I had a good conversation today about a business owner whom we assessed as a salesperson and found some varied results. The owner was strong in some areas but weak in some important aptitudes. This led to the discussion that the owner was one of the best people at actually selling this service so how could they have lower scores in these areas.

Some important points about this scenario:

• Hiring is a complex process with an almost limitless amount of variables. A successful process needs to incorporate objective data and then use it interactively with the candidate. Our approach is to pursue specific topics, in an indirect manner, once we have the assessment of the candidate. Some times companies overvalue positive assessment results.

• This business owner is strong at selling this service. Does that mean there is not a stronger salesperson out there? If the owner is strong with some lower aptitudes, how successful a “strong aptitudes” salesperson be? The trap here is that people assume (by their metrics) there isn’t a stronger salesperson in the marketplace.

• Management is often assumed as exemplary. Often, it is not. The best candidate will quickly fail in a new role if their manager is not aligned with them in the role. What I mean by that is we often see managers who have no idea how to effectively lead this new person who has joined their team. Typically, the manager manages to their own style. Any team members who do not align with this approach are removed. The manager then leads to the hiring process and fills the opening with a clone of themselves. Soon they have filled the team with employees who share the same strengths and similar weaknesses.

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Not the most inspiring introduction:

“I need any sedentary job that need no previous experiance, based on hourly wage…”

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Last week we posted on the CEO turnover problem both here and here. Today, I caught up to a lengthy CareerJournal.com article regarding How to Fire a CEO: It’s Harder to Sack the Boss. It is an interesting read about the multiple dismissals that have arisen recently. This topic hits home in that the United Healthcare imbroglio occurred in our backyard this year.

This is borders on the absurd:

Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. dismissed CEO Robert J. O’Connell last year, saying that he padded a retirement account by millions of dollars, misused corporate aircraft and conducted an affair with a female executive. But a panel of arbitrators said last month that MassMutual should not have terminated Mr. O’Connell for cause. The arbitrators found that Mr. O’Connell made questionable moves to benefit the retirement account and had affairs with two other employees, but said these did not amount to “willful gross misconduct” that materially damaged the company — as his contract required. MassMutual has appealed the decision, which could force it to pay Mr. O’Connell more than $40 million.

Wow. The obvious question is what would the arbitrators consider as “willful gross misconduct?” I really don’t want to know the answer to that question.

I guess this statement provides some insight into how these issues are handled:

It’s so hard to fire a CEO for cause that many boards don’t try, even when ethical problems are involved. Some boards work out other departure arrangements that allow the CEO to leave with severance or other benefits intact.

A few years back, we were involved with a customer that ended up firing their CEO. He was a complete maverick and a definite High D. He arbitrarily hired our services for a consortium for which his company was just one of many manufacturers. We ended up meeting with the president of this consortium who was a bit confused as to our reason for meeting. He proceeded with our hiring process until he got the word out to the other companies involved in the consortium. At that point, the hiring process was terminated.

The CEO for this company was fired not long after this event.

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Inc.com posted this article earlier in the week – Entrepreneurs Twice as Charitable as Heirs. The main thrust of the article:

When it comes to charitable giving, self-made entrepreneurs are more than twice as generous as millionaires who acquired their wealth through inheritance, according to a new study.

I think many people would have guessed this result. I think there is a principle here that affects lottery winners also. We’ve all seen the follow up stories of lottery winners and how their lives were not as rewarding as they expected them to be. The incredible wealth did not bring them incredible happiness.

The difference in donations between self-made millionaires vs. millionaire heirs is not even close:

…entrepreneurs donated an average of $232,206 per year, according to researchers at Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy.By comparison, donors who inherited their wealth gave an average of $109,745 annually, the study found.

I always been a believer that if you donate substantial amounts of money, it will never own you. Perhaps the self-made millionaires have a better understanding of this principle than the heirs?

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I was watching Selling Power Daily Report and today’s video interview is with Dan Seidman of Sales Autopsy. Dan is a sales trainer who has written a book by the same title which is a collection of sales horror stories.

In today’s video he recalled a horror story that happened to a salesperson who was trying to build rapport with a new prospect who was the President of a company. The salesperson took 6 months trying to set up this meeting with this prospect through phone calls, snail mail and messages with the gatekeeper. Finally, he landed a face-to-face meeting:

He was led into the President’s office which was very expensively decorated and he became somewhat intimidated. Knowing what to do, the salesperson looked for the fish on the wall or the golf trophy to make a little small talk. There it was on the desk – a photograph of this president with John Madden. So the salesperson asked how he had gotten his picture taken with his arm around John Madden.

The president glared back at him and said, “That’s not John Madden, that’s my wife.”

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Most peole do not put much thought into daylight saving time, until it is time to adjust your clocks. In SHRM’s recent newsletter, they offered a short article that got me thinking that there is more to it than this. A quick Google search revealed there are over 500,000 articles that come up when you search on daylight saving time.

