Lee and I had lunch with a customer of ours who is the VP of Sales for a medium-sized business.  We were discussing why candidates lie about their education, primarily stating they have earned a degree when they have not.  This information is easily confirmed so lying about it seems foolish.

We had one candidate who has been in the workforce for 30 years yet lied on his resume about earning a B.S. degree from a local university.  A degree was not a requirement for this position.  Besides, 30 years of sales experience easily trumps a degree in our world.

My only thought on this topic is that candidates must do it to get past the automated candidate software that provides first-pass filtering of respondents based on simple criteria (like a degree).  I suspect the respondent’s thought is that they will do so well in the hiring process that the lie about the degree will be disregarded.

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It is difficult to classify telecommuting as a trend – it is more than that today.  We encounter telecommuting in almost every position we source, even some where you wouldn’t expect to find it.  Managers must have the skills to be effective with their team even though they may not seem them face-to-face on a daily basis.

ManageSmarter.com offers up Talking Telecommuting which provides some excellent tool suggestions for a manager faced with a geographically-dispersed sales force.  The example company is Cisco which obviously has some powerful tools for keeping remote workers informed.  Check out this proprietary tool:

Cisco ensures it’s easy for mobile workers to find and use internal company information. It does this with help from a proprietary tool, Cisco Storybuilder, that automatically stitches together PowerPoint modules to create a complete “story.” Strict operational procedures for content freshness, and requirements for documenting notes mean remote teams can benefit from the latest content in one streamlined location. When Karl, a Cisco sales manager in Singapore, needs to prepare for a meeting, he uses Storybuilder to create a presentation. He reads up on the current talking points for his particular area without needing to chase people down in San Jose.

Wow, what I would give for that capability.

On a much more rudimentary level comes this final point from the article:

Flexibility. Mobility works best when it’s supported by a variety of mediums. Everyone has a phone and a PC, but you have to move beyond e-mail to encompass a corporate instant messaging standard and smart phones. It may seem counterintuitive to provide more forms of communication, and run the risk of employees losing focus, but it turns out employees on average wind up being more productive and responsive.

That is key – offer more forms of communication.  We are far from cutting edge in our technology, but simply using instant messaging and smart phones has been a huge benefit to our productivity.  This is a low bar to clear and almost every company can offer these capabilities.  And should.

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I just listened to a sales candidate’s initial message in response to one of our ads. He described his experience by saying:

I’ve been in the _______ business for 20 years. Yada, yada, yada.

Funny on Seinfeld, painfully bad on an approach call.

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From CNNMoney.com’s Jobs gains back on track:

U.S. payrolls posted a net gain of 110,000 workers in the month, according to the Labor Department report. That’s roughly in line with the forecast of a 100,000 gain by economists surveyed by Briefing.com.

The Labor Department also now estimates that August had a gain of 89,000 jobs, a big upward revision from the originally reported 4,000 job loss in August.

…

The July payroll reading was also revised higher by 25,000 jobs more than the earlier report. That means that there are 228,000 more Americans with jobs in this latest estimate, based on the September gain and the revisions, compared to the original reading from a month ago.

I will continue to shout this from the mountaintop – the present economy is quite strong in spite of the media’s reporting of it.

UPDATE: The spin begins: Job loss erased, but danger lurks

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I haven’t seen this approach in a long time:

No online or email applications. Call (XXX) XXX-XXXX.

That line is from a sales ad I read this morning. I love it. Start with the phone screen and move on from there. You notice that a phone call means they are not relying upon the resume as the first filter.

I have to confess the ad does describe an entry-level position, but kudos to the hiring company for taking a screen-based approach to sourcing.

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The latest Q4 hiring survey is out, this time from CareerBuilder and USAToday. From the press release with my emphasis:

The survey, titled “Q4 2007 Job Forecast,” was conducted from August 10 through September 4, 2007 of more than 2,700 hiring managers and human resource professionals in private sector companies. “Given the housing slump and tight credit market, caution is to be expected when it comes to hiring in the fourth quarter,” said Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder.com. “While employers are keeping a watchful eye on economic indicators, they are still planning to expand staffs at a steady pace and are actively competing for qualified labor. Forty-four percent of employers said they currently have open positions for which they cannot find qualified candidates.” One-in-four employers (27 percent) report they will add new employees in the fourth quarter. Six percent expect a decrease in staff levels while 62 percent anticipate no change and five percent are unsure.

Don’t you love how every piece of economic news is accompanied by the “housing slump and tight credit market” precursor? We moved 2.5 years ago because we knew the torrid housing market was starting to slow down. 2.5 years ago. These reports characterize the housing slump as if it is breaking news when in actuality it is more like reporting on a glacier’s movement.

