Adria offered an interesting comment on our post regarding Resume Enhancements. Here is her comment in whole:

I currently teach a Resume class in a Texas Workforce Center. I tell my attendees to never lie on their resumes. I also try to emphasize they should never put something in print about themselves which they cannot prove, or for which they cannot provide a witness if necessary. Will recruiters simply dismiss the truth in the resume style Im teaching as more embelishments or is there a trustworthy means to note integrity on a resume?

First off, good news that candidates are being taught a specific manner for maintaining the veracity of their information. I suspect a good rule of thumb for resume information is to view it similar to a referral for a potential contractor.

We had a large, intense hail storm here in New Prague, MN last month and the roof on my house has been totalled by the insurance company. I have been soliciting quotes from roofing companies - I know nothing about roofing. I have received references from the companies and all of their references speak glowingly of each company. I doubt there is any value in this task.

Resumes have a similar tone. Candidates overemphasize the good and withhold the less-than-good. Our approach is to view the resume was a glowing piece of marketing that needs to be taken with a large grain of salt. For sales, we always look for specific numbers that support their claims of growth. If it is a high level position, we often ask to see a pay stub from their employer to verify their compensation. These are simple items that make a difference.

In sales, we will always put more value on the phone screen than the resume. We have sat through numerous screens in which the candidate had a resume that made you believe they could sell sand in the desert. Once on the phone, it became obvious they couldn’t sell cold water in the desert.

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We have a new article that has been released today - Sales Hire Misfires. This short article covers 2 important process errors we often see in sales hiring. Eliminate these two errors and you greatly improve your chances of a successful hire.

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I’m working through some resume tasks this Monday morning and noticed an amusing line from a cover email:

I have excellent customer skills and great work ethic! I do more by 9:00 in the morning that (sic) the marines do all day!!

I know, a grammatical error steals some of the thunder, but I still got a kick out of the line. Note: exclamation points should be avoided at all costs. However, it is always - always - valuable to stand out from the crowd in a pile of resumes.

Assuming you stand out in a good way.

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In talking with one of our customers, we heard this humorous story from the acting sales manager. This executive has been filling in the past month because her Sales Manager quit without notice and she was voicing her frustration at the lack of urgency on the part of the existing salespeople. Her story goes like:

She asked one of her new salespeople for an update on her forecast and where things stood with a few specific prospects.

The salesperson answered that everything was good and that in a year the two of them would be laughing about this discussion about where these deals stood. The salesperson mentioned that they would be awash in cash from all of the deals that had closed.

I must mention that to date, this salesperson has yet to close a deal.

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Last week the Rock Star was commenting on Head Lice Prevention Month. Today I give you OneWebDay which is a celebration of the world wide web. The gist of it:

Susan Crawford, the founder of OneWebDay, said she wanted people to reflect on how the web had changed their lives.

Maybe we are getting too many of these special days?

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We’re going to start a short blog series on some specific sales aptitudes that predict success in a majority of sales roles. Our first one may be the most important aptitude - handling rejection.

Sales is overflowing with rejection. I know because getting “no’s” was a hallmark of my sales career - nobody did it better. Getting the “yes” was my struggle (still is).

Anyway, this aptitude is one we pay close attention to in all sales candidates. Sales that require many prospect contacts to reach 1 close require candidates with strong handling rejection aptitudes (an extreme example - telemarketing).

Handling Rejection:
The capacity to exhibit persistence and strong will in the face of objections.

A salesperson with a strong handling rejection aptitude is able to separate their self-value from their performance. They do not take rejection or criticism in an overly personal way.

A salesperson with a weak handling rejection aptitude will be prone to viewing rejection or criticism as a personal affront (a mark against who they are as a person) and will react accordingly (i.e., in a defensive, hostile or emotional manner). They can allow negative feedback to have a negative impact on their self-esteem.

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Resumes have been a popular topic for us this week. Now I just caught up to this post from Anthony Meaney over at Recruiting.com from last week:

Eighty-four percent of executives polled said it takes just one or two typographical errors in a resume to remove a candidate from consideration for a job opening; 47 percent said a single typo could be the deciding factor.

First off, “typo” is a bit nondescript so I would argue some typos are worse offenses than others (”alot” instead of the proper “a lot” is forgivable in my opinion). However, one axiom we live by is that the interview process is the best the candidate will be.

A resume is a formal portfolio of their work. If the candidate cannot take the time and effort to make sure their resume is perfect during an active job search, when will they? If they are in sales, will they present a proposal to a prospect with errors? These are items we consider when sourcing.

(and now I am praying that my spellchecker caught all of my errors in this post)

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The 2 companies in the title of this post have released a new website - cbsalary.com. The site is a competitor of the long established salary.com website of which I am a fan.

The CareerBuilder site has some interesting hooks to it including a direct link to current job listings on their board. If I am not mistaken, salary.com offers a comprehensive service that searches the big 3 job boards. There is a section towards the end of the free report that offers a comparison to similar profiles which was interesting. The similar jobs were close, but not quite exact. I searched on a Technical Recruiter position but the comparisons were for a general recruiter which is a big difference. The report does list benefits/perks for the profile which has some valuable information (laptop, cell phone, telecommute, etc.).

One thing I have to mention, cbsalary has a blog! And it is run by Dr. Al Lee who is a PhD in physics from Yale and goes by the moniker “Dr. Salary.” You’ll know that fact the minute you read a post there.

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I came across a new sales blog, RainToday.com. They are offering a free e-book to download titled The One Piece Of Advice You Can’t Sell Without that caught my eye and I encourage you to go download it.

Rain Today says this about the free e-book:

We’ve read a lot of advice about selling professional services, and there are a lot of people who claim to know it all. But when you boil it all down what’s really important? What do you need to know? To answer this question, we asked 11 experts in selling professional services: What is the one piece of advice you simply cannot sell without? This 34-page, complimentary e-book answers that question.

If you have been in selling for any length of time you will recognize many of the experts, they are:

Seth Godin, best-selling author of 7 books including Purple Cow and Permission Marketing
Keith Ferrazzi, speaker and author of Never Eat Alone, and a columnist for Inc. Magazine and Fast Company
Sam Reese, CEO of Miller-Heiman, The Sales Performance Company
Alan Weiss, CEO of Summit Consulting Group and author of Million Dollar Consulting
Mike Schultz, Publisher of RainToday.com and Principal, Wellesley Hills Group
Paul Dunay, Director of Global Field Marketing for BearingPoint and Publisher of the Buzz Marketing for Technology blog
Jill Konrath, Chief Sales Officer, Leapfrog Strategies and author of Selling to Big Companies
Frank Stasiowski, President of PSMJ Resources, serving the architecture / engineering industries
Larry Bodine, Owner-Operator of LawMarketing Portal and Larry Bodine Marketing, serving law firms
Paige Arnof-Fenn, CEO of Mavens & Moguls and a columnist for Entrepreneur
Michael W. McLaughlin, co-author of Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants with Jay Conrad Levinson and editor of Management Consulting News

I have read through some of the experts’ advice there are many points we can all use. Whether it is a fresh idea, a new way of looking at something or just a reminder of things we should be doing, it is well worth the bandwidth to download the ebook.

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Today is the 3rd annual National Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Awareness Day. It is quite an impressive website and has tons of resources for those affected by this disorder. In fact, maybe they should have developed a shorter website with more bulleted information!

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