Meet Sonja Hastings, Software Sales Recruiter at Optimal Sales Search
Welcome to Optimal Sales Search
It’s hard to imagine something changing your life more than the people you meet along the way. More than 15 years ago, I started my recruiting career and it’s been the most rewarding career decision I have ever made.
With years of direct hire recruitment experience, I’ve partnered with my clients to recruit sales leaders, individual contributors, and build successful sales teams across the United States and Canada.
What’s a Sales Recruiter’s “Secret Weapon” to Recruiting Top Tech Sales Talent?
Power Recruiting Tools
LinkedIn Recruiter, Twitter, and other social media sites are powerful in the right hands, but alone they won’t get the job done. I have all the latest and greatest technology a recruiter could ever want.
Today’s tech makes my day more organized and speeds up the search process. One recruiter today can handle as many searches as 3 recruiters could just 6 years ago.
10,000 Hours of Hard Knocks
Wow, I’ve waited a long time for this one! Nothing takes the place of hands-on experience. I’ve done the quantitative work. I’ve interviewed more than 8,000 people. And I’ve successfully placed hundreds of salespeople in early-phase, breakthrough, and mature companies.
Serious Skills
They must always be improving. Looking for ways to do the job better, faster, and more effectively. I’ve learned how to use and integrate technology effectively into the recruitment process.
I’ve also developed serious listening skills because I’ve recruited through so many situations, chances are I’ve seen similar problems many times before. This comes in handy more times than not but doesn’t always help.
I’ve learned that sometimes it’s even better to have the skill of remaining a beginner–staying open-minded and curious.
Human Connections
Recruiting is a human activity. Recruitment success requires building rapport, developing relationships, and understanding goals. Being a recruiter comes with serious responsibility.
Changing jobs has side effects, not just for individuals but for families and companies.
For Hiring Managers, recruiting the right people can make your life easier and help you build a track record of success.
Hiring the wrong people can create new problems and hold you back from achieving your goals.
Putting someone into a new company for the next few years is not and will never be “transactional.” It is a case-by-case, situation-by-situation, and highly personal decision.
I take people’s sales careers seriously. Every career matters, and every hire counts. I don’t see salespeople as expendable and never will.
The Will to Finish
Today’s recruiter has to be willing to go the extra mile to find the person you need to do the job. Today’s unique sales job requirements demand higher levels of effort than ever before.
It’s easy to start a search yet difficult to successfully finish. I know how to persist and keep looking until we have the right people in place. Battle-tested, two-time recession tested and I’m still loving every minute.
Unlike many recruitment firms, when you hire Optimal Sales Search, you hire me. I lead all searches from start to finish, I recruit candidates myself–an advantage available from no other source.
Let’s Get Started
So whether you’re looking to hire your first rep or your 100th or need to hire a dynamic sales leader…contact me to get started today!

Sonja Hastings, Software Sales Recruiter
San Francisco Bay Area HQ’d National Sales Recruitment Firm
Since 2004 Optimal Sales Search has been helping innovative companies across the nation accelerate growth by hiring high-performance sales and sales leadership.