A few months back we posted on an article from CareerBuilder.com titled Top 10 Interview No No’s. One of the top 10 “no-no’s” is a topic that we discuss with our clients regularly. It is: 2. No Opening Monologue – It is often tempting to have a monologue at the beginning of your time with a candidate. Giving too much information about the type of candidate you are seeking, or providing a substantial amount of information about the position and responsibilities can be detrimental. Giving too many details upfront leads a candidate to tell you what you want to hear, instead of what he/she actually thinks. Do simple introductions and… Read More
Continue ReadingTermination Tips
Firing an employee is usually a difficult task unless things have degraded to a point where you are eager to terminate them. Nonetheless, there are some tips available for doing it the “right” way. CareerBuilder has a solid, basic article that hits the high points of terminating an employee – What to Know About Letting an Employee Go. Here’s a good tip from the article: It’s About Time It used to be the general consensus that late Friday afternoon was considered the ideal time to drop the hammer on an employee. But experts in the Human Resources industry now believe that earlier in the day, or even the week, is… Read More
Continue ReadingWork & Health
I laughed out loud when I read this headline from CareerBuilder’s recent newsletter, 46% of Workers Have Gained Weight at Their Current Jobs. I have to admit that I am in with the 46% so naturally I had to read the article. CareerBuilder.com surveyed more than 2,200 workers from June 6 to June 16, 2006. Here are some of their findings: 20% say they are more than 10 pounds heavier. 10% say they are more than 20 pounds heavier. 57% of government workers gained weight. 54% off IT workers gained weight. 53% of accounting/finance workers gained weight. 35% of retail workers gained weight. 39% of sales workers gained weight. Well,… Read More
Continue ReadingTalent Shortage
According to a recent SHRM article, …approximately 60% of the 3,100 human resource executives surveyed by Novations Group (a Boston-based consulting firm) said they see signs of a talent shortage, while nearly 10 percent said they have seen no shortage but expect to before the end of the decade. That leaves 30 percent that see no or few signs of the shortage. About 20 percent of respondents said they see no signs of a talent shortage but will remain cautious on new hiring in the year ahead and ten percent said they do not even anticipate a shortage of workers in the next decade. More than half of those seeing… Read More
Continue ReadingSelling to Women
I’m catching up on some reading and came across Selling Power’s recent Sales Management Newsletter which had this article, If You Sell to Women, You Better Clear the Clutter. Some interesting information about selling to women. According to a cruise ship survey women could recall details as small as the design on the rugs and the subject matter of each painting on the walls. In contrast, most men couldn’t even remember the color of those walls. Women account for more than 80 percent of all purchases in the U.S., $3.7 trillion as consumers and $1.5 trillion as business owners. And third and foremost in my mind was the authors final… Read More
Continue ReadingThe 6 Hour Workday
Price Tag for Lost Productivity: $544 Billion. I’m always intrigued about how these calculations are made through a simple survey. How about some stats from the article? Employees spend an average of 1.86 hours per eight-hour workday on something other than their jobs, not including lunch and scheduled breaks, the survey found. More than half (52%) of the 2,706 people surveyed admitted that their biggest distraction during work hours is surfing the Internet for personal use. Other distractions cited by respondents included socializing with co-workers (26.3%), running errands outside the office (7.6%) and spacing out (6.6%). I remember seeing something about this survey since “spacing out” made me laugh. I’ve… Read More
Continue ReadingHow to Explain Natural Talents
Let’s keep this talent vs. experience riff rolling into a Monday. This battle is near and dear to our hearts, as you know. Here is an experience we had recently involving a final candidate who had a strong networking ability. He has the ability to network within his industry effectively. He even networked with people incidentally – at a restaurant, in retail environment, etc. This ability was revealed throughout his assessments. He was a strong people reader, had high empathy, was people-oriented, etc. Unfortunately during the in-person interview, the candidate wasn’t able to tactically explain his networking ability. The ability came naturally to him so he was not overtly aware… Read More
Continue ReadingAnecdote – Is that your final answer?
Late on a Friday and we need some levity so it is anecdote time. The set up – I am conducting a phone interview for a consultative service company where excellent listening and verbal skills are required. After asking a candidate (that was doing quite well) some preliminary questions about their general experience, I started asking more sales process-oriented questions. My first sales-specific question was “What is your typical length for one sales cycle?” His response, “I have been in this industry for almost 6 years but looking to make a change.” I was utterly baffled. I apologized to the candidate and mentioned that my question was not clear and… Read More
Continue ReadingKnow Your Competition
Just over 10 years ago, I was a Regional Sales Manager for a high-tech company in a competitive market. There were 5 major players in this market and each of us incorporated different technology in our capital equipment. The Internet was a fledgling concept in the business world at the time. We needed to know what our competition was developing since they all had different technology. We had admin people call in to our competitors, pretend that they were prospects and request information packets. Our competitors obliged. We then passed the information around to the team and filed it in a huge lateral file for future reference. Outside of trade… Read More
Continue ReadingA Hiring Riddle
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. -Albert Einstein Here is a riddle we constantly encounter yet have difficulty solving. Let’s say you are the sales manager for a somewhat complex product sale and you have an underperforming salesperson. The salesperson is well below quota, has an ethereal forecast and is not making enough prospect connects to turn it around. What do you do as a sales manager? My solution – pull them from their territory for 1 week of intense product training. I’m talking deep training down to the part production, software coding, product assembly nether regions of operations. If you can pump… Read More
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