CareerJournal.com – Returning to the Corporate Fold After a Stint As Your Own Boss:

“After seven years of running your own business, you’re a renegade,” Mr. Eberharter says. “I call people like this ‘psychologically unemployable.’ “

What a fantastic saying – I laughed out loud when I read it. I often tell the Rock Star I am unemployable.

There is a good piece of advice for any jobseeker tucked in the article:

If you’re determined to find a corporate job, you likely need to redo your resume since yours isn’t opening doors to the higher-level positions you should be targeting, says Jewel Bracy DeMaio, a resume writer in Sanatoga, Pa. “The job of your resume is to get a quality response, not a quantity response,” she says. “Yours isn’t doing that, so most likely it isn’t written correctly.”

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Inc.com offers up this slide show that nails it – 10 derailing mistakes that can short circuit any hiring process.

A couple of my favorites:

Jumping to conclusions
Don’t be too hasty when reviewing resumes. A 30-second glance isn’t enough to eliminate a candidate. Be fair, and take the time to discover the truth behind a resume.

I would take it one step further – don’t jump to conclusions after interviewing the candidate either. We have sat through many interview debriefs where the hiring manager took one piece of data from the interview and ran it out to a sinister trend in the candidate. There is nothing more frustrating than that. Ask questions. Ask follow-up questions. Ask clarifying questions. Don’t assume.

Letting personal attitudes and biases impact decisions
Everyone has pre-dispositions, but if you begin the process with bias for any reason, you may well miss out on a great candidate.

This mistake is subtle and difficult to expose. We see it often and try to work around certain aspects of it. Most often these biases are based on recent experiences. Heaven help you if you find a strong candidate who has any resemblance to the person who last held the position!

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From a promotional email from CareerBuilder.com:

Last year, job searches on CareerBuilder.com increased by over 60% in January, breaking all previous job search records.

Obviously, CareerBuilder is trying to sell employment ads, but the quoted statistic is remarkable.

We hear people complain about finding talented salespeople using the big online boards but we have consistent success with them. The boards may be a problem for some positions, but I don’t think that is the common cause. From what I see, many companies post ads that are . . . well, atrocious.

Here’s my Minnesotan view on it: Imagine you are on a large lake that is renowned for good fishing. Now let’s say you don’t catch any fish, or at least keepers, for an entire week. You could state that there are no keeper fish in that large lake, but few people would believe that statement. My initial questions to you would be, what bait were you using? What other bait did you try?

See, too often we encounter HR departments that have written a job description based on their internal criteria. That job description (which reads like technical instructions to a mechanical assembly) is then posted on a job board resulting in a flood of misaligned resumes in somebody’s inbox. Granted, there are automated responders on the major boards so you will receive some completely unqualified resumes. But the quality of response is directly proportional to the quality of the ad.

If you want to attract the right sales candidates, you have to write the ad so that they see themselves in the ad. The best approach is to outline the parameters of a typical sale and describe the skills and aptitudes needed to succeed in that sale. A brief description of the compensation plan is also a requirement. However, it is unwise to go into great detail about all of the rewards the salesperson will receive if they land the position. That information will enter the equation at the appropriate time in your hiring process – and hopefully the strong candidate will use their qualifying skills to discover it.

For more specific information, please read this article from our newsletter. The article is from 2 years ago, but the principles are still effective today.

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Each morning I peruse the sales employment ads to see who is hiring and what ads they are placing. I came across a local company I have never heard of and was impressed by a bullet point in their ad:

Accountable for achieving sales goals within an assigned territory which has key accounts.

The emphasis was theirs. This approach may seem trivial, but it is important in putting the right bait out their to find the right salesperson.

Companies often have glorified visions of a single salesperson with minimal marketing help being able to take a zero revenue territory and grow it into a highly profitable territory. This can happen – I’ve personally done it. But I had much help from the marketing department and a strong brand to sell.

Yet finding a salesperson to grow the dormant territory usually takes much money and a long time frame. If you have existing accounts in a territory, do not be afraid to give them to the new salesperson once they are ramped up to full speed. Give them the rewards of the commission for those accounts even though they inherited them. A taste of that sugar will keep them motivated. The commission structure also teaches them to earn as opposed to receiving a handout in the form of a guaranteed commission for a set time period (unless you have no existing accounts in the territory in which to earn commission).

One other point, if your commission plan pays the same rate for a dollar of existing customer business vs. a dollar of new customer business, you need to revisit your commission plan.

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