An interesting article from ere.net titled The Role of the Hiring Manager in Recruiting. The author cuts to the quick in one of his bullet points:

The industry-experience trap. Industry experience is not only highly overrated, but it’s also the quickest way to sub-optimize the talent you recruit. If you think of the pool of top-quality, top-quartile talent, the minute you say they must come out of the food industry or the high-tech industry, you’ve reduced that pool of available talent by about 98%! The fact is that for the majority of our jobs, top talent with high learning agility can learn the nuances of our industry, but industry-experienced candidates who do not possess high learning agility will never become top talent or future leaders for you.

I emphasized the last sentence since that is a battle with which we are most familiar. The author is absolutely correct in that statement, yet companies often revert to an overemphasis on experience – especially when hiring salespeople. I believe they do it because it is difficult to discern a strong salesperson from a weak salesperson who interviews well (unless you are using assessments).

So, all things appearing equal, it is safest for the hiring manager to hire the candidate with more industry experience. If that candidate fails, the hiring manager can say they aren’t sure what happened – the person had great experience.

May I suggest a process that eliminates the guesswork?

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I was reading my daily email from the JustSell.com guys and they referenced an interesting study:

With help from Gallup, the authors surveyed more than 4 million employees and found that those who give and receive praise:

increase their individual productivity

increase interaction among colleagues

are more likely to stay in their current jobs

Gallup research also revealed that the #1 reason most Americans leave their jobs is because they don’t feel appreciated — and 65% of the people surveyed said they did not receive recognition for good work in the past year.

In the past year! Granted, some communication styles need more reinforcement than others, but all styles need reinforcement. I think sometimes people overstate responses to these types of surveys. Nonetheless, I am guessing that most of the 65% do not feel appreciated.

Interesting statistic – in my post yesterday, the SHRM survey found that 67% of employees are looking for a new opportunity.

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This is a new approach for a cover letter:

…please someone help me before im living under a bridge.

I personally think it is wiser to explain how you, as an employee, will help the company. But that’s just me.

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This should probably be an anecdote, but I found it entertaining. My general resume subscription pushed a resume to me of a candidate looking for a “House Manager” position. House Manager . . . never heard of such a position so my interest was piqued.

Here’s what a House Manager does:

• Coordination of parties and other events
• Personal shopping & errands
• Handling of personal correspondence
• Care of house guests needs
• Keeping the family calendar & appointments
• Assist with travel plans
• Supervision of household staff
• Coordinate automobile maintenance
• Oversee maintenance & service to home
• Occasional driving
• Pet Care
• Household finances (I am a degreed accountant with many years accounting experience)

They are looking for $35/hour for daytime, $40/hour nights and weekends.

If they had listed lawn care, I might have called.

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I’m reading posts in recruiter message boards that are discussing low salesperson response rates to employment ads placed on monster, local newspapers and publications. From the amount of responses to this subject, it appears many other recruiters are having similar difficulties.

I then read the opening paragraph from this article that states:

Seventy-six percent of employees are looking for new employment opportunities, according to the 2005 U.S. Job Recovery and Retention Survey released today by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and CareerJournal.com. Sixty-five percent of HR professionals indicated they were concerned about the voluntary resignations at their organizations. To prevent a mass exodus, almost half of the organizations surveyed are implementing special retention processes to keep their employees.

76% are looking for new employment opportunities yet these recruiters are not getting a good response to their sales ads placed in multiple media. Something is amiss. We covered this topic yesterday in some detail and I want to hit upon it one more time.

The advice this recruiter received (from other recruiters) was to advertise in more media locations for longer periods of time. Great advice if you are selling advertising. Bad advice if you are hiring salespeople.

I took the time to hunt down the ad. The position seems to have a decent pay and a doable commission structure (from what I could infer). Yet, the recruiter could run that ad for 3 years and not get a good response. The ad is written in the first person, speaks about degrees and typing speed and is too long.

As Mark Twain once quipped, “I’d write you a shorter letter, but I haven’t the time.” Think of that quote when authoring employment ads.

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This may be a bit self-indulgent, but writing style is a favorite topic of mine. Dan Tudor over at Landing the Deal authored this post – Great Sales Copywriting a couple days ago. The tip in the post are applicable to all writing, not just sales copy.

The takeaway tip:

The opposite of active voice is “passive” voice. Here’s an example: “While visiting China, a brand-new idea in vitamin supplementation was discovered by Dr. Smith.” You feel like Dr. Smith just stood around until he accidentally bumped into the idea, right?Now let’s change that sentence to active voice: “Dr. Smith discovered a brand-new idea in vitamin supplementation while visiting China.” That’s much better, isn’t it? You can almost see him talking to herbalists and picking plants beside the Great Wall.

