One of the real draws of working at a smaller company is the opportunity to have direct access to management-level decisions.  As larger companies trim their payrolls, skilled employees will enter the candidate pool.  These candidates may find a smaller company provides new opportunities for their personal skill set.

The Wall Street Journal discusses this topic in Moving to a Small Company Can Lead to Big Rewards:

That close proximity to upper management often leads to quicker action. Mr. Macdonald, the former Bristol-Myers worker, says he has the power to get things done more expeditiously at his new employer, Acorda Therapeutics Inc. in Hawthorne, N.Y. “There’s less bureaucracy,” he says. “Decisions are made without having to go through a number of layers of approval.”

Being able to influence a company’s bottom line is what led Scott Ruthfield to join WhitePages.com Inc. in April as vice president of engineering and technology. “Everybody plays a core role, so if you do a good job, you are directly contributing to way the business is going to succeed,” says the former Amazon.com Inc. manager.

And here is the pull quote that gets to the alluring aspect of a small company (emphasis mine):

Small-company converts also mention the room to gain experience in new practice areas—or to return to the heart of a business—as another plus. “You get divorced from the nuts and bolts of operating a business when you work for large companies,” says Mike Barnes, a newly hired logistics executive at Halton Co., a provider of construction equipment in Portland, Ore. Mr. Barnes says the depth of involvement he has at his new firm has another upside: A level of job satisfaction he says he hasn’t felt in a long time.

We have had much success placing large-company candidates into small company positions.  A common theme amongst the candidates is a bureaucracy burnout from the larger company culture.  The opportunity to have an impact on the direction of a company provides an incentive that is less attainable at the larger company.

Granted, there are drawbacks to be addressed, mainly compensation (especially benefits) and resources.  These items have to be addressed in the early stages, but we have found the upside of our smaller customers to be of great interest to large-company candidates.

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I got a kick out of this - I’m looking through resumes online and I came across one that was listed as confidential.  Candidates put a title to their resume that often says “Experienced Sales Professional” or something of that sort.  The candidate can then hide their personal contact information (name, address, phone, etc.) and their current employer.  This person did that.

Except the title for their resume was their actual name as in “John Doe’s resume.”

Oops.

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Seriously, Forbes ranked the top 25…is there anything Forbes won’t rank?  Yet, I am a sucker and watched the slide show.  I’ll speed it up for you a bit and provide the top 5:

1. Boulder, CO
2. Bethesda-Gaithersburg-Frederick, MD
3. Ithaca, NY
4. ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN
5. Corvallis, OR

I won’t mention which one of those towns is my hometown…well, I spent the first 5 years of my life there.  Lee says that doesn’t count.  Unfortunately for him, the Twin Cities did not make the list.

In all seriousness, I’m not sure if there is much value to this type of list.  Clearly the top towns are host to a major university which stands to reason they would have a higher rating.  The mildly interesting point to me is how these different college towns rated against each other.

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I received an email from Amy Quinn pointing me to this article - Where the Talent Is: 100 Sites to Find the Elite in Any-Given-Field.  This is a comprehensive list of job boards and sites for employers looking to hire in specific fields (sales included).

Here are the sales boards listed in the article:

52. Sales Jobs: Sign up with this site and get access to hundreds of thousands of resumes from qualified and experienced sales professionals to help you find a match for your company.
53. Sales Trax: This professional sales community is a great place to meet and talk with potential sales employees. Find salespeople interested in everything from pharmaceuticals to financial sales.
54. Sales Careers Online: This rapidly growing site gives you access to comprehensive resume searches as well as the ability to post jobs online.
55. Hot Sales Jobs: Find great sales and marketing professionals on this site. You’ll be able to post jobs and get advice on finding the best sales professionals out there.
56. Power Sales Jobs: Find top sales producers with this simple website. here, you’ll get free job postings for 30 days where you can describe just what you’re looking for to help you make a better match.
57. Sales Jobs.net: Search through thousands of qualified applicants on this sales employment site. With so many candidates to choose from, you’re guaranteed to find someone that can help you meet your sales goals this year.
58. Insurance Sales Jobs: If selling insurance is what your business specializes in, then take advantage of this site. You’ll get access to resumes from thousands of experienced insurance sales professionals.
59. Software Sales Jobs: Software is big business in our high tech world. Find salespeople who can help you move your software with the help of this site.
60. Just Tech Sales: Whatever high tech products you’re selling, you can find experienced salespeople with this site. Post a job or search through available resumes.

