How Predictable Revenue skips a step in the interview process

Predictable Revenue is an outbound sales development strategy company. They help their clients meet their sales goals, and one of the ways they do that is by providing SDR pods. These pods are staffed by dedicated sales development representatives (SDRs) who increase the sales pipelines for Predictable Revenue’s clients. 

As you can imagine, running these SDR pods requires a lot of SDRs! Account Strategy Team Lead Niamh Ryan and Recruitment Specialist Karla Gonzalez lead the efforts to find them.

Challenge

The tremendous demand for Predictable Revenue’s SDR pods meant they needed to expand their team. Over 100 people a month were applying for Predictable Revenue’s SDR openings, and shortlisting the top candidates on that list of over 100 was already difficult. “We were able to get to everyone, but it took a lot of time,” Karla said.

They needed to double that number of applicants to reach their goal of 7-10 hires a month. And the fact that most of Predictable Revenue’s clients sell to English-speaking countries presented another challenge. Karla was spending a lot of time determining whether or not candidates had the necessary level of proficiency with the English language because she needed to call each candidate to get a feel for their grasp of the language.

That wasn’t going to get any easier as the company grew.

Solution

Predictable Revenue needed an efficient way to find English speakers who were good at asking questions and listening. Niamh and Karla used TestGorilla’s Communication and English (intermediate/B1) tests to find the right candidates.

Two of the features that helped were qualifying questions and video questions.

Qualifying questions

Since English is a requirement for Predictable Revenue’s SDR positions, Niamh and Karla included a qualifying question to see if applicants met this requirement. That way, they wouldn’t be charged for assessing an unqualified candidate, and the candidate wouldn’t waste time on a job they weren’t going to get.

In the past, Karla would ask about salary expectations on a pre-screen call. Now that’s covered in a qualifying question, so they would know whether or not a candidate is in their price range before spending the time scheduling and conducting a pre-screen call.

Video questions

Using TestGorilla’s video questions, Niamh and Karla were able to benefit from objectively quantifying each candidates’ skill level without reducing applicants to a number. “When I go into TestGorilla, I first look to see who scored really well on the English and communication tests,” Karla said. “But after that, I give other people a second chance based on their video.”

I was worried we were missing out on good candidates before. Now TestGorilla gives candidates another opportunity to prove themselves.

Karla Gonzalez, Recruitment Specialist, Predictable Revenue

She and Niamh used video questions as an opportunity to get creative with their assessments. To get a feel for each candidates’ communication style and ability, they gave a list of three prompts.

Candidates chose from options like:

1. Tell us the plot of your favorite TV show.

2. Tell us your favorite memory from a vacation.

3. Tell us about the last book you read that you just couldn’t put down.

It’s good to combine data with the people side of things. Maybe a candidate’s English isn’t great, but their video response was really engaging.

Niamh Ryan, Account Strategy Team Lead, Predictable Revenue

Results

Before TestGorilla, the candidate selection process could take up to fifteen minutes per candidate. But Predictable Revenue had trouble tracking exactly how much time was spent on the process.

“It was very random and hard to measure. And what you can’t measure, you can’t evaluate,” Niamh said. “TestGorilla has made the process more organized. Now it takes about two minutes to determine whether or not to book a meeting. Basically, it skipped a step in the interview process for us.”