Insights

You write your job description, define your requirements, and post it on a job board. Now, you wait for the applications to roll in. You think your company and the job are pretty great, so it’s only a matter of time before you start receiving applications from the best candidates on the market. Right?

Most founders and hiring managers want to do the right thing when it comes to increasing diversity. Diverse teams have been proven to perform better and the downsides of neglecting diversity in the early stages of startup life are increasingly clear. At the same time, most startups struggle to be proactive when it comes to recruiting diverse technical talent. As you race to build your company, survival instincts and speed often trump a thoughtful long-term approach. It’s easy for a homogenous culture to become the status quo, which makes it difficult for underrepresented candidates to feel like they belong. By the time you become Facebook or Google, compounding takes over and even investing tens of millions of dollars in diversity recruiting efforts can do little to meaningfully move the needle on diversity.

In a tight labor market, there’s no guarantee that the offer you extend to your ideal candidate will be accepted – even when you’re dealing with entry-level candidates. From competing offers to location, there are countless reasons a candidate could decide to turn down a job offer. So what’s really going through a candidate’s head when they accept (or reject) your job offer?

It’s been five years since Google released its first diversity report, sparking other large tech companies to do the same. Since then, many companies – not only in the tech sector – have made diversity recruiting a clear priority, acknowledging the lack of women and people of color in technical and leadership roles and pledging to increase the diversity of their teams.

What’s the top skill entry-level candidates should have when entering today’s job market? According to data collected from the recruiters that use our platform, Microsoft Excel still reigns supreme as an essential skill for recent college grads.

Read our article on 'University Recruitment Trends to Watch in 2020' here.

Recruiting top sales talent is a challenge for any organization, but especially for B2B companies looking to scale rapidly. As it turns out, the shortage of entry-level sales talent isn’t in your imagination. The new ‘LinkedIn 2018 U.S. Emerging Job Report’ reveals that Sales Development Representatives, or roles that requires skills such as prospecting and lead generation, is the 9th fastest growing job in the U.S. The demand for qualified SDRs has grown by 400% in the last five years, according to the report, meaning that companies will have to work even harder to develop a strategy to find qualified SDRs and BDRs.

A team of great business development representatives (BDRs) or sales development representatives (SDRs) can change the trajectory of your organization, generating high-quality leads at the top of the funnel and scaling up your customer base. A team of bad BDRs can also change the trajectory of your organization – for worse.

Almost five years ago, Google announced that they would no longer determine a candidate’s potential for success based on academic pedigree such as school prestige and GPA. The tech giant instead looks at prior experience, problem-solving skills, and learning ability as indicators of a strong candidate. Now, Google’s approach to recruiting seems to be part of a larger trend.