I just read through a local business weekly that had a profile of a power player CEO. Her bio says she is married with 3 children all under the age of 3. The first thing listed under her hobbies section:

Spending time with her family

I know, this is probably just semantics, but spending time with your family is a hobby? I generally think of rollerblading, hunting and traveling as hobbies. Your family is more important than work and I would characterize family life as more than a hobby.

Again, maybe it is just semantics, but certainly not how I would state it.

Comments(0)

This is the closing sentence from a long, detailed sales manager ad I read this morning:

For full job details, to apply online, and to learn more about our dynamic organization, please visit our website at www.company.com and search for Req ID# XXXXXX.

“Search for” a req on their website? I followed the link and it simply takes you to the home page of their rather extensive website. I went 5 clicks deep into the site and still did not find the specific job listing.

Don’t do this. It may work for web developer positions, but not for sales positions.

Comments(0)

From the stack of information that my only interest me comes this important article – Coffee can be good for you, experts say. My passion for coffee knows no bounds so this is welcome news:

Drinking coffee can help ward off type 2 diabetes and may even help prevent certain cancers, according to panelists discussing the benefits — and risks — of the beverage at a scientific meeting.

And later:

There’s evidence, Arab noted, that the beverage may protect against certain types of colon cancer, as well as rectal and liver cancer, possibly by reducing the amount of cholesterol, bile acid and natural sterol secretion in the colon, speeding up the passage of stool through the colon (and thus cutting exposure of the lining of the intestine to potential carcinogens in food), and via other mechanisms as well.

Expert sales hiring and managing tips along with detailed coffee updates (including colon explanations) – who says we’re not a well-rounded blog?

Comments(0)

I’ve been on this resume topic all week but it is important enough to continue.  First let me give you the setup and then an analogy.  We run a detailed, repeatable process to identify the strongest candidates for a specific position.  Our process includes profiling the typical sale and then sourcing candidates based on the information revealed in the profile.

We run candidates through a phone screen where we actually mirror the pressure they will encounter when calling on your prospects.  We score them and have the top candidates complete a battery of objective, online assessments.  We will even ask for candidates to complete written, essay-like questions so we can see their writing style.

At this point we present the candidates to our customers.  New customers usually formulate questions around one topic – the candidate’s work experience based on their resume.  60+ pages of assessment information, phone screen summaries, writing examples . . . and through all that, the hiring manager wants to solely discuss something on the resume.

Now for the analogy:  Say a restaurant owners wants to hire a head chef.  He has many chefs send him their menu that describes their signature entrees.  The descriptions give the owner some idea of what is contained in the dish, but he doesn’t know all the ingredients, proportions or the preparation to make that dish.  The owner may even sit down with the chefs that interest him the most and have them describe, in detail, their dishes.  At the end, he hires the chef he likes the best but the critical truth here is that he has never seen the chef cook nor has he tried one of the entrees.  The hire is a leap of faith.

Now another restaurant owner wants to hire a head chef also.  But this owner actually observes the chefs preparing meals.  The owner even gets a chance to sample an appetizer or two and have a panel of judges rank the food based on specific criteria like taste, texture, preparation, difficulty, etc.  At this point, the owner sits down with the chefs and discusses in more detail the dishes that he has sampled.  At the end, the owner selects the chef that is the best fit to the restaurant’s market space and culture.  Granted, the owner has not seen the chef prepare an entire meal, but he has sampled the chef’s work, seen his abilities in action and knows how to build upon those strengths.

As you can see, the second approach is far less risky since it incorporates techniques to actually observe the candidates’ abilities.  Our process is similar to the latter analogy.

Comments(0)

In small businesses according to Inc.com’s short article Small Businesses Driving Job Growth.

Private-sector payrolls rose by 64,000 jobs in April, including 45,000 new jobs at small businesses, according to the ADP National Employment Report.

By contrast, jobs at larger firms dropped by 10,000, the fourth straight month of declines, the report said.

Nothing wrong with that fact. We have been working with a wide variety of companies lately and there definitely seems to be hiring momentum in the “smaller” businesses.

Comments(0)

Ah, this week we look at a trait that tends to be foreign to many salespeople. But that need is changing as the market factors become more complex. If your sale typically includes a complex, detailed offering, this trait is definitely one to measure in all candidates.

Attention To Detail
This is the ability to notice and dedicate mental resources towards details. This trait includes recognizing the component parts of a procedure or object and verifying the correctness or error in an individual part or procedure.

A salesperson with strength in this trait will likely be thorough in the execution of their job responsibilities. They will define each job function at its most elementary level and be sure that each of the functions is properly completed.