I will refrain from launching on the stereotypical economic reporting of the mainstream media and instead focus on the fact that 44% of the surveyed employers have open positions and no qualified candidates. Almost half of the 2,700 companies cannot fill openings today – is it any wonder only 1 in 4 are going to expand hiring this quarter. They can’t fill their open positions today.

This aspect of the story is the story.

The ramifications of this immediate need provides a real threat to the economy. A shrinking labor pool (i.e. Baby Boomer retirement) combined with an expanding economy will put constraints on business growth. I would like to read a story based on that angle and the possible solutions for it.

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ManageSmarter.com offers 7 suggestions for sales managers to make them more effective:

1. Do not micromanage people
2. Take time when increasing expenses
3. Take care of your “stars”
4. Be teachable
5. Focus on the things that make a major difference
6. Be sure to understand the ‘hierarchy’
7. Earn the respect of the people you are leading

You will have to read the article to get the details for each point. But here is the take-away from point #5:

There is a tendency to get caught up in making changes to areas that are irrelevant to productivity yet have a negative impact on the staff. Let the little things go while attending to the major shortcomings of the enterprise. Long-term employees typically resist change. Easing the pain with the process by altering the big things nets greater dividends.

How true. I worked at a company where there were meetings about the most ridiculous items that we became fed up with it all. A group of us who were tasked with producing results formed our own clandestine group with our own meetings. We discussed the major objectives and tasks at hand, divided them up between us and then went out and accomplished them.

It was like a shadow management team. And it was more effective than the lead team.

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This week we focus on a unique trait in that it is usually low amongst jobseekers.  They are confused or unclear about their current role and looking to find clarity in their next role.  This fact is the reason why we stress a strong onramping program for all new sales hires.  A clear program immediately sets the parameters of their new role – something that was most likely missing from their previous position.

Role Awareness
The ability of a salesperson to be aware of their role in the world or within a given environment.  This is the ability to understand the expectations placed on a position and to clearly see how those expectations are to be met.

A salesperson with strength in this trait will understand what they are doing, what is expected of them and how they are suppose to be doing it. Having this understanding will allow them to utilize their other personal strengths and abilities to fulfill the role which they are in.

A weakness in this area indicates a lack of understanding for the role someone occupies.  They are either unclear as to what it is they feel they should be doing or they have not been informed adequately as to what the expectations are of their role or duties.

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I may be alone here, but I found this information remarkable:

Looking at statistics from hotels and resorts worldwide, about “43 percent of business travelers were recorded to have been women”. Moreover, according to American Airlines’ director of women’s sales and marketing, women are responsible for 70 percent of travel decisions.

…

Interestingly, two key characteristics distinguish women travelers from men. First, according to Marybeth Bond, a consultant who has advised hotels on marketing to women, “Women will take more time for themselves than men if they are traveling for business. Men will rush home, but women will stay an extra day.” The second is that women appreciate the details, cleanliness in everything from the bed linen to the bath-showers. Hilton Garden and Hampton Inns, in particular, have recently enjoyed greater success by catering to women business travelers.

That information is from the Herman Group’s Trend Alert email (subscription required). I had no idea about this entire trend. I can say I do rush home when traveling for business and I have stayed in some hotels that can only be categorized as dumps. But I still stayed there.

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From the Career News newsletter (sorry, no link):

In September 2007 there were 4,270,000 online advertised vacancies, an increase of 165,200 or 4 percent from the August 2007 level, according to The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series released October 1, 2007.

In September, 2,934,100 of the 4,270,000 unduplicated online advertised vacancies were new ads that did not appear in August, while the remainder are reposted ads from the previous month. Online advertised vacancies were up (17.5%) over the year (September’06 – September’07). There were 2.78 advertised vacancies online for every 100 persons in the labor force in September.

I suspect this information is illustrative of the migration from newspaper employment ads to online job board ads (obviously many newspapers offer online ads too). This thought is supported later on in the same newsletter:

Seventy percent of all job seekers reported using online ads to look for employment, according to a recent study by The Conference Board, a Non-partisan and not-for-profit leading business membership and research organization.

Among respondents who received a job offer, the largest percentage (38 percent) feels that their job offer resulted from their Internet search. About one-third attribute their job offer to networking with friends and colleagues (27 percent) and “other,” including employment agencies (30 percent). Newspapers were the least likely to be cited as the source of a job offer with 24 percent of respondents citing print ads.

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