Steve Rothberg over at collegerecruiter.com provides one of the clearest posts I have read regarding Gen Y and their job-hopping ways. This is Steve’s area of expertise and this post lays it out in simple terms. An excerpt (emphasis mine): Gen X’ers like me who attended college two decades ago received our education for far less money than Gen Y’ers are paying. I paid $3,500 for tuition my last year in school. If the cost of that tuition were to double every seven years, that means that today’s student in that same program would pay $28,000. That’s disgusting. I graduated with about $20,000 in student loan debt. A Gen Y’er… Read More
Continue ReadingWall Street Turnover
If you think you are experiencing hiring difficulties, be happy you are not on Wall Street: Fresh off some of the richest bonuses ever handed out, investment bankers and traders, especially those who deal with leveraged debt, are in high demand. In some cases, bidding has driven newly hired employees into the arms of a rival in mere weeks. That statement seemed like hyperbole until later in the article: Securities-industry employment rose to 804,000 at the end of 2006 after a third consecutive year of increases. The employment figure is just 4% shy of the all-time high set in 2000, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. The… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Biggest Hiring Challenge
No surprise here: Finding qualified people to work as sales representatives is the biggest hiring challenge for global employers for the second year in a row, an annual talent shortage survey reported Thursday. Sales reps top the list of hard-to-fill jobs in the United States, Japan, Hong Kong and in five other countries… The CNN/Money article goes into detail about CEO’s focus on growth and the lack of salespeople available to power that initiative. We are experiencing it first hand as our sourcing times have been extended. In fact, we are making adjustments today to pour more resources into our sourcing channels. Strong sales candidates require extra work to locate… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Emotional Control
Sales can be an emotional roller coaster. Sales can be frustrating and anger-inducing. Conversely, sales can be joyful and exciting. But what about salespeople who allow these emotions to rule their behavior? Successful selling requires poise in the midst of an emotionally-charged environment. This week we look at one of the top 10 traits for sales success. Emotional ControlThis is the ability of a salesperson to maintain rational and objective actions when experiencing strong internal emotions. This trait measures one€™s ability to control their own internal emotions and prevent them from affecting their actions, logic, objectivity, etc. Emotional Control deals with keeping internal emotions in instead of letting them get the better of the salesperson. A salesperson… Read More
Continue ReadingC.Y.A. Excuses
Clayton at Salesopedia has a short, entertaining post that provides 5 excellent excuses to use if you are caught napping in a meeting (I have been). Read the post, I guarantee you will laugh. My personal favorite: €œThey told me at the blood bank that this might happen.€
Continue ReadingCoffee Snobbery
From CareerJournal.com comes an important article revealing a new trend – Gourmet Coffee Becomes An Unwelcome Office Perk: Of people who drink coffee at work, the percentage that drink the in-house brew dropped to 52% last year from 64% in 2003, according to the National Coffee Association, an industry group. I love that they have surveys for coffee consumption at the office. Is there any topic that isn’t subject to a survey? Nonetheless, I take my coffee seriously and am heartened by this new trend: Many employers are also investing in single-serve machines that make everything from coffee and specialty espresso drinks to hot chocolate and allow employees to brew… Read More
Continue ReadingDistributed Decision Making
We have written much about the flattened org chart that the younger generations subscribe. The extremely veridical, military-like chain-of-command days are waning in the modern work world. The decision-making distribution of authority is having a tremendous impact on slow-to-react companies. I encountered this shift years ago working for a company that was headed up by older managers. My group made a presentation to management to streamline the complex business model we were running. Instead of a near-impossible vertical structure, we recommended distributing the decision process to the different business groups. The approach, which we thought made the most sense in terms of efficiency, was to have managers individually guide each… Read More
Continue ReadingWho To Promote Into Management
CareerJournal.com offers When Managers Neglect To Coach Their Talent which covers a principle we incorporate into our process. “The role of people-managers — who develop talent and create sustained profits for companies — isn’t as valued as it should be,” says Mr. Harter, co-author with Rodd Wagner, also of Gallup, of “12: The Elements of Great Managing.” If it were, he adds, companies wouldn’t promote to management those who succeeded at a prior job but don’t have the foggiest idea about how to motivate people. Blame the top executives who simply grade their managers on their financial results rather than on how well they groom and retain good employees. The… Read More
Continue ReadingImprove Your Google Fu
We’re big fans of Hidden Business Treasures and the great insights they provide. Their latest post provides a tool for searching corporate websites that I was unaware of. Now, I’m no expert when it comes to researching the web, but perhaps you were unaware of this technique: Here€™s the secret. DON€™T wander around the web site €“ instead, search the web site. Atlantic Trust does not have a search tool on their site €“ but Google (and Yahoo and Live.com) do €“ for every web site in the world. For this exercise, go to Google and type in the following: €œhuman resources€ site:www.atlantictrust.com Read the entire post to understand how… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Sales Diploma
From Selling Power’s Daddy, I Want to Be in Sales When I Grow Up: Imagine a world in which sales was regarded on a professional level with engineering and medicine; a world in which your five-year-old said, €œDaddy, I want to be a salesman when I grow up.€ Sound like a dream? It is. This topic has long been of interest to me. Sales is often considered a lesser profession due mainly to the fact that there is a low barrier to entry. If you have a smart phone and a briefcase you can be in sales. The gentleman in this article, Howard Stevens, is out to change that fact. Consider… Read More
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