Talent Acquisition Head: Can we a do a live pilot now?
This was our first time that a prospect asked us to do a live pilot on our first demo and sales meeting. Usually, pilots are managed by a separate team after configuring the product for a prospect. But when we were asked by the VP Talent Acquisition (the boss) amidst his entourage of about 15 Talent Aquisition Leads; we saw no way to escape. I said “Sure”. Deepika, my Business Head, looked with an empty stare at me…I gave a slight nod conveying “do think we have a choice?”
One of the Talent Acquisition lead went out of the big conference room and came back instantly with her laptop. Deepika and I in the meantime found solace in filling our glasses with water from some fancy looking bottles kept on the huge conference table.
“I have data of 10 Regional Sales Manager (RSM) candidates; will that do?”…we said its fine and Deepika started drafting script for the opening message, job overview referring to the copy of the Job Description (JD). Deepika also quickly crafted 3 questions that she felt would be appropriate to ask an RSM level person. She read out the script to the entire team and the VP Talent Acquisition (the boss) nodded in agreement to go ahead.
Deepika recorded the campaign in her own voice and uploaded the candidate data. She then set the calls to be released instantly and hit the go button.
In about 30 seconds, we saw 1 under ‘Failed Calls’ (Switched-off or not reachable)….in another 10 seconds we saw 2 under ‘No Answer’. Then after a silence of about 2 mins, we saw 2 under ‘Not Interested’. Our heart sank….5 down already! After an excruciating wait for another 2 minutes; we saw 5 under ‘Interested’. Deepika looked at me with her sly half smile….My heartbeat started stabilizing…“There you are” I said with confidence. We released 10 calls and within 5 minutes you know what happened to them with 5 interested. I could see a bit of ‘wow’ in the Talent Acquisition leads. But the VP Talent Acquisition (the boss) was unmoved! No expression at all!
VP Talent Acquisition (the boss) then put another bomb…”Let’s call one of these interested guys right now; put him on speaker phone” he said. One of the senior looking Talent Acquisition Lead then dialed one of the numbers of the interested candidates and had a good 2 mins talk in front of all of us (without announcing he is on the speaker; GDPR did not mandate maybe). At the end of the talk, a face-to-face meeting date & time was agreed.
Then finally the VP Talent Acquisition (the boss), without yet showing signs of any excitement; told me and Deepika, “Why don’t you guys talk to my team and based on our requirements send us your commercial proposal at your earliest. We may intend to start using your recruitment software solutions for our planned hiring’s in the next 2 quarters”.
VP Talent Acquisition (the boss) did not smile while shaking his hands with us; we did!
