1. ZeroChaos
Case Study

2. National Supplier of Telecom Equipment to Small/Medium Companies
Challenge: The company was experiencing excessive turnover with branch sales
representatives to the point it was adopted that turnover was the price you paid to weed out the
non-performers. The problem was it wasn’t necessarily those that were under-performing that
were leaving, but high potentials were also voluntarily exiting. They kept filling up the bucket,
but there was always a hole in the bottom.
There were two profiles that they would seek for the sales representatives:
 Sales Associate - Recent College graduates with 0 – 2 years work experience.
 Sales Consultant - 3 – 8 years sales experience selling products B2B preferably in the
Telecom or Cloud Computing industry.
Sales metrics were based upon how many people were in the seats doing sales, and the
emphasis for recruiters and sales managers was to have a monthly training class filled
regardless of skill, ability and past performance due diligence…People numbers vs. past
performance numbers.
To keep up with the frenetic churning, the first initiative was to add more agencies in each of 14
regions around the country. The push from an agency point of view, was to send as many
candidates to the client, because they are so desperate they should get at least one hire if not
more.
Call to Action: The Company contacted ZeroChaos to assess the turnover situation to
determine what the root cause was, and what could be done to remedy the resource drain.
ZeroChaos recruiting process specialists put a discovery plan in place to:
(1) Assess the current ATS system and how it was tying to the existing process. The ATS
system was being vastly underused. The agency portal feature was never activated and
consequently all agency candidates were coming to the recruiters via Outlook. The recruiters
had no training on how to use the ATS, so the only candidates that were entered were
candidates that were hired and was done manually. The recruiting history was like footprints in
the sand.
2

3. (2) Interview and access the recruiting skill level of each branch in addition to conducting a
satisfaction survey from candidates currently in process. Overall, the recruiting skill was fair, as
the emphasis was on quantity, not quality, and the candidate experience was very poor. The
interviews were rushed, appeared to be focused on candidate appearance, and the feel that
candidates were a commodity.
(3) Attend sales training to determine quality and interaction with newly hired reps. We
observed that the training content regarding product knowledge and presentation skills was
excellent; however, the expectation of the sales cycle and process was misleading based upon
reality. The more experienced were mixed in with the ‘rookie’ reps and mixed signals cropped
up as to daily routine.
(4) Examine the career branding message. The career site landing page was below par in
enticing candidates to explore a sales opportunity with the company. There were no
testimonials or career potential mentioned. This was a missed opportunity to brand ‘why work
here’.
(5) Conduct third-party exit interviews of randomly selected past employees. This was perhaps
the most telling because even though the company conducted exit interviews where possible,
most were not telling the full story. Here are some comments, “It was a hell hole where they
treated us like babies. We were required to be at the office every morning at 7:30am, collect
our leads and location to cold call, then report back to the office between 6 – 7pm so they could
see the business cards we had collected. It was terrible to fight commuter traffic just so they
could see evidence we were doing our job.” “I could not believe the hours you had to put in
every day – 12 hours was normal.” “They treat their employees with disrespect. It’s like ‘don’t
let the door hit you on your way out.’” “The morale was so low because you never knew who
the next casualty might be.” “I came home crying every day. My parents couldn’t believe it, and
my father was almost going to buy one of their products for his business, but he backed out
after seeing how they treated their employees.” “I can’t believe that they have not been sued.”
(6) Research the ‘street talk’ about the company. We talked to candidates that had been
through their interviewing process that did not get the job to learn that there were no manners
when it came to the candidate experience. It was typical that candidates were left in the
reception area for over an hour and then give them a five minute interview or never contacted
them back after the interview. We researched various websites that give employee reviews of
3

4. their company. These are done both anonymously or identified which had a predominate
amount of negative reviews. We contacted many of the recruiting agencies that had worked
with the company and it was said that even though they sent candidates to them, they just
hoped that the candidate would last through the guarantee so they could keep their fees.
Solutions: ZeroChaos first worked with the client marketing and IT professionals to overhaul the
career website to build up the employee value proposition and to highlight the fact that the
philosophy is to promote from within as all sales management positions are filled from sales
reps starting out in field sales and are rewarded for their performance. It might be tough for
some, but those that make it have a wonderful career in front of them.
We also saw ways to optimize the ATS system to work as a valuable tool for the internal
recruiters and a better way to organize their candidate activity. We orchestrated some
reconfiguration with the ATS vendor development team and client IT to integrate to the career
website applicant portal, integrate an online assessment tool specific to sales performance
indicators, and to integrate with Cognos to deliver meaningful data and metrics.
To better ensure an effective decision making process in hiring the right candidates, we
adjusted the recruiting process into four assessment components to vet for former evidence of
performance, tolerance and resiliency in a tough sales environment, and for a more experienced
profile, career progression factors. We established ride-alongs with existing sales reps so they
could see ‘a day in the life of a sales rep’.
The localized marketplace had been diluted with recruiter agency hyper-activity, and polluted by
the many nay-sayers that turnover had created. ZeroChaos implanted recruiting consultants to
support the sourcing and recruiting efforts for each regional office to ensure a continued healthy
pipeline of candidate and ensuring a positive candidate experience. We streamlined the
recruiting message to candidates and added extra bandwidth to the core HR team allowing
them time to be proactive in their workforce planning, employee development, and ensuring a
positive candidate experience.
Results: Turnover was reduced from 55% to less than 30% in six months with the goal and
trend moving in the direction of less than 20% turnover within 18 months. The overt and hidden
cost of turnover had been calculated at a minimum of $15,000 per lost employee due to
4

5. recruiting and training costs that could never be recouped, so there was a significant drop in
turnover costs.
Employee morale improved significantly as initiatives were put into place by the client HR to
help develop promising new employees so they could get over the ‘hump’ of creating a new
customer base.
ZeroChaos provided a continuous feed of candidates to the pipeline by establishing
relationships with military transitioning hubs, colleges and university career counselors, and
offering learning opportunities that created positive visibility of the client employee value
proposition. In essence, more candidates were initiating contact to seek a job with the client
company and were seen as an employer of choice.
5