Sourcing strong sales candidates is a full-time proposition in this current job market.  We are encountering extended sourcing times as we work through different channels.  SellingPower.com offers a quick-read article with some suggestions for different channels.  The suggestions:

Outplacement Firms
Government Resources
Associations
Community Resources (local papers)
Company Alumni
Military Outplacement

Those are all good suggestions and I am a strong proponent of using non-traditional channels simultaneously with job postings and networking.  I’m not a critic of the major job boards.  In fact, I find them to be quite effective for finding strong candidates.  My guess is the people who struggle with them may not be placing the right ads to attract the right candidates.  Of course, we source sales candidates who tend to be hunters so the job boards are a natural lure.

One channel I expected to see in the article was social networking sites.  We are a bit late to this party, but we have begun using different sites to network towards the right candidates.  LinkedIn has been a good source for us recently.  These sites seem to be the way of the future especially in regards to the “company alumni” suggestion stated above.

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Last week I posted on a democratically-run company and the challenges they face. Today I came across a business article from our local Pioneer Press titled Lawson’s clash of cultures. The article speaks to locally-based Lawson Software and their acquisition of a Swedish company. There are distinct differences in business approach between the US and Europe:

The problem hasn’t been the technology. It’s been cultural, especially getting Swedish employees accustomed to a new way of doing their jobs, Debes said.

“It’s the Nordic region, so you’re talking about a socialist culture where, even though there are no formal unions, the employees act like they’re unionized,” he said.

They expect management to discuss its decisions with the employees beforehand, give them time to mull it over and allow them to vote on the matter, he said.

The German-born Debes is no stranger to international business, having spent 10 years in Australia with Geac Computers, a Canadian business software vendor. He said that he thinks of himself as open-minded but that the European style is too cumbersome. “It is not the North American style of leadership,” he said.

That last sentence is clear. It becomes even more clear when you read later in the article (emphasis mine):

Debes, who was named CEO the same day the Intentia merger was announced in 2005, makes no apologies for his leadership style, which he calls “demanding.”

You can see the picture being painted by the writer. I suspect the CEO has a fair amount of Dominance to his style and Utilitarian-Individualistic to his motivations (a common CEO profile). The socialist-based Swedish employees probably have a strong Social motivation streak through the existing employees that doesn’t blend well with the CEO’s style. An educated guess only, but based on this (my emphasis):

But he (Debes) acknowledges that employee turnover, at 18 percent, has been higher than he had wanted, and above the 12 to 15 percent that is average for the information technology industry.

Acquisitions are often made by first by financial/market analysis without as much effort put into employee analysis. From earlier in the article (emphasis mine):

“My impression is if they had to do it over again, they wouldn’t integrate with Intentia,” said Paul Hamerman, vice president of enterprise software application research at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.

“Not that I don’t think they can’t work out the cultural differences,” he added. “It’s just been a difficult merger for them.”

I don’t know what was done here to prepare for the acquisition, but I bring it up because some of these cultural rifts could have been identified long before the acquisition. Mergers and acquisitions involve people, whether it be the board members or the shipping department. An investment in identifying the different compositions of both companies is grease to the skids of a potentially difficult merger.

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I heard an insightful business analyst quote this past weekend:

Whatever results you are getting are a perfect outcome of the system you have in place.

How true is that? Now add in this Albert Einstein quote:

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.

These truths can be applied to hiring salespeople. Companies are far too accepting of simply following their gut instinct when hiring a salesperson. This hiring approach is riddled with pitfalls, is not repeatable and introduces biases into the hiring decision.

There is a better way. Click here to download our 1 page process overview (250 KB pdf).

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From BusinessWeek’s Undergrads’ 25 Most Wanted Employers:

Public service or stock price: These were the two features undergraduates overwhelmingly gravitated toward in naming their ideal entry-level employer, according to newly released results of Universum Communications’ 2007 Most Desirable Undergraduate Employer ranking.

Not to ruin the surprise, but here are the top 5 companies:

1. Google
2. Walt Disney
3. Apple
4. State Department
5. Peace Corps

Click here to view a slide show of all 25.

