Last week I put up a second post, What Candidates Look For In A Job on a webinar conducted by Monster and DDI. In that post I highlighted the disconnect between what the candidate is looking for and what the employer believes they are looking for. Age is a factor in the responses and I promised to share that information with you. So here you go, the top 4 reasons by age group in order of importance:

Less than 20 Years Old
A creative/fun workplace culture.
A compatible work group/team.
A good manager/boss.
Opportunities to learn and grow.

21 to 30 Years Old
Opportunities to learn and grow.
Opportunity to advance.
An organization you can be proud to work for.
A good manager/boss.

31 to 40 Years Old
Opportunities to learn and grow.
Opportunity to advance.
A good manager/boss.
An organization you can be proud to work for.

41 to 50 Years Old
Opportunities to learn and grow.
A good manager/boss.
An organization you can be proud to work for.
Opportunity to advance.

Greater than 50 Years Old
A good manager/boss.
An organization you can be proud to work for.
A compatible work group/team.
Opportunities to learn and grow.

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Salary.com put this article out earlier this month. It is a lengthy article written to employees in regards to 2007 areas of compensation, but there are some points to keep in mind not only as you are hiring staff this year but in retaining your current team. These points are complementary to one of our earlier posts on the top reasons why candidates take a job.

If you haven’t read this post, let me highlight the top 4 things candidates are looking for in jobs: A good manager/boss, opportunity to advance, opportunities to learn/grow and balance between work and personal life. Salary.com’s article aligns with 3 of the 4 points from that post. If you are not already doing these things, may I suggest that you start thinking how you can incorporate them into your hiring practice this year?

The first trend they see is the increase in performance-based bonuses. Salaries will not increase significantly this year as the market continues to tighten but bonuses based for performance will.

In the area of advancement, they are seeing leadership development no longer being just an executive perk. Instead, leadership training will be provided to the middle manager giving him or her the ability to develop the additional skills needed to advance.

Another trend is that external and internal training programs are on the rise. This approach gives employees the opportunity to learn and grow within the company. Our economy is a knowledge-based one and without these training programs, companies will no longer be able to be competitive in their market.

Finally, one trend is the ability to work a more flexible schedule or to work entirely from home. With the technological advances – VoIP’s, VPN’s, PDA’s – and all the other acronyms can give your employees the same abilities as if they were sitting in your office.

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A few months ago I posted on Why Salespeople Leave which discussed the disconnect between how a company compensates their salespeople and what the salespeople view as a reward. Last week I attended a webinar jointly presented by Monster and DDI and was amazed at the disconnect they found in their research between what employers think candidates desire in a position and reality. Employers, or more specifically hiring managers, listed these items as the top 4 reasons why a candidate takes a position:

1. A good manager/boss.
2. Opportunity to advance.
3. Opportunities to learn and grow.
4. Balance between work and personal life.

However, here is how the candidates responded in the survey:

1. Opportunities to learn and grow.
2. Interesting work.
3. A good manager/boss.
4. An organization you can be proud to work for.

Now you might be saying that the hiring managers had 2 out of the 4 correct which isn’t bad. True, but what I found amazing was where the other 2 ranked with candidates. “Opportunity to advance” came in at #5 and “balance between work and personal life came” in next-to-last at #9. On the other side, “an organization you can be proud to work for” landed at #8 on the manager’s list. Why is this important? Remember that a candidates base their employment decision on this criteria:

• Need
• Motivation
• Compensation
• Trust
• Urgency
• Format

If you are not aligned with their top 4 reasons, you are not going to be aligned to their motivation. This misalignment makes your chances of them accepting your offer far more difficult. My suggestion – start off your hiring process by selling them on your company and the position by talking about their opportunities to grow/learn, the type of work they will be doing, the manager they will be working for and what makes your organization unique/different.

You know the one question that kept going through my mind during this presentation was do these findings vary based on the demographics of the candidates? According to the study, there is a variance by age classification. It is late on a Friday so that topic will have to wait for another post.

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I have read numerous article over the past few weeks about phone interviewing or screening sales candidates and every one of them miss the mark. Instead of going at what is wrong with each of these articles, I will give you some essentials that make this an effective step in our hiring process. These are the steps we incorporate into each recruitment process we run for our clients. These techniques have been developed through conducting thousands of sales interviews and phone screens over the past few years.

