When sourcing and phone screening, we tend to come across salespeople who have been laid off from a previous position.  Layoffs are obviously a common occurrence in business, but they are problematic in sales.

Most companies do not lay off salespeople who are closing profitable business. 

Granted, some companies view salespeople as an expense and assume the customer relationship will remain – big mistake.  Some smaller companies are family owned and keep the family members employed as the business contracts.  There are always exceptions, but they are not the rule.

When we encounter a salesperson who has been laid off, we immediately look for logical specifics regarding their shortened tenure.  The candidate needs to clearly define the circumstances and the rationale behind the company’s decision.  If these items cannot be explained, the assumption has to be that the salesperson was not performing at the expected level (fair or not).

This item isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker for a candidate so please don’t take me out of context.  My suggestion is to drill down thoroughly on this topic when talking to the candidate.  Make sure you are confident in the circumstances and keep your focus on what the candidate could bring to your company.  The candidate may simply have been misemployed in the previous role.

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BusinessWeek.com offers up a good summation of today’s hiring market in terms of executive recruitment.  We could have wrote this article – it describes exactly what we are encountering in a couple of executive searches.

Let’s unpack a couple points from the article:

This new environment requires that executive headhunters and companies’ human resources and business leaders delve deeper into what’s really important to senior-management candidates and calibrate the recruitment process accordingly.

Very true.  Part of this understanding comes from assessing their motivations and rewards, the other part from interaction.

Yesterday I posted on the need for flexibility when hiring since candidates desire work/life balance far more than in previous times.  An example (my order):

Many headhunters say search assignments used to be considerably easier to orchestrate when more management-level career climbers were willing to commit—with little or no hesitation—to do whatever it might take to succeed in a new job if it promised big career opportunity.

The truth is that in today’s market for executive talent, sought-after leaders hold the bargaining advantage because they’re facing a resilient economy, multiple job offers, and likely a steady stream of calls from headhunters who want to move them.

The issues that motivate today’s top management talent to pursue new career opportunities have themselves grown more complex, in large part because of leaders’ desire for more work/life balance and/or the need to protect their assets.

The work/life balance topic is at the forefront of hiring and retention.  Companies that do not proactively address this topic will flounder in the hiring arena.  Unfortunately, one of our customers would not adjust despite our pleas and they ended up losing a strong candidate because of it.

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