From my monster.com job search agent this morning:

Relocation Administrative Ass / XYZ Company / Minneapolis, MN

I have a few candidates for that position.

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Weddle’s offer’s a bi-weekly newsletter about Internet resources for recruiting & HR professionals. In a survey conducted between March 10 and May 10, 2007 they asked the following question:

Of the openings you’ve posted online, what level were they at:

• Hourly positions? 7.7%
• Entry-level professional positions? 23%
• Mid-level professional positions? 46.2%
• Senior-level professional positions? 7.7%
• Managerial positions? 11.5%
• Executive positions? 3.9%

It is interesting that Mid-level professional is the largest group followed second by entry-level. I believe we’ll continue to see these two categories grow in the coming years. It will be interesting to watch the growth of niche job boards and of the networking sites liked LinkedIn, Jigsaw and Facebook to see what effect they have on the big boards.

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Objections are the common hurdle to all sales in all markets.  As a sales manager, you need to be able to coach your salespeople through the common objections they will encounter.  ManageSmarter.com offers this article - Sales Objections Overruled - as a quick read for handling 5 different objections.

I wouldn’t characterize the solutions in the article as groundbreaking, but there is one deserving of comment:

4. Timing: “We’re fine for now.”
Some folks just want to sit pat and avoid change€”or at least delay it. They eschew opportunities to grow. Nicely ask: “How has that worked for you so far?” Ask them: “Are you aware of your competitor’s recent moves?” Emphasize the advantages you can deliver vis-a-vis their competitors.

I would not recommend using the “aware of competitor’s” line -  condescending and insulting at the same time.  Following that question up with a features/benefits discussion is sales suicide.

But the previous question is effective - “How has that worked for your so far?”  That question works well in this context.  A prospect’s decision to not make a decision is still a decision.  I’m not trying to contort words here, but that is a fact of selling.  Salespeople have to get through this stall since it is one of the most common objections they will face.

If the salesperson encounters this objection, they need to reassess whether their value proposition is truly in play.  If a prospect can delay the decision without paying a penalty for it, then that is the right decision for the prospect to make.  The salesperson has to qualify the prospect’s current position and see if there is enough pain to change.  If not, time to find a new prospect.

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This excerpt is from a sales ad for an entry-level salesperson (my redaction):

In other words, this position is a perfect fit for an ‘up-and-comer’ who is looking to be a key contributor to a high-growth organization that is helping to define the ______ future.

Beyond your ‘role,’ you will be an integral part of an overall pioneering team and can be called upon, along with everyone else, to shuttle out-of-town visitors to airports, take out trash, do dishes, whip up hot cocoa for guests, or chase down the FedEx truck to take just one last package. You name it, if it moves the enterprise forward, you’ll likely be called upon to do whatever it takes to accrue an ever-growing base of astounded, advanced real-time ______ solutions users.

The ad is a bit long, but it is well written and extremely persuasive for a new salesperson.

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We are awash in a sea of change in the sourcing options available to hiring companies.  Yahoo! news reports in Monster signs up more newspapers that Monster.com has moved into more locally-owned community newspapers.

Community Newspaper Holdings has 93 daily newspapers and is based in Birmingham, Ala. Under the deal announced Monday, each of the 80 new sites cobranded sites with Monster will be tied to a daily newspaper from Community Newspaper Holdings.

It appears that Monster, CareerBuilder (even though they are owned by 3 newspapers) and HotJobs are attempting to displace the long-standing newspaper employment classifieds.  Whether this will be sustainable in the long run is difficult to predict.

I am more intrigued by the niche, online job boards.  Our society is moving towards specialization through outsourcing.  As that trend continues, I suspect these niche-specific job boards will become the preferred channel for sourcing the right candidates.

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Funny article here from Inc.com about a CareerBuilder.com survey - Survey: Late Employees Lie.

As many as one in four employees admit to making up fake excuses for arriving late to work, a new study reveals.