1. What are the main requirements of the job? I am not talking about the job description. Instead, think about a wish list, so to speak, of what you need this person to be good at to close business for you. Do they need to be good on the phone? Do they need to be solutions-based in their approach rather than product based? Is this a business development role or an account management position? Chances are you are not going to find all of these skills in one person so pick the top 2-3 things from this wish list you know they must possess.
2. Formulate questions to measure the candidates’ competency in these 2 or 3 requirements. Here is where a number of these articles fell down. Don’t ask simple questions like: How many accounts do you presently manage or how many times have you exceeded quota? You may be thinking that these are important to the job requirements and they may be – to a point. Let’s say this is an account manager position and you have been hit extremely hard by the competition in this territory. So these 2 questions do have some relevancy, but there are more pertinent questions to ask. More than likely their resume will reveal which years they exceeded quotas. If they have exceeded quota 2 of the last 4 years, which years did they meet it and, more importantly, why did they not meet it the other 2 years. So drill down – ask them why they did not meet quota. Looking back, what, if anything, could they have done differently? That will help you understand their ability to retain accounts.
3. Use multiple filters throughout your hiring process. Think about the responses you need to hear in order for them to move on to the next filter. After you are done with each candidate’s phone screen answer this question – Were they strong enough to make it to the next step? Don’t get caught up in questioning an earlier decision. Don’t feel the need to compare candidates on a point-by-point basis. The only thing you should be doing is making a determination if this candidate will be making it to the next step.
4. The last phone screen essential is to know (ahead of time) what the next step is in your process. I would recommend that you objectively assess each candidate before moving to the face-to-face interview. A simple reason – even bad salespeople can be adept at building rapport. In fact, they can be so good that an experienced hiring manager can get drawn in by their persona. I submit to you these 2 posts (Salespeople Are Professional Actors and The Unsaid Often Says It All) to illustrate why we assess all candidates before the in-person interview.

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Yesterday I attended a Webinar from Monster and DDI titled, “Thanks, But No Thanks: Keeping Top Prospects From Turning Down Your Offer” that not only echoed many of the points from this Selling Power article, but had the data to support it. There were numerous points that I wanted to share with you so I’ll post on them in bite-size pieces over the next few days.

In our previous post, point #4 talks about trust. A candidate forms their opinion about trust in 3 areas with the interviewer being the first mentioned. I’m sure some of you thought that may have been a bit far-fetched but take a look at the research behind Monster & DDI’s report. They found:

• 32% of the candidate’s say that the interviewer affects their decision “a lot”
• 33% said that it affected their decision moderately
• 26% said slightly
• 9% said that it didn’t affect their decision at all

So how are you being perceived by your candidates? Is their anything you should be changing? Here are the top 5 habits candidates find annoying:

1. Acting like you have no time for the interview.
2. Withholding information about the position.
3. Turning the interview into a cross-examination.
4. Showing up late.
5. Being unprepared for the interview.

Also asking inappropriate or strange questions made the list. Here are some questions that made this list:

• If you were on the Simpson’s, which Simpson character would you be?
• If you were a tree, what kind would you be?
• If you were a dog, what kind would you be?
• What’s your relationship with God?
• Is that your natural hair color?

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I am currently sourcing candidates for a customer with these requirements: technically savvy, results oriented, efficient sales skills with good phone & writing skills. My interaction with this candidate started via email, which is great because I could get an idea of his written communication skills.

His first emails were to find out a little more about the company and a lot about the position responsibilities. We emailed back and forth several times in which he asked some great questions. After I had answered his questions, he sent an email stating that he was interested in the position and would like to take it to the next step. I emailed him back telling him I had some questions for him and that we would need to set up a time for a phone discussion.

I received this response from him:

That’s great, go ahead and send me your questions and I will be more than happy to answer them for you.

Okay . . . I thought maybe I was not clear or that because he is currently working that it may be difficult for him to get time during the day to talk. So I responded to him by emailing that I would like to talk with him and if needed I could make myself available in the evenings.

I received an email back almost instantly from him stating that:

No, it would be easier for him to do this via email and that I should just fire off the questions to him via email and he would get them back to me in the next day or so.

Remember, this position requires a fair amount of phone activity. Amazing. I have never encountered a sales candidate who would not get on the phone. Needless to say, I passed on the candidate.