I had forgotten that the law was actually passed back in 2005 and at the time I was amazed as to why they were not going to implement the change until 2007. For decades, candy manufacturers have lobbied for a daylight saving time extension through Halloween. What is interesting about this is last week before moving our clocks back, my teenage kids told me that this is the reason for moving the dates. Most people remember the mild debate in our nation around these changes – it is actually a result of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

One article I found provides several reasons behind the opposition to the bill. Some of the reasons:

• School Children – will possibly wait in the pitch dark for the school bus.
• Business – the airline industry claims it will cost millions of dollars to adjust schedules.
• Computers, Clocks and Gadgets – many electronic devices automatically adjust for daylight saving time. Some of these devices will show incorrect times. Some computer software will have to be reprogrammed.

The last one surprised me. You mean that my cell phone, computer,TV and etc. don’t change automatically? These are things that I really didn’t think about and have taken for granted. So I looked at a few more articles about these technology issues – here are some interesting points:

Cisco Systems’ technical support has pages of detailed technical information on solving DST problems afflicting its servers and routers. Oracle’s online discussion forum is filled with posts from developers seeking help handling esoteric DST challenges.

Many of us have a Microsoft operating system we use on our computers, which maintain an accurate clock. Peter Houston, Microsoft’s senior director of servicing strategy, had this to say about the upcoming change, “We’re aware of the upcoming change, and will make sure that Windows handles the transition smoothly.”

I learned that “smoothly” doesn’t necessarily translate to “flawlessly.” Microsoft’s support Web site contains dozens of articles related to DST hiccups, varying from broad problems — some multiprocessor computers running Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 or 5 have trouble adjusting to DST — to minor oddities. In Windows Millennium Edition, the operating systems’ DST adjustment accidentally reset HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) wallpaper background images to a bitmap file.

I learned that my Sprint phone didn’t make the change until I turned it off and back on again. Okay, this is not as big of an issue as Y2K was, but it has created a variety of issues for technologists. Come next spring when the daylight saving changes go into effect, know that much programming had to occur for such a simplistic change.

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Most hiring managers believe they are accurate assessors of talent. Even when confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they still trust their hiring ability over someone else’s. Why is this disconnect so prevalent?

I believe it comes down simply to gut-level hiring. If you rely on your gut to tell you if a candidate is strong, there is no appreciable way to outsource your decision to another. You can’t place your feelings into an HR person, an external recruiter or a different process. You simply have to meet candidates face-to-face and hope you aren’t being snowed over by a disingenuous salesperson.

Sounds high risk, doesn’t it? Yet it permeates hiring decisions to this day. What we attempt to do with our customers is move them away from emotional, subjective decisions and towards informational, objective decisions. This approach is best served by keeping the subjective decisions to a minimum, or at least to a later stage in the hiring process. If the objective filtering can occur before the final subjective decision, the over-reliance upon gut-level decisions is greatly neutralized.

The gut will always play a key role in successful hiring and we are not suggesting it be abandoned. However, this subjective manner for hiring is a tremendous hindrance when it comprises the majority of the input in a hiring decision.

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Well, the latest unemployment numbers are in and they indicate that, as a nation, we are basically at full employment. The new unemployement number is 4.4% – a drop of .2% from last month and a 5-year low. Sourcing is going to be even more of an issue for companies. We are seeing this in our business as we have extended our sourcing times while doubling our efforts. If you aren’t using multiple channels for sourcing, you are going to find long lead times on strong candidates.

The second part of the equation is compensation:

Workers’ average hourly earnings climbed to $16.91 in October, a sizable 0.4 percent increase from September. That increase was bigger than the 0.3 percent rise economists were expecting. Over the last 12 months, wages grew by 3.9 percent.

We have experienced this fact also as candidate compensation expectations are on the rise. There are many good jobs available with strong compensation packages. As you go to market to hire, expect a strong demand from candidates in regards to overall packages.

You know, for all the dire predictions I keep reading about the economy, it certainly seems to be cruising along at a strong clip.

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This week we turn our attention to another important aptitude for successful selling – Project and Goal Focus. Most sales managers can relate to the issues that surround this particular ability.

Project and Goal Focus
An individual’s ability to maintain their direction in spite of obstacles in their path. It includes their ability to stay on target regardless of circumstance.

A salesperson with strength in this capacity is able to stay on track while involved in a project or opportunity – even if there are unforeseen obstacles that occur during the process. They will tend to ignore the problems and stay on the path even if some event causes the course to be altered. This salesperson will also have the ability to keep a single task from diverting them from overall project goals.

A salesperson with a weakness in this area may tend to be easily swayed from the prescribed course of action. Their focus can change quickly and without much effort. They may require direct supervision in order to stay focused on a particular task or project.

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The Employee Benefits You Should Demand.

1. Wellness
2. Autopilot retirement savings
3. Retirement income security
4. Education and workplace guidance

And how do you get them?

Well, for starters, don’t try to convince your HR department. That would be preaching to the choir, says Adams. Instead he recommends sending letters to the so-called C-suite – the senior level executives. “You have to appeal to the people who can make those decisions,” he said.

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