Our client, an independent fiber network company, faced a critical challenge. They needed to expand their B2B sales team with high-quality professionals — and fast.
Their Talent Acquisition team lacked sufficient bandwidth to support this growth. Meanwhile, the urgency to meet business goals was mounting. They needed support not only to source and engage top-tier talent, but also to capture key recruiting metrics and market insights that would advise the Business and help to better strategize their recruiting plans in the future. Compounding these challenges were a lack of diversity in candidate pipelines as they had mostly relied on referrals, inconsistent adherence to the hiring process by managers, and low employer brand visibility — many candidates simply didn’t know who they were.
The Solution
Deep Partnership with Hiring Managers
The Recruiters built alignment by listening first to the hiring managers — developing a true understanding of the ideal candidate profile. This included weekly syncs to maintain clarity, speed, and collaboration
Creative Sourcing & Market Positioning
Instead of only relying on employee referrals and incoming applicants, we developed a unique sourcing plan that included a focus on sales candidates outside of the typical telecommunications industry. As these non-traditional candidates were hired, we kept a close eye on attrition and performance metrics to ensure their quality of hire was consistent with, or exceeded, that of traditional hires.
As not all sourced candidates respond to the first outreach, we created branded, attention-grabbing messaging to differentiate the client in a crowded market and developed a CRM marketing strategy to amplify the employer brand and draw passive talent interest into the opportunities.
Data-Driven Strategy through Hiregate
As part of our RPO Partnership, we leveraged Hiregate to track the recruiting funnel performance in real-time. This data and reporting helped us align better with the Business when reviewing candidate decline reasons, candidate market data, and competitor information.
Hiregate was also used to grow a pipeline of future talent for the organization, as it categorized and tracked all candidates sourced throughout the project.
The team also utilized data from Hiregate to analyze candidate assessment results and identify top performers based on the source of hire, as well as quality of hire metrics, thereby optimizing future sourcing strategies.
The Results
- Achieved Hiring Deadline: With additional sourcing and candidate marketing support, the team met all hiring deadlines and fully staffed the B2B Sales group on time. Reducing a heavy Cost of Vacancy for the organization and allowing the Sales team to expand their reach into additional markets as planned.
- Talent Acquisition Viewed as a Trusted Advisor: With the data and a sound recruitment strategy in place, Talent Acquisition was now viewed as a trusted advisor to the business. Weekly calls and reporting revealed challenges ahead of time allowing the ability to pivot and enabled proactive workforce planning moving forward.
- A Diversified and Sustainable Talent Pipeline: The focus on sourcing produced a diversified candidate pipeline, moving away from over-reliance on referrals. 38% of new hires were directly sourced vs. only 20% prior. Referral hires dropped from 80% to 33%, indicating healthier, more varied sourcing. These sourcing efforts built a robust pipeline of future Sales talent for long-term hiring success.
The solution reshaped the organization’s approach to Sales hiring by introducing greater discipline, strategic insight, and a more effective framework for identifying top talent — ensuring the right people are in place when and where they’re needed most.