Weakness may cause a salesperson to focus more attention on the completion of the overall project rather than the component elements. This person may not enjoy, or have a desire for, checking details of the situation. He or she would prefer to have that responsibility delegated to someone else.

Comments(0)

I am on the road this week in Dallas interviewing candidates with one of our clients and a situation came up in the last 24 hours that speaks to proper etiquette during the interview/hiring process. There are certain expected behaviors that should be followed by both the employer and the candidate in any process.

Yesterday, I received a phone call in the evening from a candidate who wanted to tell me that she was canceling our interview scheduled with her for early this morning. She knew that I was traveling from Minneapolis to Dallas and had even confirmed her interview with us late in the afternoon the day before. So less than 18 hours before the scheduled interview, she calls me to tell me she just got back from a second interview with another company, was offered the position and “just had to accept it.”

I don’t question that she had a great offer or opportunity – my question is her timing. Once you arrive at the night before a morning interview, it is proper business etiquette to complete the interview the next day. It is certainly an employee’s market right now and I think some candidates take liberties they normally wouldn’t dare in a slower job market.

I personally encountered a similar situation in my own career many years ago. I was living in Boise, ID when my wife and I decided to move back to Minnesota. I lined up several interviews in Minnesota over a couple week span.

The job I wanted the most was smack dab in the middle of my interviews. I completed my first interview with this company and they immediately had me meet with the President and several other execs of the company. They offered me a job on the spot. They told me they were aware that I still had a number of interviews to complete the next week, but they were excited for me to join the firm so they offered me a position and gave me 2 weeks to give them an answer.

The offer, the company and the position were all solid, but I had no idea what the other opportunities had to offer. So I went into each interview concentrating on the opportunity and familiarizing myself with the companies (and them with me). I ended up getting a couple of additional offers and used them as a comparison to the first offer I received (and later accepted).

Comments(0)

Newspaper circulation continues its precipitous decline.  However, online employment ads have increased 24% from last April according to this Inc.com article.  Surprisingly, I talked to a company last month that did not believe online job ads were the way to go.  Their plan – post sales ads in the printed newspaper.

Some stats:

Online job ads totaled 4,365,000 in April 2007, an increase of 16 percent from the previous month, and represented approximately 2.9 vacancies for every 100 persons in the labor force in April, the report said.

That is a significant number of ads especially compared to the number of people in the labor force (ever wonder how they know how many people are in the labor force?).

And later in the article we encounter the understatement of the year:

“The April rise in advertised vacancies reflects some momentum in the labor market, which in turn reflects an economy that is slow but not slowing,” Gad Levanon, an economist at the Conference Board, said in a statement.

As we like to say in Minnesota, “Ya think?”

Comments(0)

I’m not physicist, but I remember some teaching in class regarding the difference between kinetic energy (an object in motion) and potential energy (stored energy within an object).  Salespeople are similar in that you want to hire the ones with kinetic energy and not the ones with only potential energy.

I’m going to stay on this theme since it is so important to successful sales hiring – filtering candidates based on their resume does not allow for determining these two “energies.”  Hiring managers attempt to divine kinetic energy from a document that is written to imply kinetic energy/activity.  But is it true or is it an embellishment?  Or was it even written by the candidate?

The best method for determining the ability of a sales candidate is to talk to them.  I am always flabbergasted when I read a sales ad that has applicants fill out information on a website and closes with the command, “No phone calls please.”

Please indeed.

The post mortem report on most bad sales hires involves some form of assuming potential energy equals kinetic energy.  The sales candidate looked good on paper and put on a show during the in-person interview.  Yet, once they were entrenched on the payroll, their work day consisted of a cloud of dust.  At the end of their work day, the wagon hadn’t moved.

The key is to put the candidates into situations that allow you to see their abilities in action.  Their selling ability, their follow-up ability, their persistence…all of these things can be observed long before you even meet the candidate.  Adjust your process and you will weed out the potential-only candidates.

Comments(1)

When was the last time you read through a marketing piece concerning a product or service you were considering to purchase? Imagine you are in the market to buy a new vehicle. Do you read through the brochure and accept every statement as objectively true? Or how about attending a trade show and picking up a pamphlet at a booth? Do you consider that information to be an advocate’s view or not?

Most people view this information as propaganda and rightly so. Yet when it comes to resumes, many hiring managers use this embellished “product” sheet as the definitive filter for interviews. That’s a mistake that leads to inconsistent sales hires.

We encounter the allure of the resume even within our customer base. Our process includes a difficult phone screen, online assessment and writing examples. There is much information within those 3 items yet new customers often formulate opinions solely from the resume. Old habits die hard!

Resumes may tell the story for engineers, admin and other positions, but resumes rarely reveal the real salesperson. Live interaction and objective analysis will provide a consistent sales hiring process.

Comments(0)