Gong for talent acquisition teams

Legal considerations

Note

Gong Recruiting is currently in a restricted beta phase, accessible to a selected group of customers until further notice.

Who's this for: Talent acquisition managers

It is your responsibility to comply with laws and regulations related to recording, privacy and data protection. Gong provides various configurable settings, which you can read more about below. We recommend enabling dual consent for all call recordings and including a candidate privacy notice that specifically addresses your data collection and use practices.

We strongly recommend you comply with such regulations by doing the following:

• Familiarize yourself with local laws & regulations, and read the following article:

  • Data retention policy

• Inform candidates about call recording and ask for their consent:

  • Proactively inform candidates that interviews will be recorded, for example, by adding a message to the pre-interview email reminder template in your ATS

  • Make sure the Gong audio prompt is turned on by default for all recorded interviews. This means all call participants will hear a prompt when they join the interview, informing them that the call is being recorded

  • If your org records using native Zoom recording, you can use Zoom's recording disclaimer

  • Advise your interviewers to ask for consent at the beginning of every interview

  • Make sure that candidate consent is obtained in accordance with your internal policies and your legal team’s guidance.

  Tip

  Go here for more tips on how to let interviewees know the call will be recorded ahead of time.

How to let candidates know interviews are recorded

Some countries require that all parties on a call be notified that it is being recorded. Here are some ways to notify a candidate that the call is being recorded.

Before the interview

You can notify participants of the recording by adding a message to the calendar invite or the pre-interview email reminder template. Here’s one way to phrase the message:

Important

Should you decide to copy the following text, make sure to replace with yours before sending the invitation.

"This interview will be recorded by Gong.

We record our interviews [with Gong] so we can focus on you and our conversation, not on taking notes. This helps us listen more attentively and base our hiring decisions on your skills and experience, rather than our recollection of the conversation.

The recordings are used for record-keeping, training, and quality purposes. They are only available internally and will never be shared with anyone outside . 

If you do not want the interview to be recorded, please let us know - either by responding to this email or by saying so at the beginning of our call.”

At the beginning of the interview

• Set an audio prompt that will play when the candidate joins the call (learn how to configure the audio prompt here).

  When Gong is set up to natively record conference calls on Zoom (learn about native Zoom recording here), a dedicated disclaimer can be presented (learn how to use ZOOM's recording disclaimer here).

  Note

  When Gong is set to record with the Gong recorder, based on your web conferencing settings, the interviewer may be prompted to allow the Gong recorder into the call.

• Advise your interviewers to ask for consent at the beginning of every interview. Here's an example of how to phrase the request:“ We record our interviews to run a better hiring process and focus on the conversation, not taking notes. The recording will be private and only available to the hiring team. Is it okay with you?" 

• For information on consent when making outbound calls via Gong mobile app, see Enable Gong Connect mobile calls and Gong Connect: data protection & privacy.

How to restrict interview access and sharing

After interviews are recorded and brought into Gong, you can restrict access per interview based on each role’s permission profile.

Typically, admins set up permissioned access as follows:

• People who only schedule interviews: No access to recorded interviews

• Recruiters and talent acquisition leaders: Access to all recorded interviews they oversee

• Hiring manager: Access to all recorded interviews for positions they are recruiting for

• Additional interviewers: Access is limited to recorded interviews they participate in

Nobody else can access any particular interview by default.

If you want to give someone access to a specific interview recording, you can either share it with them or tag them in a comment, even if they have no access to it based on their permissions, just as long as they have access to the Recruiting workspace. You can also share recordings or snippets externally with non-Gong users; however, we do not recommend sharing interviews with candidates. See more about sharing calls here.

Track adoption of strategic initiatives

Where to go: Insights > Initiatives

Initiatives gives you visibility into how your team is adopting strategic initiatives, enabling you to view adoption over time and compare adoption between team members and teams. With this analysis and insight, you can adjust your training strategies accordingly, and course-correct in real time.

Examples of initiatives to track

Use initiative boards to track all types of sales initiatives, including:

• Launching new products or services to increase revenue and expansions

• Increasing market share through competitive differentiation

• Adhering to sales methodology and objection handling

• Adapting sales messaging to increase perceived customer value in changing markets

• New pricing and discounting structure to address new market needs

Types of initiative boards

Initiative boards can track how initiatives are being adopted according to deals or calls. Only calls owned by the selected team members are included in the board.

Deal-based boards

See the percentage of deals with calls in which the initiative was mentioned. The percentage is calculated as follows:

• Calculate the number of deals with calls hosted by the team or team member, according to the selected time period and board filters.

• Identify the number of these deals with calls in which tracker terms were mentioned.

• Calculate the percentage of deals with calls in which tracker terms were mentioned out of the total number of deals with calls included in the board.

Call-based boards

See the percentage of calls in which the initiative was mentioned. The percentage is calculated as follows:

• Calculate the number of calls hosted by the team according to the selected time period and the board filters.

• Identify the number of calls in which tracker terms were mentioned.

• Calculate the percentage of calls in which tracker terms were mentioned out of the total number of calls included in the board.

Note

In addition to the filters applied to the board, any filters that are part of the board's trackers are reflected in the results of that tracker. So, if a tracker is set to only track calls in the discovery stage, then only these types of calls will be used in the calculations for that tracker in the board.

View adoption: Over time and by team

At the top of the Initiative page, you'll see the name of the initiative board you’re viewing. If you don’t see any initiative boards, you’ll be prompted to build your first one. Anyone can build an initiative board; see this for instructions.

From the menu in the middle of the page, choose which board you want to view. To the right, you can edit the board, create a new one, or delete it.

