Definitely NOT A Totalitarian Culture

Earlier this week I posted about a totalitarian culture. Now today I just caught up to a post from GL over at What Would Dad Say that provides a view of a completely different culture. I’ve recently invested in and joined the board of a fast growing software company comprised of mainly geeks, but cool geeks. They work hard and they play even harder. I’ve seen many of them passed out from doing keg stands and beer drinking relay races (at company events) . The culture isn’t for everyone, but the really smart, hard working, competitive types (who can also drink a lot) who don’t like a lot of corporate… Read More

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Hiring Remains Strong

The latest numbers are out and the experts are…drumroll please…”surprised.” From Reuters: Employers added a surprisingly strong 166,000 new non-farm jobs in October, well ahead of forecasts in an early sign that consumer incomes may be better supported than thought heading into the fourth quarter, according to a government report on Friday. The Labor Department said the national unemployment rate in October was unchanged at 4.7 percent. It revised September hiring to show that 96,000 jobs were added instead of 110,000 it reported a month ago and said 93,000 new jobs in August instead of 89,000 that it previously reported. Don’t buy the hype about a bad economy. The 166,000… Read More

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Our Most Desired Question

One question we would love to hear more often from our customers is this, “What factors make this candidate a strong fit for our sales position?” This is the best question to ask when first viewing a candidate’s information. Unfortunately, we hear many customers resort to their old method for measuring a candidate – what does their resume contain? I often wonder if hiring would improve if resumes were removed from the process. I know it will never happen, but it would force hiring managers to take a more comprehensive approach to their decision-making. The focus would move from prejudging viability based solely on a sheet of paper to interviewing… Read More

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Good Interviews From Bad Salespeople

How about this thought – many bad salespeople are good interviews because they have much practice. We have seen many salespeople do well on the phone but once we dig into their history, we find a consistent pattern of 2 year stints. But man do they say the right things on the phone. For this reason, we tend to run a difficult phone screen to weed out the pretenders. In fact, just this week we received a resume from a candidate with whom we are familiar. He worked for one of our customers 3 years ago and displayed flamboyant incompetence. As they say in the Wall Street Journal, it wasn’t… Read More

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