Our friends over at Hidden Business Treasures have paid us a nice compliment by posting about The Hire Sense last week.

They allowed us to be a guest writer on their blog and we offered up this post – Searching for the Sale. The topic of our post is the importance of finding sales candidates who possess the web-searching skills needed to prospect today. We provide 3 techniques for determining a candidate’s information literacy.

If you are interested, please follow the link and leave a comment for them if you are so inclined. While there, take a look at their consistently thoughtful posts.

Comments(0)

3.7 months. According to this CNNMoney.com article, that was the median time it took to hire in the fourth quarter. As long as that may seem, it trended down from third quarter which is a good sign.

U.S. workers needed less time to land a new job in the fourth quarter of 2006 than they did in the prior quarter, according to a survey released Thursday.After hitting the highest level in more than three years in the third quarter, the median job search time fell 12 percent in the fourth quarter to 3.7 months, according to the survey by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

While fourth-quarter job search times improved, they were still 19 percent higher than the 3.1 months recorded during the same time a year earlier, the Chicago-based employment placement and tracking firm said.

Comments(0)

Today we tackle a tough trait that is in short supply according to Mark Twain. The Using Common Sense trait provides for us some insight into a salesperson’s ability to think on their feet. This trait is most important for effectively dealing with a prospect’s objections.

Using Common Sense
This capacity is determined by the persons focus on practical thinking, their ability to see the world clearly and their general intelligence.

A salesperson with strength in this capacity will have use of everyday, informal knowledge that has not been formally evaluated and placed in the decision-making process. The utilization of common sense in the decision-making process appears to be more of a natural reflex than a logical-thinking process.

A salesperson with weakness in this capacity might be encouraged to use solid record keeping, organizational skills and other tools to aid them in obtaining a better, more objective decision.

Comments(0)

We released a new article today titled Finding Sales Candidates with the RIGHT Talent. “Talent” is a hot buzzword right now and since we measure it, we thought it would helpful to share some of our findings.

Suffice to say, most hiring managers believe it is best to hire the candidate with the most overall talent. While this approach is certainly better than hiring someone with little talent, there are still pitfalls to avoid. As you have probably ascertained from the article’s title, we target candidates with the right talent for the position’s requirements.

Comments(0)

If you have read The Hire Sense for any length of time, you know that we are consistently reading sales employment ads looking for strong formats. Unfortunately, the majority of our reading reveals poorly constructed ads. I personally believe these ads are the starting point for companies who end up criticizing online job boards.

They pay the exorbitant fee to place the lousy ad and then receive a lousy response. Their defense mechanism is simple – the online boards are an unproductive waste of resources. As I’ve stated before, if you don’t catch any fish in a lake renowned for good fishing, it doesn’t mean the lake is inferior. The first place to look is at your bait.

I give you this long lead-in due to the ad I just read. It starts out with this bullet (I edited the ad by inserting widget):

Must have at least 10 years of prior experience in selling widget-related products to OEM widget engineers and / or widget distributors

The questions that always enter my mind when I see this statement in an ad:

• Is 10 years the magic threshold for sales success in this position?
• What if the candidate has had 10 years of mediocre success in the industry?
• If a salesperson has 10 years of experience and verifiable success in this industry, why would they want to leave their current employer and potentially risk their established customer base?

I could keep going with the questions, but you get the point. The ad spirals downward from the opening bullet. There is not a single word describing the skills and talent needed for success in the role. There is an entire paragraph copied and pasted from the marketing materials that describes their company’s products. Now, they may find the right salesperson, but it won’t be because of their ad. My hunch is that they will settle for recycling mediocrity by hiring the candidate with the most experience in their industry . . . but not necessarily the candidate with the best skills and talent for their position.

Comments(0)

CNNMoney.com takes the today’s job report even further – Skilled worker shortage hurts U.S. The article’s opening sentence:

The biggest problem with job growth right now isn’t too few new jobs. It’s too few skilled workers.

And later:

“It’s down to the nub already,” he said. “Supply and demand is completely out of whack.”Some experts say part of the blame for the slowdown in the economy in last year’s second half can be laid on labor constraints – companies couldn’t expand as fast as they wanted due to a lack of workers with the right skills.