See team, time and board details

Immediately under the board name, choose which team you want to view, and for what period of time. Choose from preset dates (last 90 days, last 30 days, this month, this week) or set a custom date. The board info label displays whether the board is tracking calls or deals, and how many filters were applied to the board. Hover the label for more information. 

Immediately below, see a graph displaying adoption trends and a table displaying stats for teams and individual team members.

Adoption over time

The graph at the top of the page shows initiative adoption over the specified period. Each line represents one of the board's trackers.

• Choose whether to view results by days, weeks, or months (when period viewed is more than 60 days). 

• Hover points in the graph to see specific data for specific dates. 

• For boards with multiple trackers: 

  • Hone in on adoption trends for a specific tracker: Hover over the name of that tracker to dim the other trackers in the graph.

  • Remove a specific tracker from the view: Click on the name of the tracker to remove it from the view, so that you can see the other trackers.

Adoption by team

The chart at the bottom of the page shows how initiatives are being adopted by team.

• Choose whether you want to view according to teams or individuals.

• Choose whether you want to view according to teams or individual interviewers.

• Each column in the chart represents a tracker.

• The top row shows the team’s average adoption, per tracker.

• Each row after that represents a team or individual. If you see a number beside a person’s name, that indicates that the person manages others. Click on their name to view the individuals on their team. Clicking to view a manager's team changes the results in both the graph and chart.

• For deal-based boards: The number in each cell shows the percentage of deals with calls in this period, owned by this team, in which tracker terms were mentioned.

• For call-based boards: The number in each cell shows the percentage of calls in this period in which tracker terms were mentioned.

• Clicking on an individual team member’s adoption calculation opens a panel on the right that displays:

  • For deal-based boards: A list of deals associated with calls in which the tracker was mentioned / not mentioned. If the tracker was mentioned, the relevant snippet is included here too. If the tracker was mentioned in multiple calls on a deal, you can toggle between the calls using right/left arrows.

  • For call-based boards: A list of calls in which the tracker was mentioned. Each call includes a snippet of the part in which the tracker was mentioned. If it was mentioned multiple times, click on the arrow, or the pin below the snippet, to move between snippets.

• Understanding the colors: The cells are colored according to whether adoption goals were met. Green indicates that the goal was met; red indicates that the goal wasn’t met. Adoption goals may be high or low, depending on the purpose of the tracker. For more, see Adoption goals, below.

Adoption goals: High, fair, and low

The cells in the chart are color-coded according to the adoption goals of the specific tracker.

Goal of high adoption: For example, if you’re introducing a new sales methodology, your goal would likely be for reps to use the new terms in their calls. You want adoption of this tracker to be high, because you want tracker terms to be used frequently.

When aiming for high adoption, green indicates that the tracker is frequently mentioned, red indicates the tracker is mentioned infrequently.

Goal of low adoption: For example, if you’ve introduced new messaging, you want to make sure that reps aren’t using the old messaging. Create a tracker that tracks usage of terms associated with the old messaging, and in the board, set the goal for that tracker adoption to be low, because you don’t want tracker terms to be used frequently. 

When aiming for low adoption, green indicates that the tracker is infrequently mentioned and red indicates that the tracker is mentioned frequently.

Note

When setting up the initiative board, you set whether you want adoption for a specific tracker to be high or low, and define what percentage is considered high and low.

Create and edit initiative boards

Where to go: Insights > Initiatives

1. Click Edit this board or Create new board.

2. Give the board a meaningful name that reflects the initiative you want to measure adoption for.

3. Add a description for the initiative. This is displayed in the Board settings in the initiative board.

4. Choose whether you want to track the initiative in calls or deals.

   • View by deals: Shows the percentage of deals in which tracker terms were mentioned during the deal. Choose this when the initiative should be mentioned at some point over the deal life-cycle, but not necessarily in every call.

   • View by calls: Shows the percentage of calls in which tracker terms were mentioned during the call. Choose this type of board when you want the messaging to be brought up in every call of a certain type (defined by the board filters). For example, if each discovery call requires a specific question or concept to be brought up, use View by Calls and make sure to use the board filters to only include calls in which the stage at time of call is Discovery.

5. Click + Add tracker and select trackers that relate to this initiative. We recommend adding no more than 6 trackers to a board, but you can add as many as you want.

   Note

   Don’t have trackers to surface mentions of this initiative? If you’re a business admin, go ahead and  build them. If not, ask a business admin to do it for you.

6. Set the adoption goals of each tracker:

   1. Set whether you want high adoption of this tracker or low. If you want frequent mentions of the tracker terms, keep the goal of high adoption. If you want infrequent mentions of tracker terms, for example, if it relates to old messaging, set a goal of low adoption.

   2. Set the percentages below and above which you want initiative adoption to be measured.

7. Click + Add filter to to add filters that enable you to focus on specific types of calls, opportunities or accounts. These filters narrow down which calls this board shows data for. Choose from the following filters:

   • Call filters

     • Call duration: Only include calls that lasted for a certain amount of time

     • Direction: Only include calls that are inbound, outbound or web conference

   • Deal filters

     • Stage at time of call: Only include calls that are in this stage of the deal

     • Probability at time of call: Only include calls that are within this range of probability of being closed-won

     • Amount at time of call: Only include calls where the deal amount is within the defined range

     • Stage now: Only include calls that are currently in this stage

     • Probability now: Only include calls that are currently within this probability of being closed-won

     • Amount now: Only include calls where the current deal amount is within this range

     • Opportunity type: Only include calls with this type of deal

   • Account

     • Industry: Only include calls associated to accounts in this industry

     • Account type: Only include calls associated to accounts of this type

8. Click Create board.

Note

For a workflow recipe that includes initiative boards, see:  Tracking the adoption and performance of strategic initiatives