team environment	✓	✓				✓
Up-selling and cross-selling	✓	✓				✓
Solutions-based selling	✓	✓				✓
Campaign building and business intelligence gathering	✓	✓				✓
Sales proposal creation	✓	✓				✓
CRM	✓	✓				✓
Other
Microsoft Word - advanced	✓			✓
Microsoft Excel - advanced	✓			✓
Microsoft PowerPoint - advanced	✓			✓
Spelling and grammar - excellent	✓			✓
BDM / hunter mentality	✓	✓				✓
Online platforms for presentations	✓	✓		✓		✓
Verify LinkedIn vs CV	✓	✓				✓
Accept expected salary ($190k)	✓	✓				✓
Previous warning of termination?	✓	✓				✓
Will you pass a drug test?	✓	✓				✓
Behaviour
Dominance - 75%		✓			✓
Influence - 55%		✓			✓
Steadiness - 23%		✓			✓
Compliance - 42%		✓			✓
Forms signed
Health / police check			✓
Signed document - tell the truth			✓
Docs verified
Driver’s licence	✓		✓
Citizen AU / NZ or PR	✓		✓

DISC profiling

Similar to people, jobs have their own behavioural profile that is based on duties, environment and communication. We create a profile for every job vacancy, enabling us to match an applicant's behaviour against that of a specific role.

We use DISC, which examines the following attributes:

Dominance - accomplishing results, the bottom line, confidence
Influence - persuading others, openness, dependability
Steadiness - cooperation, sincerity, dependability
Compliance - quality, accuracy, expertise

DISC profile - Sales Executive

This is a role which requires an individual who is fundamentally assertive, independent; task driven and can operate on their own without support from colleagues and management. The person will need to have the courage of their convictions and be comfortable with being accountable for their actions.

They will need to be a fast paced and outgoing, comfortable with change, and able to adapt as required. Furthermore the role will require a person who is goal focused and is motivated to achieve the desired outcomes, without significant management intervention or the guidance of rules and procedures.

The contradiction is that from time to time in order to perform their duties effectively, the individual may need to curb their independent tendencies and follow procedures and accept instructions from superiors.

read more...

The role requires someone who is able to direct others in order to get the job done. They need to have a high level eye for detail and ensuring that the job is done thoroughly and according to the process. However, they will need to have people working with or for them who are thorough and complete the detailed part of the job.

The person would need to be a fast paced ‘big picture’ style of individual who is not overly concerned with what people think of them. This type of person would need to have a resilient character, such that they can cope with the challenging aspects of the role that require strength of character and skill to adapt to do the job. That is not to say they would need to be unpleasant but rather simply be comfortable making what could be seen to be unpopular decisions.

One characteristic of the behaviour required for this position is that the person needs to be comfortable with responding quickly to work demands and to be adaptable and comfortable with change. There will be times when deadlines need to be met with little warning and the person will need to adapt themselves to these tight deadlines.

The person needs to be enthusiastic, energetic and confident with adapting to the changing environment and not being able to rigidly follow a process or procedure.

This role is does not have a rigid structured set of rules determining what the individual is to perform on a daily basis. The role will require an individual who is capable of thinking on their feet and adjusting to the changing dynamics of the job in order to meet the requirements.

The type of person in the role will have to rely on experience and skill rather than process and will need to be confident of what they do in spite of the lack of guidance. By the same token the role requires someone who is fast paced and comfortable with a dynamically changing environment.

Sales Executive

Shortlisted candidates

Candidate A

Candidate B

Candidate C

Behavioural adaptation by candidates to match the job profile:

Candidate A

Candidate B

Candidate C

Results

Our aim is to produce a strong shortlist by sourcing widely. We measure every stage in our recruitment process to ensure we meet this key objective.

Our service comes with an extended 18-month replacement guarantee. This guarantee means our interests are mutually aligned - to recruit high achievers who will excel and stay.

Video views

1,246

Applications received

116

Interviewed by 11 Recruitment

Shortlisted

Interviewed by client

Hired

Feedback

"Ashleigh was fantastic and kept us in the loop during the whole process, provided detailed information about the candidates and keep searching until we were totally satisfied with the individual we finally employed.

A very pleasant experience for us as business owners and a great company to deal with."

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