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… Read More
Continue ReadingNew Article – Sales Hire Misfires
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.
Continue ReadingCover Email Attention Getter
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.
Continue ReadingAnecdote – Pipeline or Pipe Dream
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… Read More
Continue ReadingOneWebDay is Today
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?
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Handling Rejection
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… Read More
Continue ReadingResume Errors
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… Read More
Continue ReadingCareerBuilder and PayScale
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… Read More
Continue ReadingThe One Piece Of Advice You Can’t Sell Without
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… Read More
Continue ReadingADHD Awareness Day – Sept. 20
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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