Amazing that they invested the resources in running a survey on this topic. I always wonder about surveys regarding lies - maybe the respondents are lying in the survey?

At any rate, a good closing line from the article:

While hiring managers said they typically don’t question an employee’s excuse for being late, 27 percent said they usually don’t believe them when they do.

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The Pioneer Press offers up an utterly worthless piece of agenda journalism regarding CEO pay.  At the risk of upsetting the Red Bird, I have pulled some quotes from You’re fired! Take these millions and go (all my emphasis):

If 3M ever fires George Buckley, one of Minnesota’s highest-paid CEOs, there is one detail Buckley won’t have to sweat: health insurance.

The Maplewood-based manufacturer will kindly pick up much of the tab for Buckley’s health care for two years as part of the $38 million goodbye he’ll get on the way out the door. (ed. - we learn later in the article that this “supersized pay” health care equals $28,430)

Buckley’s potential exit payout, with its health-insurance perk, is just one of hundreds of potential multimillion-dollar termination treasures detailed to the dollar for the first time in this spring’s revealing crop of corporate proxy statements.

Expect some “holy cow!” moments to rattle a few company boards. The numbers are expected to stoke activism to stop rewarding poor performance with supersized exit pay. (ed. - I think this writer is attempting to stoke it herself since she does not provide a single shred of evidence revealing “poor performance” amongst her CEO examples.)

Still, they are a keen reminder of just how CEO’s aren’t like the rest of us.

Hodgson said he thinks one year’s salary plus bonus “is quite sufficient” for severance to play its role as a “small insurance policy.”  (ed. - how about letting the market determine what “is quite sufficient?”)

I realize newspapers are disintegrating right before our eyes so apparently editors are absent.  How else do you explain this intern-level business writing making it to print?

This article “reveals” pay packages for 9 other local CEOs.  The spin is simple - the writer’s focus is on their health benefits that are miniscule compared to the overall comp package.  I suspect her goal is to anger the “common laborers” who are paying for ever-increasing healthcare insurance.

The writer does not make a single reference to overall stock performance during any of the CEO’s tenures.  Completely pathetic, in my opinion.  Overall corporate performance and shareholder value must be included to provide the proper context to this discussion.

Ours is a free-market economy that self-corrects over time if something is misaligned.  I would argue that these CEO compensations are generally not misaligned.  Price and wage controls stifle freedom, inject government control where it should not be and ultimately can lead to totalitarianism.

See Hugo Chavez.

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ABCnews.com offers a comprehensive article explaining some traits of the Millennial generation - Meet the New Millennials. The lengthy article provides many different insights into this generation.

Here are some anecdotal highlights:

“We recently had to tell a young woman employee that this was not an underwear optional workplace,” he told ABCNEWS.com. “This generation needs to be deeply coached about wardrobe, and a lot of them are used to getting up at 10 or 11 a.m. Forget about them showing up to work at 8 or 9 a.m.”

“They grew up with an ‘everyone gets a trophy’ sense of entitlement,” he said. “They are members of a generation that thinks it should get a trophy just for waking up in the morning.”

“I had a human resources manager call me about a worker who received her performance review only to have her mother call up and complain that ’she’s better than that,’” he recalled. “The HR manager was shocked and asked the mother why she was calling about her daughter. The mother responded, ‘Because I’ve done so throughout my daughter’s life.’”

Some of those stories are almost shocking. I have to admit we do not have extensive experience with this generation when it comes to hiring. Some of these stories would give us pause.

In terms of managing this generation:

“The millennials are more collaborative and require a different form of managing,” said Masie. “There are more self-starters in this generation; they are clearly different than their bosses. The average worker under the age of 25 doesn’t expect to remain at a company for more than three years. They expect a sequence of jobs over their lifetime.”

Managing short-term employees who have different values and expectations sometimes requires managers to practice more than a little bit of patience.