Email’s casualness has a numbing effect on skillful writing. Don’t give in to it – the slight modification noted above makes a tremendous impact on written communication.

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Seems like employment ads are the topic du jour on the The Hire Sense today. One thing I have noticed that truly cheapens an ad is to use extra large fonts, multiple colors and highlighting. Does this approach just scream multi-level marketing or is it me?

Most corporations write their ads in a prim and proper manner which is ok. This approach reminds me of the Apple commercials with the PC represented by the stodgy, business-suit guy and Apple represented by the trendy, young guy. Formula ads with cliche requests for degrees, years of experience, etc. are similar to the somewhat boring PC guy. Of course, that approach is certainly better than the MLM coloring page look, but there are some differences that bring good attention to an ad:

-Provide the company’s website
-Use bullets, some bold and only black
-Describe the job’s rewards
-Focus on skills & talents not experience & degrees
-Avoid detailed benefit descriptions
-Provide a clear response request (call, email, etc.)
-Shorten it

Simple suggestions but look at the ads that are out there today. We monitor the local ads on a daily basis and it’s ugly. Many companies believe employment ads are slow and ineffective for sourcing. Many recruiters attempt to reinforce that belief. Not true. Effective ads receive overwhelming responses from strong candidates.

If you don’t catch any fish in the lake, it isn’t because the lake is lacking fish. Change your bait.

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One of the peculiar facets of Internet job boards is that you receive interest from around the world. That fact has its good and its bad. This would be the bad side of it:

Meanwhile I am highly & hugely trying at my best efforts to post for this vacancy with heavily long-desired rayhopes that based on my supreme graymatters plusing with my well-accumulated experiences in working for several foreign-based firms as well as projects, & I have accrued a lot of skills or so specialization in various matters & manners…I make risks to submit for the aforesaid post with long-desired hopes that you will see through my sensitively & briliantly particular status quos, & I deplore you all to give me a chance to work for your corporation.

I haven’t sorted out if this is a hoax, a promo for an email client or a legitimate response. After rereading all of it, I think it is a bad promo. One thing I do know, the communication level for the position we are sourcing requires a higher level than this cover letter shows.

“Supreme graymatters” is most excellent though.

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We posted multiple ads about 10 days ago on multiple job boards for 3 different sales positions we are presently working. Our highly unscientific experiment has led us to these . . . conclusions.

• Big Boards – Monster.com still leads the pack – probably due to name recognition. We have had more success with monster as opposed to CareerBuilder.

• Niche Boards – We received a limited response and no viable candidates. My gut tells me these may work better for higher-level positions (VP, Director, Manager).

• Free Boards – We have been using them for 6 months and the response totals are increasing with each posting. The candidate quality is hit-or-miss, but we have found viable candidates.

We attempt to use a mixture of all boards when we are sourcing for a position. Depending upon the position, we blend in resume database searches (if we need a very specific experience set) and old-fashioned direct recruiting. One note on direct recruiting – we have found email to be the best approach tool. If you send an introductory email first and then follow up with a phone call, you will increase your response rate immensely.

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Even I had to do a double take regarding the title of this post – it is a bit misleading. AICPA has a rather dry article (what did you expect from a CPA website) about hiring trends in the accounting world. We try to stay on the cutting edge here at The Hire Sense so I read the short article. I was intrigued by this statement:

The traditional structure of a corporation’s accounting department, with definitive job responsibilities and several layers of management and staff positions is changing. Accounting departments are staffed by fewer, more flexible, technologically savvy and highly experienced professionals. They are responsible for developing methods to grow the business and increase profit margins.

That is my emphasis but this is directly from the article. As a former salesperson in larger organizations, we seemed to view the accounting department as a necessary evil. Not an enlightened thought, I know. Yet, it seemed that their job was to question every commission, seek clarification on every expense and complain about frivolous costs in the sales department.

I read this article and am left wondering what will accountants sell to grow the business. This article states that they are being asked to more than beancounters. Instead, they are morphing into business advisors for their clientele:

Candidates who can assist clients in everything from auditing and tax work to process improvement are highly valued.

I note this statement simply because more companies are moving towards well-rounded employees. The demand for a wider skill set among employees is a trend we have seen for the past 2 years. Companies are looking for candidates that have a mix of abilities that allow them to contribute to areas outside their primary department. One word to accomplish this task – assess.

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