Just a quick note to let you know we have added an About The Authors page to our site. The page provides some basic background on us and may be a bit dry today. We’ll expand upon it soon.

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I received a comment from Sonia Meisenheimer at PayScale yesterday regarding this post from last month on the Ask Dr. Salary blog. Sonia mentioned that the blog is actually run by PayScale and not CareerBuilder – my bad.

PayScale has launched a new blog called Salary Stories which I checked out this morning. I enjoyed the blog and their excellent use of YouTube (should I call that GoogleTube now?). Their description of the blog:

Salary Stories are true tales about working people who do what they love and love what they do.

The videos are well done – I watched a couple of the interviews and they are quite compelling, earthy and insightful. The interview with founder of Cranium, Inc. – Whit Alexander is quite entertaining. He went from working for free in Africa to being employed by Microsoft and working on the first ever release of Encarta.

Check out Salary Stories – it is well worth the visit.

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Ok, this is a different approach – asking yourself questions in the cover email:

Why am I here you ask? I’m seeking a position where I can learn with room for advancement.What type of position am I looking for? I’m open to new experiences, but I would love to be in an office environment.

I keep noticing these different approaches and laughing about them.

But I do notice them and isn’t that the author’s intent?

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From CareerJournal – The Top 14 Reasons We’re Stressed Out

Here are the complete results to the survey’s question, “Have you experienced the following in the past month?” Respondents could point to any of the following 14 options.

Rising prices, 74%

Too many things to do, 56%

Trouble sleeping, 53%

Concerns about money for emergencies, 53%

Concerns about health in general, 43%

Illness of a family member, 36%

Not enough money for basic necessities, 36%

Too much information to process at one time, 33%

Being lonely, 29%

Problems with your work, boss or fellow workers, 24%

Problems with aging parents, 21%

Frequent or excessive noise, 20%

Problems with my children, 19%

Abuse of your personal privacy, 13%

Rising prices? I have no idea what that means other than to suspect rising gas prices (depending upon when the survey was completed in Sept.). As you can see, money is a significant stressor which is not surprising.

How about this finding:

Surprisingly, the younger you are, the likelier you are to feel stressed, according to this survey.

Just 9% of those older than 60 said they have a lot of stress in their lives, compared with 29% of 18- to 29-years-old, 28% of those 30 to 41 years old and 25% of those 42 to 60 years old.

Now I am stressed out about older people not being stressed out. What do they know that I don’t know?

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MarketingProfs.com puts out an always interesting enewsletter and this week’s edition is no exception. Have You Been Digitally Dissed? starts out as an article about googling yourself since hiring managers are googling you.

…75% of recruiters google candidates, according to a survey by Execunet.

We do. In fact, we posted about this topic back in June.

The article states:

The moral of the story: Google yourself. It’s called self-googling or ego-surfing and you should be doing it regularly.

Here is the point I truly enjoyed – the author, William Arruda, employs this premise in the article:

If you’re looking to advance in your career, you’ll want to proactively manage your online identity to ensure that you have stellar Google results.

A great point for all job seekers. Google is quickly being integrated into standard search activities. The first step for a candidate is to make sure there is no digital dirt floating around in cyberspace regarding them. Arruda’s point is that candidates should take proactive steps to paint their Google results in the best light.

His suggestions:

Five Ways to Positively Impact Your Online Profile

1. Review books relevant to your area of thought leadership and post the reviews on amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.
2. Use technorati.com to find blogs relevant to your area of thought leadership and then regularly post comments to the entries.
3. Publish an article on a Web site relevant to your area of expertise. As marketers, you must know of Web sites that accept articles from outside authors (hint: you are on one of those Web sites right now.)
4. Build your own Web site. The best way to ensure that your online profile says what you want it to say is to speak for yourself.
5. Create a blog. A blog is valuable only if you commit to posting regularly (at least once a week), but it is a great way to demonstrate your knowledge of a particular topic and to connect with others who share your interest.

Doesn’t that list read like a basic business marketing plan? Those are all sound suggestions and certainly would have a dramatic impact on a hiring manager’s decision process.

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We’ve written about this topic before. It seems every year we encounter some issue involving background verifications with a candidate or employee. I was hopeful that 2006 was going to break this streak. This morning, I can sadly state, the streak is alive.

We have a customer who has hired an employee for a position and ran the background check to find some misdemeanors in the employee’s background.

The outcome of their employment is being determined right now, but it serves as a reminder – run background verifications before a candidate joins your company.

If you are looking for referrals, may I suggest Verified Credentials? We have found them to be one of the most thorough organizations in that industry.

For our sake, please employ their services.

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I received an email over the weekend from Selling Power inviting me to watch a new series they are launching. It is a daily video clip roughly 5 minutes in length with Gerhard Gschwandtner. Here are the selling points they used to hook me:

You are invited to watch my new Selling Power Daily Report, a series of online videos.
- Watch for less than five minutes a day
- Enjoy insightful interviews with top thought leaders
- Get bright ideas to implement every day
- Learn new business solutions every day of the week
- The reports are FREE for the month of October 2006

I went to check out the clips and see how long they have been doing this series (brand new with only 5 videos). From the current videos and looking at the coming attractions, it appears that Gerhard conducts a brief 5 minute interview of his guests. In most of the videos, there is something that can be pulled out that is worthwhile. It is also a chance for the interviewee to plug their product.

Here are a couple of things that caught my eye. A great quote form Albert Einstein in Oct. 3rd’s segment on How to Turn Passion into Profit:

We are boxed in by the boundary conditions of our thinking.

And from today’s (Oct. 9th) Nutrition for Traveling Executives the following stat just blew me away:

The direct health costs related to obesity in America exceed $82 billion a year.

For me, the jury is still out as to the overall value of these videos. They are new so it will take time for them to establish the topics. I’ll monitor them and keep you posted throughout the month.

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Here’s a Monday morning thought: There are many facets to successful selling, but none of greater importance than asking the right questions.

Think about this, there is nothing prospects like to hear more than their own voice. They have good reason for this – they believe the salesperson is there to talk them into buying something. A fair assumption for sure. The best approach for a salesperson then is to ask the right questions and let the prospect talk.

Two critical items underscore this approach. First, the person asking the questions is in control of the conversation. They can direct the topics which leads to the second critical item.

The salesperson’s primary role is to qualify prospects and they do this by gathering information. Lesser skilled salespeople tend to assume a deal. What I mean is they assume the prospect has a need, the money seems to be in the right range or the deal should close shortly. None of these items are qualified, but they may keep the sales manager off their back for a while. The critical step here is to gather information from the prospect…directly. No assuming and no guessing. Ask the right question and do not make assumptions beyond what was said.

In the end, qualifying a prospect through the right questions is a salesperson’s most powerful tool for closing deals.

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This whole premise of this website is funny.

(h/t Seth Godin)

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I have a general weakness for the general resume cover emails. This one is great:

Help! I am not an idiot!
Ok-I am employed full time-but they think I am incapable of anything but answering the phone, making copies, and filing! I am so much smarter than that.

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