January, 2006

By Henry Canaday

Searching for just the right salespeople has always been a challenge. But by using the Web creatively, sales managers can expect to reduce the time and expense it takes to recruit new hires. Here are a few smart ways to use the Internet to recruit and test new hires.

PeopleComm offers two online services that focus on recruiting salespeople for such high-tech industries as software development, information technology, and telecommunications. The first online service, salesrecruits.com, has been operating for five years. President Steve Morgan says only hiring firms are allowed to search the site's resume file, not headhunters or search firms.

Applicants may post resumes and fill out questionnaires for free. Hiring companies pay anywhere from $2,500 for 90 days of simple access to the data to as much as $10,000 for a full menu of options. About 700 firms use the site, including IBM, Oracle and many small companies. More than half of customers renewed their contracts.

The second site is cardbrowser.com, and it too is unique. "We go to about 300 high-tech trade shows each year - not to exhibit, but to network and meet managers in high-tech industries," Morgan explains. "We collect business cards from the exhibitors and upload them onto our Website."

The hard-traveling PeopleComm staff have collected and posted 125,000 business cards online and post more each month. These are not people who are actively looking for new positions, but Morgan points out, they are top salespeople, selected to represent their firms at tradeshows. Business cards give company names, full titles, and complete contact information, including direct phone numbers and email addresses. "The cards also give you a credible reference for contacting the individual, since we include the show where they were present." CardBrowser.com has attracted approximately 300 hiring firms, and its charges are similar to those of salesrecruits.com.

Most PeopleComm clients also use general job sites, such as HotJobs and Monster. "They have learned to enjoy online recruiting, see value in it and have been successful at it," Morgan says. The PeopleComm chief thinks savvy firms add his sites to their recruitment portfolio for a few reasons.

"First, they have a hard time finding high-level people - earning hundreds of thousands of dollars per year - on other sites. Some of the top people do not want their resumes in the hands of search firms. They want to conduct a discreet search."

Second, employers like the fact that PeopleComm concentrates on just high-tech industries, making searches more efficient. Third, Morgan argues, top salespeople often have egos and like to be identified by their field and position rather than mixed up with many other sales positions.

Once you have found them, you have to find out how well they sell.