Sales&Marketing Management posts this online article – Iron-Fisted Management – regarding negative motivation. Being a psychology major, I am always drawn to these discussions. From the article: Matt McCann, district sales manager at ACSIA, a Darien, Illinois-based long-term insurance agency, agrees. “I think [negative incentives] are counterproductive. You may see short-term success, but I think it builds resentment,” McCann says. When he’s seen or heard about negative motivation, it’s yielded the same result: short-term profits, but an office inferno. Those who are the objects of punishments “start saying they don’t want to bend over backwards. They wash their hands of the situation, look for other jobs, and try to get… Read More
Continue ReadingCorporate Policies Regarding Blogs
Blogs are popping up at 1 per second according to the latest Sales&Marketing Management email. Here are some interesting facts regarding developing corporate communications (sorry, no link): –Just over a quarter of employers have terminated employees for e-mail misuse. Another 2 percent have dismissed workers for inappropriate IM chat. And nearly 2 percent have fired workers for offensive blog content including posts on employees’ personal, home-based blogs. –While 35 percent of employees use IM at work, only 31 percent of organizations have an IM policy in place, and 13 percent retain IM business records. 50 percent of workplace users are downloading free IM tools from the Internet. –Blogs are booming… Read More
Continue ReadingWhen to Assess Salespeople
The first key is to assess candidates before hiring. We encounter many companies that hire based on their gut feeling about a candidate. I met with a customer last week who has a VP who makes up his mind in a matter of the first 10 minutes of an inperson interview. Some people have strong empathetic abilities and can get a good read on an unknown candidate. But they make mistakes. The President of the company explained to me that although this VP was quite intuitive, he still missed on candidates which ended up costing the company. This meeting brought to my attention the need to explain when to assess… Read More
Continue ReadingMore Aggressive Cover Letters
Its Monday and it seems like we need a bit of levity to ease back in to the work week. Nothing like general resume cover letters to lighten the mood. I actually enjoyed this person’s resume – it was eye-catching in its uniqueness. Then I read this: If your company isn’t willing to offer a job with a BASE salary of at least $30,000 then please do not consider me a candidate. I searched the job market 2 years ago for a brief time before I began running my own business on a full time basis and discovered there are a lot of “Bull Crap” jobs out there (i.e. selling… Read More
Continue ReadingQuestions for the Interviewer
Tory Johnson from abcnews.com has a helpful article titled Turn the Tables in a Job Interview. She discusses what candidates should ask in an interview when the interviewer asks, “What questions do you have?” I’m always perplexed by candidates who simply state “None.” That response is always a red flag. Volumes of information are readily available with the Internet. Today’s candidate should have a general understanding of the hiring company’s business model, markets and corporate structure (privately held, subsidiary, etc.). Due diligence is easily completed with today’s technological tools. Back to the article – this question can and should be asked by every serious candidate: What are the biggest challenges… Read More
Continue ReadingInterviewer Styles
Monster.com has an entertaining article about interviewer styles. We’ve seen this “version” more times than we can count: The Unskilled Interviewer Problem: This is an interviewer who doesn’t know what he’s doing. Maybe the person was “roped into being there,” says Meehl. “Maybe they just don’t know what to do.” In a way, it is you who is teaching them how to be an interviewer, she explains. The article is a quick read and does provide some good pointers to interviewees when trapped in a poor interview.
Continue ReadingMore Anecdotal Encounters
I decided to mark these general resume emails as anecdotes also. I found this one entertaining: I’m looking for work that doesn’t involve customer service. Also work that is relatively healthy in that there are no poisonous gasses or fumes in the workplace … I have had around 30 jobs in the past 10 years. I quit jobs because I either get sick of the people I work with, bored with the job, or a little of both. I took the liberty of shortening the cover letter – it didn’t change the context. You know, we sometimes harpoon websites that ghost write cover letters and resumes. In this instance, investing… Read More
Continue ReadingAnecdote – Work at Home
Friday sourcing anecdote time so let’s go. This one was an email response that I need to give you just a little background information. First, the company we were running this hiring process for had a few open positions on their website. Second, we were in different stages of the hiring process on several positions with several customers. I received this email with “work at home” for a subject: hi ijohna ilooking to work this at home can you call me asap 4561230978cst johna@email.com call me monday at 2;00pmcst I am always baffled by responses like this to employment ads. This guy obviously has some communication issues with email. Yet,… Read More
Continue ReadingMonster.com Sees Dip in Online Recruitment
A quick blurb of a story from TechWeb about Monster.com’s numbers released for June. 24 of the 28 major markets showed lower online recruitment activity. They do mention that Minneapolis and St. Louis actually saw an increase in online activity for the month. We can attest to that fact in our local sourcing campaigns. I think this excerpt cuts to the quick of the entire story: “Broader business expansion activities slowed with the start of the summer vacation season.” We see this trend every year – July and August are truly hit-or-miss months of the year. Vacation schedules play a major part in it. One anomaly, traditionally we have had… Read More
Continue ReadingRecruiting the Younger Generation
I just caught up to some reading on Workforce Management’s website. Ready for the Big Time captivated my attention. The author references a company where candidates are hired similar to an NFL-style draft. You have to register at the site but it is free. The article is quite long but I’ll give you the high points. The article is written about what National Oilwell Varco’s (NOV) chief executive did in response to seeing that most of his executives and upper managment positions were being held by baby boomers. He put his Senior VP of Sales and Director of Employee Development on the task to develop a system to recruit their… Read More
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