Notice that the comment is not a lack of skills, it is a lack of the right skills. We are releasing an article early next week on finding the right talent for your sales position. There are numerous sales candidates available and many actually look good on paper. However, there are 2 critical pieces of information you must possess to hire effectively in this evolving market. More on that next week. For now, it seems clear that we are on the cusp of a significant skilled-labor shortage – a shortage that will lead to many exasperated hiring companies.

And this is a good description of future sourcing activities:

“With this level of unemployment, the only way they can find the workers they need is to hire them away from someone else, hire them from someplace else, or hire someone without the necessary skills,” said Vitner. “All these things cut into productivity growth.”

And to close:

“When the economy hits some natural barriers, it slows it down, and one of those barriers is when the pool of workers begins to dry up,” he (John Challenger) said. “The lifeblood of the economy today is skilled workers.”

Dramatically stated but accurate nonetheless.

Comments(0)

From Foxnews.com – Economy Shrugs Off Weak Housing and Automotive Sectors As Employers Add 167,000 Jobs in December. We are encountering extended sourcing cycles right now due in no small part to compensation increases.

Employers stepped up hiring last month, boosting payrolls by a brisk 167,000 and keeping the unemployment rate steady at a still historically low 4.5 percent. Workers’ wages grew briskly.

The latest snapshot of the nation’s employment climate, released Friday by the Labor Department, showed that the jobs market ended 2006 on a strong note and provided fresh evidence that the troubled housing and automotive sectors aren’t dragging down employment across the country.

We have implemented numerous behind-the-scenes updates (technology, resource investment) to better attack the tight market. I posted earlier this week about a statistic from CareerBuilder regarding a 60% bump in job searches they encountered last January. This is a good time to be sourcing since many people use their vacation time around the holidays and then actively pursue a new opportunity after Jan. 1.

Comments(0)

I saw this section in a sales ad this morning:

Day to Day – At a glance

The section contained seven bullet points explaining the tasks of a typical day in this role. It was a quick read section that provided enough insight into the position to pique the interest of the right candidates.

The brevity of the section is the factor that makes it work. I would not recommend 25 bullet points with every daily task – just provide the flavor for the candidate.

Comments(0)

CNNMoney.com offers this quick story – Planned job cuts take big Dec. dip. The phrase “planned job cuts” is a poor construction, but it essentially means expected layoffs.

Planned job cuts for all of 2006 fell below 1 million for the first time since 2000, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., an employment consulting firm.

Be wary of the naysayers spouting an impending doom for our economy. The economy is robust and it truly is an employee’s market right now. The reason why you should be aware of this fact:

“With the American economy at full employment for the first time since Sept. 11, 2001, the latest job-cut data provide strong evidence that employers turned their energy toward retention in 2006,” Challenger said.

There is a perfect storm brewing right now (or perhaps already raging). We have historically low unemployment, almost automated job search agents and a new generation of workers who monitor new opportunities . . . all the time.

Retention will be a top priority for 2007. It should be a top priority every year. Salespeople are on the look out for something better. If turnover is trampling your sales staff, perhaps it is time to provide some assistance to your sales management team?

Comments(0)

Today we are focusing on an aptitude that has become more prevalent with the advent of remote salespeople. When we assess sales candidates for home-based or remote office positions, we place a higher significance on this trait.

Self-Management
An overall trait comprised of multiple factors which involve a person’s ability to manage his or her own self. This trait is similar to a person’s ability to manage others which involves empathy, understanding, gaining commitment and various other leadership qualities. This trait measures a person’s ability to marshal similar abilities toward managing themselves.

A salesperson with strength in this aptitude will be able to objectively and accurately assess their own strengths and developmental needs. They tend to be realistic in deciding what they are capable of doing and in what time frame they can do it.

A salesperson with weakness in this area may have trouble applying these capabilities towards themselves. This is not to say that they do not posses the proper tools to manage. Rather, they simply may not be very practiced at internalizing such efforts towards themselves. They may fail to maximize their abilities to their fullest potential since they have difficulty properly analyzing themselves.

Comments(0)