Here is a bullet point from a sales employment ad:
Home based office experience a major plus!
Can you imagine reading that point just 5 years ago?
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A bullet point from a Business Development Sales Position ad:
Demonstrated ability to persevere and remain positively motivated when faced with negative response or rebuff from the customer
What they are describing is the ability to handle rejection. I think there is no more important differentiation between average salespeople and sales superstars. That quoted line could, or maybe should, be in every sales ad.
Spelling errors in a resume are bad, but spelling errors in ads may be worse. I’m looking through ads this afternoon and found an ad that spelled Minnesota this way - Minnasota. Yeah, that isn’t going to impress the locals. However, I think I have seen the worst error ever. One company has the word “electrical” in their name…they misspelled it. They misspelled their own company name.
Unbelievable.
I just read an employment ad for a sales position that had this for the title:
Salesmen
Honestly, how out of touch can you be?
Well, I should qualify that; I suppose an Oscar, Grammy, Tony, etc. is a timeless award. However, I just read an employment ad from a large recruiting firm that had this bolded statement at the top:
#1 Ranked Executive Search Firm - January 2006
January 2006? My first thought was who beat them out for the past 2 years. Maybe they have drastically declined in some way?
Call me a minimalist, but I prefer to get right to the meat in an employment ad. In fairness to this firm, this was an internal hire. Still, I would think they would have a bit more sense to remove that statement since it is more than outdated.
Hiring strong salespeople is just about the most difficult hire any company can attempt to make. One of the reasons it is difficult is due to the types of ads that companies use when sourcing.
Here is a prime example:
Detailed Description
Prospect region to identify new Referral vendors
Provide regional support for National Referral relationships
Re-engage Referral Endorsers not assigned to current reps
Introduce (Company) to Referral vendors
Manage paperwork for registering Referral vendors
Educate Referral vendors on (Company) products and services
Manage leads received through Referral vendors
Develop (Company) solutions for referred leads
Complete profit assistants and proposals for referred prospects
Submit orders and process paperwork for provisioning
This description is for a business development position. If you are looking for a hunter and find the words “manage paperwork” in your ad, you are in trouble.
Part of what I do every day is hunt through the local sales position ads. There are always some ads that contain more words than a doctoral thesis. Posting an internal job description for a sales position is the wrong move.
One aspect of sourcing that we observer is the salesperson’s ability to qualify, in this case, the opportunity. If we post all the information about the position, the salesperson doesn’t have to work to find specific information. I’ve said this before, it is amazing how much you can learn during an initial 10 min. phone screen. An overwritten ad negates this fact to some extent.
One other item we are researching is response rates to ads based on how much information is in the ad. We hope to have more information about this later, but it appears that erring to the “too little” side is better than the “too much” side.
Ok, this is a bit dated, but still funny:
“COMPETITIVE SALARY”
(We remain competitive by paying less than our competitors.)“JOIN OUR FAST-PACED TEAM”
(We have no time to train you.)“CASUAL WORK ATMOSPHERE”
(We don’t pay enough to expect that you’ll dress up; well, a couple of the real daring guys wear earrings.)“MUST BE DEADLINE ORIENTED”
(You’ll be six months behind schedule on your first day.)“SOME OVERTIME REQUIRED”
(Some time each night and some time each weekend.)“DUTIES WILL VARY”
(Anyone in the office can boss you around.)“MUST HAVE AN EYE FOR DETAIL”
(We have no quality control.)“CAREER-MINDED”
(Female applicants must be childless and remain that way.)“APPLY IN PERSON”
(If you’re old, fat or ugly you’ll be told the position has been filled.)“NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE”
(We’ve filled the job; our call for resumes is just a legal formality.)“SEEKING CANDIDATES WITH A WIDE VARIETY OF EXPERIENCE”
(You’ll need it to replace three people who just left.)“PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS A MUST”
(You’re walking into a company in perpetual chaos.)“REQUIRES TEAM LEADERSHIP SKILLS”
(You’ll have the responsibilities of a manager, without the pay or respect.)“GOOD COMMUNICATION SKILLS”
(Management communicates, you listen, figure out what they want, and do it.)
Newspaper subscriptions are plummeting and have been for some time. I think it is pretty clear that this trend is going to continue as newspapers struggle to redefine their product.
The future for them appears to be online according to Media Daily News:
WHILE THEIR PRINT EDITIONS CONTINUED to slide, newspapers enjoyed an online audience boom in 2007, according to the Newspaper Association of America, which says the total unique audience for newspaper Web sites increased 9% in the fourth quarter to an average 62.8 million per month, compared to the same period in 2006. The figure from October, when 63.2 million people visited a newspaper Web site, is an all-time record.
Furthermore, the statistics, compiled by Nielsen Online, show that 39% of all active Web users visited newspaper Web sites during the fourth quarter, for an average 44 minutes per month–a slight increase over last year’s fourth-quarter average of 43 minutes, but substantially higher than the 36 minutes in 2004.
Most newspapers have suffered from a common ailment amongst monopolies - they thought they could define the market. Instead of staying ahead of the market shift, the newspapers appeared to have a hardening of the categories. The online content shift has been underway for many years and the dailies have been slow to react to it.
One thing is for sure in the Internet age, companies are penalized for moving at glacial speed.
Spell check. Seriously. There are few things worse than misspellings in an employment ad. The image an error creates is difficult to measure, but I am certain it has a sizeable impact.
I came across the worst place for a misspelling…the title of the ad:
Sales Carreer Opportunity
I have squiggly red lines and windows popping open in my blog software trying to correct that word. Yet someone at the hiring company did not catch this obvious error.
The reason this error is so egregious is because the title is often the only description of the position that the jobseekers will see. It has to be correct (and intriguing enough to get them to click on it, but that is a post for another day). This type of error simply cannot happen. Spell check, multiple proofreaders and a final review before posting are the necessary steps to avoid these elementary mistakes.
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