First off, I didn’t know government workers were ever fired.  Then I read this CareerJournal.com story At the Pentagon, Employees Fill ‘Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure’.  The gist of the story is that this Pentagon lawyer keeps a website of ethical violations that occur within the government sector.

Some humorous examples:

-Take the case of the Customs and Border Protection officer who landed a government helicopter on his daughter’s grade-school playground…

-Two Veterans Affairs bureaucrats were charged with overbilling the government and receiving kickbacks from a supplier. “The product?” Mr. Epstein dryly notes: “Red tape.” It was more than 100,000 rolls of a special type used to prevent tampering with prescription-drug orders.

-Then there’s the “links-loving Vice Admiral,” who sponsored a private golf tournament on government time and awarded prizes solicited from defense contractors.

What a great idea for exposing these transgressions while using humor to make a point.

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Here is an example of a company using a rational approach to sales experience in their ad:

Technical sales experience is preferred but can be substituted for an individual who proves to be driven and motivated with the desire to be successful in this career.

I realize the “driven and motivated” part is nebulous, but it is better than requiring 5+ years of direct industry experience.  Here’s the tip – strong salespeople have skills and motivations that transcend experience.  The best approach is to write the ad towards those skills and motivations instead of “time-served” experience requirements.

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Finally, some positive press for a slightly overlooked generation.  From Foxnews.com’s Research Shows Generation Xers Get a Bum Rap, But They’re No Bums:

The new 30-somethings do face some challenges that others didn’t. They’re making less than their parents were at the same age. According to U.S. Census estimates, the median income for men between 25 and 34 in 2005 was $31,161. In 1975, adjusted for inflation, it was $35,296. The comparable data for female workers was $22,815 in 2005 and $16,247 in 1975.

And, they have much bigger bills. It’s not just the school loans, it’s the generally bigger lifestyle that hurts their bottom line. Think about the computer, cell phone, broadband service and more that are a necessary part of life now.

Gen Xers have some unique strengths, too. They are technologically savvy and unafraid to put their finances online or talk about their financial problems and solutions, says Marc Hedlund of Wesabe (http://www.wesabe.com), a social networking/financial planning Web site that is attracting users in their 20s and 30s. And they have that vaunted cynicism to keep them from trusting strangers — or employers — with their money too easily. Most are wise to not count on retirement benefits that are loosely promised to be there decades into the future.

“Vaunted cynicism” – ouch.  I’m not sure that is a positive attribute for describing an entire generation.  “Unafraid to put their finances on the line” is a good description for this age group.  Gen X sales candidates seem to be the least concerned about commission-intensive positions.  Of course, this is a generalization, but one we have seen play out many times over the years.

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Inc.com offers a quick article about annoying meeting items – New Study Reveals Why Meetings Are So Unbearable.  From the article:

Of 1,037 full- or part-time workers polled, 27 percent ranked disorganized, rambling meetings as their top frustration, followed by 17 percent who said they were annoyed by peers who interrupt and try to dominate meetings.

Surprisingly, respondents considered BlackBerry use less intrusive than people falling asleep during a meeting €” 9 percent of respondents were bothered by co-workers nodding off, compared to just 5 percent who said they get frustrated by others checking e-mail.

Checking email?  That makes me laugh since a certain someone in our company Rock Star has been known to do such things.  I’ve never encountered anyone sleeping in a meeting.  That action certainly strikes me as a career-limiting move.

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Ok, we’ll approach this week’s trait cautiously since it approaches some forms of gut-level decision-making. Strong selling requires salespeople who do not guess or assume. Rather, they qualify by asking the right questions and listening to the answers.

But let’s face it, there is a bit of artistry to being a good salesperson. Much of that artistry comes from having the ability to make the right decision even when all of the data is not available.

Intuitive Decision Making
The ability to accurately compile intuitive perceptions about a situation into a decision or action. This ability allows one to be €œintuitional€ as opposed to intellectual (requiring data and logical reasoning) in effective decision making. This trait requires a good deal of understanding of people, the outside world and the ability to visualize the whole picture in a mental scenario.

A salesperson with strength in this trait will be comfortable making decisions on their feet without having to study a situation or requiring logical data to examine.

A weakness in this area indicates a salesperson who is not comfortable making decisions until he/she has had sufficient time and information to analyze a situation.

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From our local Pioneer Press:

More than a quarter of young adults have only cell phones, making them the leading edge of a strengthening move away from traditional landline telephones, a federal survey showed Monday. Overall, the portion of adults with only cell phones grew by more than 2 percentage points in the latter half of last year to nearly 12 percent, an expansion rate that began in the first part of 2006 and was double earlier rates of growth. One in four people age 18 to 24 had only cell phones, as did 29 percent of those age 25 to 29, the study showed. The percentages declined with age after that, with 2 percent of those 65 or older having only cell phones.

I would say that is more than just a trend.  We are seeing it amongst younger candidates too – the landline is less of a consideration for Gen Y.

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Turnover is trouble for any company when it is not controlled.  To use a timely analogy, it is similar to a forest fire.  A controlled burn clears out a section allowing it to be repopulated with fresh, new trees.  An out-of-control fire can destroy an entire forest in a short amount of time.

