All right, we posted on Candidates with Personal Websites yesterday and now today we come across this Selling Power article – Blogs: Are You There Yet?

This phenomenon is more than a fad, it appears to be a growing trend:
“Blogs are, generally speaking, genuine,” says Krane. “A blog is one person’s voice. How someone blogs is probably an indication of how that person speaks and conducts him or herself in general.”Many prospective employees also keep blogs as a portfolio – especially in this town [San Francisco],” says Krane. “Having a blog shows that you are on the cutting edge of Web 2.0. It’s commonplace for a job candidate to refer a prospective employer to his or her blog.”

Common in San Francisco. Not so common in the Twin Cities…yet.

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A quote from my post on Tuesday:

And don’t assume its about money. When someone quits her job, 89 percent of managers assume it was over money, whereas 91 percent of the workers who quit say it was anything but, Murphy said.

From a CareerJournal article titled Opportunity Knocks, And It Pays a Lot Better:

Managers like to say employees leave companies because of bad bosses or lack of career growth. A new report suggests a more straightforward reason: money.In a survey of about 1,100 U.S. employees, 71% of top performers listed pay among the top three reasons they would consider leaving their employer. Yet in a sister survey of 262 large employers, 45% of employers cited pay as a top-three reason workers leave.

Dueling surveys. So which survey is accurate? I’m not sure. One thing is certain, turnover is an issue in today’s market:

Nationally, the annual rate at which workers quit their jobs was the highest last year since 2001, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Here is the stat that I think drives the pay discussion:

The average employee is forecast to pay $3,305 next year in premiums and out-of-pocket costs for health care, a 7.8% increase over this year and more than double the $1,640 paid in 2002, according to human-resources consultant Hewitt Associates Inc.

Benefits are becoming a much larger piece of the compensation puzzle and if not properly managed (see General Motors), they can become an anchor around a company’s neck. Some where in the past, employees forgot that businesses to not have to offer insurance and retirement – it is simply a “benefit.”

I think this person has the best grip on the rationale behind the responses:

Some career experts question whether pay is pre-eminent. They assert that pay often isn’t the root of employee dissatisfaction, even when employees say it is. Meg Montford, an executive-career coach in Kansas City, Mo., says clients who blame pay often have a deeper problem such as career stagnation, boredom, or feeling unappreciated. “They may come to me with the idea that it’s pay, but usually that’s a camouflage for something else,” she says.

My experience is heavily slanted towards sales positions where compensation is king. Salespeople will leave if they are battling against an unreachable commission goal. Yet, that situation is rarely the reason. Most of the candidates we talk to are actually looking for a different challenge to their skills. Often this challenge involves more responsibility within the company, especially the opportunity to substantially contribute to the overall direction of the company.

I believe “feeling unappreciated” is probably the top reason for an employee to leave their current employee.

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You could argue that this week’s aptitude – Handling Stress – is a key component in almost every job. In sales, it is critical because the typical sales position involves multiple levels of stress. Whether it be presentations in front of many Directors and VP’s or dealing with an irate customer, sales presents a wide variety of stresses.

Handling Stress
This is a person’s ability to balance and defuse inner tensions and stresses which, if allowed to build up, could interfere with a person’s ability to perform up to their potential. It is not the person’s ability to handle stressful situations, but rather their ability to appropriately separate themselves from such stressful situations while maintaining their own separate inner sense of peace.

A salesperson with strength in this capacity will be able to encounter a stressful situation, deal with it as need be, and then step away from the situation (resolved or not). They step away in a manner which releases their own emotional involvement and allows them to move on to other matters. These stresses can also be cumulative in nature. Having this ability serves to prevent excess buildup of stress which, in sufficient enough levels, could begin to interfere with performance and physical well-being.

A salesperson with weakness in this area may encounter difficulty accomplishing emotional separation. They continue to exist in the same stressful environment even when not at work (i.e. they bring it home with them). Allowing this cumulative buildup of various stresses may serve to distract them from other tasks, or reduce their effectiveness in them, due to the preoccupation caused by the underlying stress. Being prone to such buildup may also effectively reduce the amount of external stress with which one is comfortable. That, in turn, can lead to a decrease in performance more rapidly than someone who is not as full of stress.

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