Did you catch that bolded information? This change in career philosophy is having a tremendous impact on hiring today. The days of one company careers are all but over.

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We are all familiar with common sales terms like “cold call,” “closing” and “overcoming objections.”  These terms are engrained in the common sales vernacular.  But think of the implications of these mechanistic terms.

SellingPower.com has a most interesting article titled Watch Your Language!  Here’s the hook:

Who taught you to talk like you do? When it comes to your sales language; chances are good it was your sales manager€“your first one.

For generations now we have been talking about selling from the viewpoint of the Industrial Era. We have seen businesses as machines and accordingly we have “re-engineered” them, “systematized” them, and more. Our premise has been that businesses are things. So when it comes to selling we have such endearing terminology as “Closing” sales, making “Cold” calls, and overcoming “Objections.”

No wonder we were surprised to discover that businesses are living systems! A business is a group of people involved in an enterprise. Hence, it is alive and it behaves like an organism, not like a mechanism. Our prevailing mindset has been Physics when it should have been Biology. We are dealing with living beings, not things!

So what?  Look at the author’s ensuing point (added emphasis):

Think of what happens to people emotionally and intellectually when you give them the task of making “Cold” calls. They become anxious and resistant. Why? Because the implication of the language is that the call will be unpleasant and “cold.” Instead of simply calling them “warm” calls in a sophomoric attempt to change the feelings, how about just calling them what they are? They are New Calls. It is that simple. They don’t need to be cold or warm; they just need to be appropriate to your desired result.

I know this sounds simple and touchy-feely, but I think this author is truly on to something.  Further into the article:

Speaking of closing, what is that about? Do we intend to end the sales relationship? Once it is done, are we off duty? Closing is a word that indicates finality and closure. Once it is done, the work is usually over. But that is not what we intend when selling. So, again, why not call it what it actually is? It is confirming the sale. Proving that a purchase decision has been made and taking action on it.

He provides a detailed description of his reasoning behind these word changes.  I am usually quite skeptical of these term changes since it has a tendency to sound forced.  Yet, this author makes an excellent case for removing the emotionally-charged words from everyday sales speak.

Read the whole thing.

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CareerJournal.com’s Company Leaders Are Spending More Quality Time With Customers covers a timely topic in today’s market - CEO’s directly involved in the selling process.  We have seen this change in our mid-sized customers for the past few years.  This article provides a good example - the CEO for Intel getting involved in a large deal with Apple:

He heard grumblings that this change wasn’t possible — at least not anytime soon — but Mr. Otellini pushed ahead. “Instead of saying no, we can’t, let’s say yes and figure out how,” he recalls telling his senior team members. He won them over and soon had a new packaging design to show Apple, which chose Intel as its supplier.

Nothing like the CEO providing a bit of “motivation” to the senior team members.  I like this guy’s approach and later on in the article I learned why (my emphasis):

“We’re adjusting and tailoring products for them and moving much more quickly,” explains Mr. Otellini, who came up through the sales and marketing ranks.

That explains it.  And that one quoted sentence speaks volumes to the adjustments that are being integrated into the modern-day sales process.  When you have global competition at the touch of a keystroke, you have to be customizable and quick.  Anything short of that and you will become a commodity.  Quickly.

“Ten years ago, a sales executive would have given a pitch, but today big customers want the CEO’s commitment that if they buy from you, you’re forming a partnership with them and will deliver exactly what you promised,” says Ed Peters, chief executive of OpenConnect, a Dallas company that makes software that uncovers business-process inefficiencies. “And if you don’t, your failure will be broadcast on the Internet and quash possible deals with other customers.”

One caveat -the CEO best understand the sales call and the goal of the meeting.  CEO’s are a real presence in the meeting, but they run the risk of derailing the sales process if they decide to wing it.  Pre-call strategizing and post-call debriefing is the key to keep the sale moving forward efficiently.

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