Interview Etiquette Begins The Minute You Walk in the Door from CareerJournal is a must-read piece for Gen Y workers. I’ve seen some of these traits first hand in initial interviews or even email communications.

I had a candidate this past week email me his resume and cover letter. Strangely, he wasn’t even close to fitting the clearly specified requirements of the position. He then followed up with the same email to me for the next 2 days. Except these times he had 5MB of attachments to his email. Finally, on the 3rd time, he sent the 5MB email to me 3 times in the middle of the night and filled my email quota (essentially shutting it down). I was fuming – talk about bad etiquette!

Ok, I’m done venting – back to the article. Many candidates ignore this truth:

Your demeanor comes under scrutiny the moment you arrive at a search firm. “We are building a picture of you piece by piece,” explains Dora Vell, managing partner of Vell & Associates, high-tech recruiters in Waltham, Mass.

And this is another move we have seen first hand:

You chat briefly, repeatedly peeking at your BlackBerry. Another dumb move. Twice in the past six months, aspiring vice presidents have pulled out these email devices during interviews…

Talk about interview suicide. Anyone who must check their cell or BlackBerry during and interview should be removed from consideration. One principle we adhere to – this is the best they will ever be. What I mean is that the interview will be their best behavior. Everything after that is less formal. If they do not display a minimum level of formality in the interview, you do not want to turn them loose inside your office or worse, in front of your clients.

The closing paragraph from the article hits the nail on the head:

He suspects many ill-mannered job seekers suffer from a similar, excessive sense of self-importance. “If you’re going to interview for a job, interview 100%,” Mr. Gallagher advises. “Put everything else out of your mind.”

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CareerBuilder.com approaches an important topic that is often placed on the back burner – Why Do Quarterly Employee Reviews?

I suspect most companies perform an annual employee review that is primarily tied to a salary review. Many companies may not even do that much. A scheduled, quarterly review is insulation against bad habits taking root in the employee’s performance.

From the article, a real truth:

Almost everyone performs better when held accountable. Employees who are not given performance benchmarks, goals and a vision will often fail.

This fact is our first topic when coaching sales managers. Sales managers simply need to hold their team accountable. They don’t need to be good at it, they just simply have to do it.

And then we come to this:

Measurement - It is important to measure the progress, growth, and impact each employee has on your organization. Rather than making subjective judgments about an employee’s performance, establish objective measurements with the employee. In most cases, goals provide an easy way to measure short-term (quarterly) performance. Clearly communicate goals and the criteria by which employees will be measured in writing and verbally.

Yes, we agree completely with this comment. Hence, we just released our new Sales Development Plan to assist sales managers in this measurement.

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CareerBuilder along with Cars.com performed a survey to find out what cars CEO’s drive. I don’t know if this data has any real application, but I found it interesting:

The truth is more CEOs surveyed drive ordinary passenger cars and SUVs than luxury cars; in fact, those who drive Chevys outnumber those in Mercedes. And while most respondents think CEOs spend more than $70,000 on their cars, the average price CEOs in this study payed for their primary vehicle is under $25,000. One-in-four (26%) CEOs surveyed reported they spent less than $20,000 on their primary vehicle.

Are you surprised? I’m not for 1 reason – the majority of CEO’s we have evaluated tend to be Utilitarians. They seek a good return on their investment. As most people know, cars tend to be one of the worst investments you can make.

An interesting follow up survey would be to discover how large CEO homes are. I suspect that survey would produce some different results since homes/real estate tend to be fantastic investments.

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As someone who has attended many trade shows in my career, I was most intrigued by this short note in a recent Sales & Marketing Management email (sorry, no link):

How bad are trade shows? A new survey by transportation-services provider BostonCoach reveals 70 percent of attendees harbor some negative feelings about their experiences. From boring presentations to the hassle of travel, trade shows are getting low marks.”The results of this survey have important implications for organizations staging events,” says BostonCoach president and CEO Jonathan P. Danforth. “Producing a truly successful event requires focusing on activities and logistics that extend well beyond the show floor or a meeting room.” Here’s where trade shows fall short:

* They are no fun. More than half of those in the survey said they were not stimulated or energized by events in or outside the meeting hall, and a great lineup of speakers was not enough.

* There’s little return on investment. It costs money to attend a show, from travel and registration to days away from the office. And 48 percent of trade-show attendees have negative feelings about the lack of value trade shows provide.

* Travel is a drag. Thirty percent of attendees said they didn’t like the hassle of air and ground travel, and didn’t enjoy time away from home and the office.

