He’s back! Back in August I first posted on this employment ad respondent and then just a month later he emailed me again. I hadn’t heard a peep out of him for 2 months when out of the blue I received another email. This time he wasn’t inquiring about a position, but it seems I have made it onto his distribution list for garbage emails. I have received several emails (more than I care to count) about the latest sick child that AOL will donate 32ยข for every email forwarded to Microsoft will pay you $245 for every email you forward. You know, this is the glamorous side of sourcing… Read More
Continue ReadingCandidates With Blogs
All right, we posted on Candidates with Personal Websites yesterday and now today we come across this Selling Power article – Blogs: Are You There Yet? This phenomenon is more than a fad, it appears to be a growing trend: “Blogs are, generally speaking, genuine,” says Krane. “A blog is one person’s voice. How someone blogs is probably an indication of how that person speaks and conducts him or herself in general.”Many prospective employees also keep blogs as a portfolio – especially in this town [San Francisco],” says Krane. “Having a blog shows that you are on the cutting edge of Web 2.0. It’s commonplace for a job candidate to… Read More
Continue ReadingOne of Them Must Be Wrong
A quote from my post on Tuesday: And don’t assume its about money. When someone quits her job, 89 percent of managers assume it was over money, whereas 91 percent of the workers who quit say it was anything but, Murphy said. From a CareerJournal article titled Opportunity Knocks, And It Pays a Lot Better: Managers like to say employees leave companies because of bad bosses or lack of career growth. A new report suggests a more straightforward reason: money.In a survey of about 1,100 U.S. employees, 71% of top performers listed pay among the top three reasons they would consider leaving their employer. Yet in a sister survey of… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Handling Stress
You could argue that this week’s aptitude – Handling Stress – is a key component in almost every job. In sales, it is critical because the typical sales position involves multiple levels of stress. Whether it be presentations in front of many Directors and VP’s or dealing with an irate customer, sales presents a wide variety of stresses. Handling Stress This is a person’s ability to balance and defuse inner tensions and stresses which, if allowed to build up, could interfere with a person’s ability to perform up to their potential. It is not the person’s ability to handle stressful situations, but rather their ability to appropriately separate themselves from… Read More
Continue ReadingCandidates With Personal Websites
We may be early on this topic, but we have seen candidates with personal websites. Now, I must clarify – I’m not talking about MySpace profiles. I am referring to full-fledged, personal, web domains. My initial take on this approach is that it is rife with vanity. But I have to confess, I took some time to browse their website and learn more about them. Now I just caught up to this MarketingProfs.com article title What’s Your Google Identity? From the article: People are googling you and making decisions about you from what Google reveals. Whether you are an employee looking to advance in your company, a professional seeking your… Read More
Continue ReadingCandidate Questions
We always say that interviewing is a two-way street. Both the hiring company and the candidate have to be impressed with each other to continue the process. Either one can terminate the process at any time. That being said, BusinessWeek has an interesting article dedicated to candidates titled Ask The Right Question. The author provides a strategy to 3 styles of questions all candidates should ask in an interview: Here’s My Brain Working Questions My Turn Questions What Happens Now? Questions I’ll let the author lay out the strategy for the questions (which is quite well developed). One overly simplistic tip I will share from our experience – candidates should… Read More
Continue ReadingWork-Life Perception
Sales & Marketing Management has an quick-hitter of a story titled Motivational Forces in the Workplace. I thought we could keep the motivational/rewards riff going from this morning’s post, but this article is a quick rehash of a Monster.com study. The article is rather unremarkable except for this bullet point: Work-life balance matters more to women. Forty-one percent of women would refuse a job offer that provided no work hours flexibility. Only 26 percent of men would do the same. Still, once on the job, work-life issues flip-flop across gender lines. Forty percent of men say their current employer is not flexible enough regarding work-family balance, while only 28 percent… Read More
Continue ReadingEmployee Retention Wake-Up Call
Speaking Up Helps Keep Star Workers appears in one of our local papers – the Pioneer Press. The article discusses a topic we have addressed before that many employers assume is not active in their company – job hunting. In case you were in doubt, some stats from the article: A recent workplace survey of 16,237 workers by Leadership IQ, a leadership training and research firm in Washington, D.C., found that nearly half the people regarded as stellar performers were actively trying to leave their current employers. That should grab every managers’ attention. 16,237 is a large sample size and 47% are actively looking to leave. Forty-seven percent of your… Read More
Continue ReadingA REAL Working Vacation
Ok, I had to read this abcnews.com article slowly – Need a New Job? Go On Vacation. To cut to the chase – people are using their vacation time to test drive a new career they would prefer to have. Vocation Vacation – what a great name – offers this service: the company offers more than 75 different career experiences all while your boss thinks you’re off sunning yourself on some sandy beach. We have encountered companies that are implementing various forms of trial-for-hire programs even amongst high end sales positions. From the company’s perspective, I think it is a great opportunity to make sure you hire the right person… Read More
Continue ReadingWhen Sales Job Postings Go Bad
We keep an eye on the sales employment ads so we are informed of trends in the market. I came across an ad that was innocuous enough in its title. Then I read the opening sentence: This is a job in our Customer Service Department that can lead to an outside sales position at our company. What does customer service and outside sales have to do with each other? Nothing…that is the problem. We have seen this trap before with some of our customers. The skills and aptitudes required for effective customer service are markedly different than the skills and aptitudes required for successful outside selling. This situation is exasperated… Read More
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