Obviously, extreme turnover is typically a sign of a “churn-and-burn” organization.  However, a small, controlled amount of turnover is valuable to an organization’s overall health.  But what about a company with no turnover?  Is it healthy?

This question is difficult to answer in a vacuum.  Number of employees, company revenue, market trends, etc. all play into the equation.  Yet, problems will arise when an employee who should be terminated is allowed to continue his or her employment.

CareerBuilder.com covers this topic in their article The Cost of Keeping a Bad Employee.

The majority of bad employees already know that they are not the best person for the job. Coming to work every day with this knowledge is frustrating and stressful. It is likely that this work related stress infiltrates the employee’s personal life. A manager who sincerely cares about the people he/she is managing must be willing to take action to help an employee move into a job where they can be a star player or good employee.

This sounds like an excellent tact to take with managers who have difficulty firing under-performers (especially sales managers).  Often under-performing salespeople have the ultimate albatross hung around their neck – “They can’t sell.”  Some can’t, but many can.  The salesperson is simply in the wrong sale.  As a manager, the best thing you can do is free them to pursue the right sale that fits their abilities.

Here is the greatest risk in retaining a bad employee (my emphasis):

When cancer enters the body, it spreads grows and spreads throughout if gone untreated. A bad employee can be like cancer within a company. Strong negativism, a poor attitude, backbiting, and incompetence can spread quickly within any organization. Co-workers of a bad employee notice the issues and typically try to fight off resist catching the negative traits. However, such traits are contagious and can severely hurt or even kill a company. A bad employee will eventually affect your employees, customers, and product/service’s quality.

Many people can relate to this truth.  I suspect most have experienced a “cancerous coworker.”  No team is worth putting at risk over a hesitancy to fire a bad employee.  That statement sounds harsh, but there really is no option in that situation.  Moving that employee to another department does not ensure the end of their effect.  The best move is to clear the forest of the dead trees an allow new ones to grow in that place.

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In reading through more sales ads this morning, I kicked up an example of an ad without clarity about the position. Here are the qualifications:

-Hard working and dependable
-Sales experience is necessary (____________ industry, preferred)
-Must have no travel restrictions in covering assigned multi state territory
-Must be computer literate
-College Degree preferred
-Strong Relationship building skills

That is it. The remainder of the ad is filled with the compensation and benefits the salesperson will earn in this role. The few bullet points provide no specific traits or skills for a candidate to qualify. I suspect that almost every salesperson who reads the ad will believe they fit these qualifications.

The net outcome of a poorly constructed ad is voluminous responses from grossly unqualified candidates. Hiring is only a “numbers game” when you don’t know what you are looking for. Successful hiring involves writing an ad that eliminates the unqualified and clearly describes the ideal candidate. This ad lacks that clarity.

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I just read an ad for a position I have never seen advertised before – “Sales Demonstrator.”  I was quite skeptical before reading the ad – successful selling pivots on the salesperson’s ability to qualify.  There is no more important sales skill set than qualifying.  Demonstrating to an unqualified prospect is a fool’s errand.

However, after reading through it, I realized the ad is actually pretty solid.  The position is B2C sales so the demonstration part makes more sense (consumer sales tend to involve more emphasis on the demonstration stage of a sale).

Part of the description:

Demonstrators offer water samples to people passing by and try to engage them in conversation about what kind of water they drink and the purifying systems they use. Demonstrators then do a quick demonstration to illustrate the power of our technology.

Again, the ad is fairly strong.  We do not work in consumer sales so I am not certain what is standard for this market.  However, this ad is well constructed.

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I have been working through many phone screens and phone interviews over the past few weeks. These interactions are tough for the candidate and for the interviewer. I was at a communication conference this past weekend that restated something I already knew – 55% of all communication is non-verbal. This fact is never more obvious than during a phone interview.

So SellingPower.com has an article in their latest hiring newsletter that caught my eye – Three, Two, One, Action. The article discusses video-conference interviewing. I am currently working on national positions in every region except the Southeast. Video conferencing would make this task much easier.

Some points:

Rooms can cost between $150 and $300 per hour, but that far outweighs the cost of airfare and hotel. Rooms also have equipment variances that can include multiple monitors, VCR or DVD players, or connections that allow computer content to be presented. Some rooms even have catering services available.
Another advantage of video interviewing is how far it can reach. For example, if you need to bring in a panel of interviewers from all over the nation or world, they can all go into separate public rooms and interview the candidate €“ either all at once or InterCall can bring them in every 15 minutes.

These advantages are hard to ignore and I think ones that will certainly lead to a shift in sourcing/interviewing activities. The technology could crash during an interview which would be an obvious problem, but I suspect these locations have redundancies built into them.

One line that made me laugh:

While there are advantages to video interviewing, there are some disadvantages. For one, it can be intimidating for a candidate to walk into a strange room all alone and talk with someone who isn’t really there.

That may be true, but I would find a video interview far less intimidating than walking into a room with 3 or 4 directors sitting on the other side of the table.

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