And yes, I know – the State Dept. and the Peace Corps?  There is nothing like the idealism of a young, college graduate!

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I’m sitting at a coffee shop right now reflecting upon an incredibly active week of sourcing and screening that has just passed. One of the items that stands out in my mind is how to handle candidates in this present market.

It is a candidate’s market right now. Many companies are hiring so there are many opportunities for candidates to consider. This being true, hiring companies have to make some adjustments to their hiring process to be successful.

Speed Up
Yes, candidates use the veiled threat of other opportunities in an attempt to influence a quicker decision. This approach works in a tight labor market like we have today. Nonetheless, companies need to be cognizant of the steps in their process along with the frequency of candidate contacts. If you have an extended or delayed hiring process, you risk losing your top candidates for one of two reasons:

-Lose them to another opportunity
-Lose them due to a poor perception

The first point is fairly obvious. The market is tight, opportunities are plentiful and good candidates are in great demand. We like to tell our clients, “If you have identified a strong sales candidate, odds are another hiring company has too.” Companies often move at their own speed based on the false pretense that they are the candidates’ best or only option. This thinking can derail any strong hiring process.

The second point is more subtle but just as likely. Delays, uncertainties, confusion – all of these items create an impression on the strong candidates. These perceptions may be accurate or they may be completely false, but they do leave an impression. Another aspect of the hiring process that trips up hiring companies is the fact that the candidates are interviewing the company too. They are drawing conclusions about your company’s culture, management approach, priorities, etc. based on their limited experiences in the hiring process.

Structure Sells
You can see the importance of monitoring your contact with the top candidates. We suggest companies treat it as a sales cycle – qualify the candidate, find their decision points and work towards a timely close. A refined, structured hiring process is appealing to strong candidates. Companies that know what they are looking for and employ methods to find the right person have an advantage in the talent market.

The best approach is to stay on target for your hire date and don’t let candidates experience an extended period of time without a touch (phone call, email, task, interview, etc.). The current market mandates a weekly touch with candidates to keep moving towards a decision. Anything less than this frequency puts the goal of hiring the top candidates in jeopardy.

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The salutation from another email cover message:

Dear All Hiring,

Cover emails are difficult to write without starting it in this manner.  I’m not a big fan of using “To Whom It May Concern,” but at least it doesn’t draw your attention in a negative way.

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We never, ever phone screen a sales candidate without asking some form of this question:

Why are you looking for a new opportunity?

This question is revealing especially if you drill down a bit on their initial response.  You will learn much about the candidate.  We also ask it of previous positions – why did they decide to leave those positions.  Listen closely to their response.

Just in time comes this line from an email cover (emphasis mine):

The company is closing their doors in Minnesota and abolishing all positions. Therefore that is why I am seeking new employment.

Dramatic.  This respondent certainly gets right to the point on the above question.  Yet, I think this may be a case of overusing a thesaurus to sound like the Queen’s English in the letter.

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I graduated with a degree in psychology and I have a coffee addiction so abcnews.com’s article was irresistible: Starbuck’s Psychology. The article points to some specific, subtle marketing principles incorporated by the ever-expanding Starbuck’s chain:

It has everything to do with the marketing strategy behind this designer coffee chain, which devised a clever way of creating its own community. It also pinpointed one key aspect of caffeine shoppers: They want their coffee immediately.

“Designer coffee” for certain. Knowing this fact, they devised their strategy:

Across the United States, there are 9,814 stores with a total of 13,728 worldwide. The Starbucks management has watched coffee drinks, and figured out exactly what people will and won’t do for coffee.

“We actually study traffic patterns,” said Starbucks CEO Jim Donald. “If it’s in a downtown area, we study foot-traffic patterns.”

“Not everyone can shop at Tiffany’s, but everyone can afford a cup of coffee — even if it’s $2, $3 or $4,” Blumenthal said. “You can do something nice for yourself by buying yourself a good cup of coffee every day.”

While 80 percent of the sales are takeout, they’re still delighted to have customers stay and sit with their computers for hours to make the place feel lived in.

The tables are also rounded to give it a comfortable atmosphere. As Blumenthal explained, round tables are more welcoming than those with square edges, and people look “less alone” while seated at a round table.