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I found this article in a recent Selling Power Newsletter that piqued my interest. After reading it, I found that the author touches on some very good points to remember when making an offer to a candidate. It is a very short read and well worth the time. The author, Craig Silverman gives these 5 reasons you will get a no:

1. Need – If your message isn’t compelling enough, they won’t feel the need to make a change.
2. Motivation – You have to understand what motivates the candidate before you offer the position. Once you find out, build it into your offer.
3. Compensation – Most salespeople don’t want to make a lateral move but tend to be open about telling you what dollar amount they want before accepting your offer.
4. Trust – The candidates start forming opinions about trust in three different areas, the interviewer, the company and the industry.
5. Urgency – Qualifying candidates to find out their levels of urgency is necessary because if they aren’t ready to make a change, it’s going to be hard to convince them to make one or don’t make them jump through hoops if you take too long, they may find something else by the time you’re through with your hiring process.

Urgency is extremely important. We have seen numerous hiring companies miss out on strong candidates because they were unwilling to adjust their schedule to keep the process moving along. We have posted on this topic several times but it needs to be mentioned again. Chances are if you have identified a strong candidate so has another hiring company. You may have other important tasks at hand, but don’t assume the candidate will wait for you.

I would like to add one of my own points to the above list:

• Format – How does the candidate prefer to have the offer presented? Adapt how you deliver it depending on their communication style, motivations and rewards. Understanding this preference and then adapting to it can give you a leg up on other offers that they may be entertaining.

For example, if the candidate is personable, talkative and engaging, I would recommend making the offer in person. We know of a company that emailed an offer out to a candidate who was people-oriented. The hiring manager didn’t even call to tell him they would like to extend him an offer, nor did the hiring manager follow-up to see if he had any questions. Needless to say, the candidate turned the offer down due primarily to the lack of personal interaction at the offer stage.

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I follow some of the career articles that the Star Tribune writes and found an interesting one titled New Year, New Career: Nine Tools for Researching Leads. You are probably wondering why would I reference a career newsletter? Well, let me tell you it has some great free resources for your salespeople to use in researching their business leads. Please allow me to highlight those that would be relevant to almost any sales team.

Just Sell – Sign up to receive detailed information on at least 50 companies that have experienced a major event in the last 5 business days which will lead to future growth… delivered straight to your email each Monday. Their website has tons of resources for you to use, newsletters, quotes, articles and a job board.

The Money Tree – It is a service of PricewaterhouseCoopers and is updated every day. It’s the only industry publication that tracks and researches private equity deals for the entire venture capital market. The weekly newsletter and daily web updates give you in-depth news on industry trends, companies seeking investors, participating firms, deal conditions and more.

Dow Jones Venture Capital – Tech, Life Sciences, HealthCare, Dow Jones Venture Capital tracks it and reports on it.

Google Alerts – These email updates delivered to your email address once a day are based on information you tell Google to watch for.

Again, I like to try and stay aware of the millions of resources available to candidates – some are good some are not. But I did find these few to be well worth the time for your team’s prospecting efforts.

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If you have been in sales for any length of time you have probably heard something to this effect – “If you’re talking, you’re not selling”. I came across an article at Salesopedia that provides 10 tips for effective listening. Now the article is not written directly for salespeople, but there are some great points that are good reminders we can apply to our everyday sales life.

Face the speaker. Sit up straight or lean forward slightly to show your attentiveness through body language.

Focus solely on what the speaker is saying. Try not to think about what you are going to say next, if you do, you may not hear a very important piece of information that could help you win the sale.

Minimize internal distractions. If your own thoughts keep horning in, simply let them go and continuously re-focus your attention on the speaker. Resist the urge to jump in, let the speaker tell you in their words.

Keep an open mind. Wait until the speaker is finished before deciding what to do or ask next.

Avoid letting the speaker know how you handled a similar situation. Don’t interrupt them to solve an issue because you will be making assumptions about what the speaker is truly thinking.

And . . .

Engage yourself. Ask questions for clarification, but, once again, wait until the speaker has finished. That way, you won’t interrupt their train of thought. Be prepared to ask several clarifying questions to get to the full issue, problem, cause, etc. of what they are experiencing.

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A couple of months ago we posted on an article from the Pioneer Press titled Speaking Up Helps Keep Star Workers. One of the surprising findings was that 47% of the 16,273 stellar workers surveyed are mailing out resumes, going on job interviews, even contemplating other offers.

I just recently caught up to an article from a WorkForce Management newsletter of a survey Yahoo HotJobs conducted on 5,300 people. They found that nearly two-thirds are open to switching jobs, with an improving job market cited as the chief cause for such optimism. Here are some interesting points they found:

• 39% cited unhappiness with wages as the chief issue
• 75% cited 2006 raises or bonuses were below their expectations

So where is retention on your list of priorities? You may want to put some thought into it because it is a safe bet that more than half of your employees are looking for new opportunities.

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