I always viewed industry trade shows as some evil concoction dreamed up in the back rooms of the marketing department. I cannot recall any valuable leads coming from those events. The best part of the experience was seeing customers in a different setting. Yet, it didn’t make up for the missed selling time from being away from phone, email, fax, office, etc.

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Finally – our new Sales Development Plan is now available. This tool will take the volumes of assessment data we gather on a salesperson and transform it into a tactical game plan to develop their sales skills. And now for our shameless plug – No sales manager should be without one for each member of their sales team.

Please click here to learn more about this product.

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It’s Monday and I’m calling this an anecdote. More fun from the general resume email. This gentleman’s cover email (seems archaic to say cover “letter”) ends with this paragraph:

I am a proven closer of large ticket, high margin services. I am a rare-rare breed. If you have a real opportunity, lets talk. If your a recruiter, I will not talk to you unless you can be specific about a REAL opportunity.

I laugh every time I read it. The guy is also asking for a minimum base salary of $120K with a commission plan that will match the salary.

Is there any greater turn off than unbridled arrogance?

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Friday, so let’s go to the anecdotes. I had a unique candidate call while conducting phone screens this past week. I talked to a candidate who said my name a thousand times if he said it once. I know, sounds silly, but after a couple questions into the interview, I was worn out from hearing my name so frequently.

Let me give you an example from our discussion:

“Well, Lee that’s a great question and I wished I could say that I have a quick response for you, Lee, but I need to think about that question for a moment.”

With hardly a pause he continued, “Lee, I would say that my experience in the industry and selling a similar product would help me fill the pipeline quickly. Does that make sense, Lee?”

Unnerving.

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CareerJournal posted this article – Six Things You Should Know About Pre-Employment Tests – earlier this week. The article is an excellent story for executive-level candidates to read closely.

First, an interesting stat:

Pre-employment testing is on the rise. In the past five years, 60% of companies have increased their use of workplace-behavior assessments, according to a survey of more than 500 human-resources professionals at U.S. companies…

Second, a good point:

“If you answer honestly and don’t get the job, it means the position wasn’t a good match for you in the first place,” he says.

Third, something we can confirm in our activities:

Senior executives are not exempt. In fact, the higher you aspire to climb the corporate ladder, the more likely you are to be evaluated on how well you might fit in personality-wise, says Joel H. Wilensky, an executive recruiter in Sudbury, Mass. His clients require most candidates to undergo assessments, he says. “It’s almost an absolute for jobs that pay salaries of $300,000 and up,” he adds. According to Mr. Testa, Mindbridge administers personality assessments to all prospective hires to see if they’ll fit into the company’s culture. But he says the company most closely scrutinizes the results of assessments from senior-level candidates. “We have the most to lose if they are a bad hire,” he says.

But the article ends on a horrific point:

Weak results may not matter. Ms. Sawyer says in 2002, a candidate for an executive position at a client of hers was hired even though results from a behavioral assessment suggested he was a poor fit. “He did well in the interviews and they thought he had the innate competencies to do the job,” she says. “They said, ‘We’re going to dismiss it and go on our gut.’ “

Please – PLEASE – do not dismiss weak results because your gut says something different. I guarantee this company fell in love with the candidate during in-person interviews, assessed him and then dismissed the assessment results. Notice how there is no discussion of whether the candidate succeeded in the position.

The subtle but dangerous mutiny on a hiring process occurs when subjective, gut-level decisions start trumping objective assessment results.

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It’s Friday so time for a little housecleaning. We will be releasing our new Sales Development Plan on Monday. After a couple delays for last minute feedback, we have finalized it and will roll it out on Monday.

The idea behind the tool is to give sales managers a document for tracking their salespeople’s skill development. Each plan will be customized to the salesperson and will identify areas for the sales manager to focus on when working with them.

The scope of this project is increasing and we will add further functionality to the development plan in the fall. More to come on that topic later.

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The founder of monster.com has started a new social networking site for 50+ year olds. Eons.com is described this way:

Instead of career and school sections, Eons.com has interactive games to build brain strength, news on entertainment and hobbies for older people, a personalized longevity calculator and tips to live longer.It also has a nationwide database of obituaries dating back to the 1930s to which people can add photos and comments.

In addition to adding photos and videos to obituaries, members of Eons.com can sign up to receive an alert when someone from a particular area dies or in response to pre-defined keywords such as a company or school name.

I’m sure there is more to the site than that, but it certainly has a macabre side to it.

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