It is remarkable to me that this company with a clear market-leading position has placed such an emphasis on the minute details. Is your marketing program as finely tuned to your customers’ expectations?

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One client of ours told me a sales hiring story that led them to us. The sales manager followed the conventional hiring process – post an ad, sort the resumes, interview the candidates from the “yes” resume pile. He chose a salesperson with a glowing resume who absolutely won him over in the interview.

He knew he had made a mistake a couple months into her employment. It turns out that this salesperson could not handle making calls in the presence of other people. What I mean is that her phone-intensive position was located in a cube farm with her peers all around her. She was incredibly uncomfortable talking to prospects within earshot of her fellow salespeople.

Her solution – only make calls in the conference room with the door closed. That’s right, away from her phone extension, her computer and her email. Obviously, she didn’t make nearly the number of calls as her coworkers and her low sales numbers revealed the outcome.

Not surprisingly, the sales manager had to let her go. This was an expensive lesson.

Pre-qualifying sales candidates based on their resume is a high-risk proposition. There is an effect that occurs where hiring managers make a determination that a candidate can or cannot succeed in the role. Of course, that is the purpose of hiring, but the subjective decision occurs without enough data. Since the next step in the process is a significant investment of time in interviewing, the hiring manager reviews resumes with the intent of disqualifying candidates from consideration.

We see this decision process play out with our new customers, too. We complete our lengthy sourcing process which includes multiple phone calls, emails, a structured phone screen, 4 different online assessments and a review of the candidate’s experience as stated on their resume (with consideration for the fact that resumes are basically embellished…greatly). This strong filter ensures that our determination that the candidate can succeed in the role is supported by more than just a resume.

Conversely, sales candidates who do not have the finest resume money can buy are still considered. Our emphasis is not on the resume but rather on their ability. We prefer to make our determination that a candidate cannot succeed in this role based on their interaction with us and our objective assessment of their abilities in relation to the role’s needs.

This approach can be incorporated into your hiring process today. Do not over-value the resume. Talk to the candidates on the phone and listen to their sales strategy and tactics. Drill down on their responses for clarity and you will vastly improve your hiring successes.

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Yesterday I posted on communication blindness.  Today, I stumbled upon CareerJournal.com’s Can a Business Be Run As a Corporate Democracy?  A stunning thought that I have never considered.  Yet, I suspect Gen Y has some ideals that favor this approach.

Ternary runs itself as a democracy, and every decision must be unanimous. Any of Ternary’s 13 other employees could have challenged the incentive decision and forced it to be revisited.

Running a company democratically sounds like a recipe for anarchy, and it can prompt bureaucratic whiplash: Ternary, a company with annual revenues of around $2 million, adjusted salaries for employees up and down several times last year.

At first blush, this approach seems as if there is too much communication, too much anarchy and not enough command-and-control structure.  We’ve never encountered a company that incorporates this management approach.

The article references some skepticism for this approach also:

Harry Katz, dean of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, doubts a system like Ternary’s could work on a large scale. In bigger companies, “there’s an inevitable conflict of interest between managers and employees,” Mr. Katz says. General Motors Corp.’s Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., for instance, experimented with giving employees a strong voice in management, but later moved back to a more-traditional structure, he says.

However, it is quite a testament to communication, isn’t it?  Well, I was hooked until I got to this section of the article (my emphasis):

The repeated changes to Ternary’s pay scale last year demonstrate employee empowerment in action. The company shares financial data, including everyone’s salary, with all employees. In 2005, Bill Schofield proposed cutting the salaries of senior programmers, including his own, by 15%, and boosting compensation for junior programmers. The council agreed.

Then, last summer, Ternary ran into a cash crunch because some customers weren’t paying their bills on time. The strategy council slashed salaries by 22%. That rattled Chad Wolfe, a 29-year-old Canadian programmer who told his representative on the strategy team that he would have trouble paying his personal bills. So the team devised no-interest loans for needy employees.

That’s it for me.  As a Utilitarian I would fail wildly in this company.  However, if we were helping them to hire more team members, we would certainly stress the Social motivation in all hires.

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