That’s a good list of sites that perhaps you have not visited yet.  There are 91 more sites listed in the article - may I suggest a bookmark?

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We’ve been working through a fair amount of initial sourcing activities the past week or so and I’ve come across something that catches my attention.  I’m seeing more and more posted resume/cover letters that state what a candidate is not looking for in their next position.

No telemarketing positions.

No work-at-home schemes.

Not interested in travel.

Must have benefit plan or not interested.

I understand the desire to be focused in a job search, but I notice a negative effect when I read through these types of statements.  Immediately, I start thinking about what other restrictions may be part of this candidate’s baggage.

I suspect there are many companies out there approaching any new resume listing with the chance to become a millionaire by selling weight-loss drugs for just 2 hours a week from your home computer.  Annoying for sure, but I don’t think an introduction to an online resume is necessarily the best forum for voicing restrictions.

Sales candidates who take this approach always give me pause.

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Lee sent this short article to me - Paying Recruits to Interview?  I’m woefully out of touch on this one:

Notching Interviews: Why would corporate recruiters pay candidates to interview for jobs? To Los Gatos Hills, California-based Notchup.com, the answer is simple: Companies ideally will find top candidates, so the money will be well spent. The startup job board adds a twist to the traditional online job search by enabling job-seeking professionals to name their price at which they will agree to interview with prospective employers. Notchup.com says employers benefit by being able to target passive candidates. The company says its tools include optional background checks on candidates and a money-back guarantee on all interviews.

I wonder if this is a natural outcropping of the impending labor shortage.  Imagine demand for candidates is so great that companies will pay for an interview!  The day may be closer at hand than you think.

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BusinessWeek.com offers up the Best Corporate Practices 2008 which is a fascinating slide show if you have time to view it.  This is from the opening of the article:

In fact, much of the gap between the best and worst management practices can be described by that word: trust. At one point as a corporate human resources leader during the dot-com boom, our company switchboard was bombarded with calls from recruiters, seeking to pull away our sharpest technical talent. Our hardworking phone operators did their best to deter search consultants looking to make contact with talent by any means possible, but it wasn’t always easy.

…

We said to our phone operators, “Let the calls through.” We said to our technical folks, “Talk to these guys. Write down everything they say. Learn as much as you can about the jobs they’re recruiting for, the projects our competitors are working on, and the salaries they’re paying. Fill out this form every time you pick a recruiter’s brain, hand us the form, and we’ll pay you $50.” Presto—some of our folks made a bunch of money in a short time, we learned boatloads about the hiring activity around town, and most important, we enrolled our employees in helping the company meet its goals.

Clever.  You know, recruiting is often a cat-and-mouse endeavor that involves multiple moves on multiple levels.  My father likes to say that some people play checkers and others play chess.  This company’s defensive approach was a smart tactic during the tech boom of the late ’90s.

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I’m willing to guess that a majority of New Year Resolutions involve weight loss and career/job changes.  If so, then January is the apex of retention within a company.  In sales recruiting, we typically see January as one of the premium months for finding sales talent.  Salespeople have completed the previous year’s commission plan and are staring at an empty commission plan.

In other words, this is an excellent time to upgrade your sales team.

The time to hire is still extended right now in spite of the dire economic predictions of the media.  This week’s Herman Trend Alert email speaks to this point:

The activity of job boards is a predictor of the future of the economy. The number of jobs posted is a forward leading indicator of near-term economic growth. “Our level of job postings is at an all-time high,” said Ted Daywalt President and CEO of VetJobs.com, the leading job board for veterans and their families in the United States.

Job boards are involved with organizations just after the decision to add employees. They are the main medium by which employers now advertise for new and replacement workers.

Daywalt details that in 2002, VetJobs barely had 2,000 jobs posted per day. Now the average is 24,000 active jobs per day and he sees his numbers rising. He expects the number of daily active postings to grow to 30,000 later in 2008.

VetJobs’ increase mirrors the marketplace as a whole; recently, the Conference Board reported that the number of jobs advertised online in 2007 grew by 9.7 percent over 2006.

Though there are no statistics to separate new from replacement postings, VetJobs’ level of increase indicates expansion. Since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics states that voluntary employee turnover has remained constant over the last quarter, we can safely assume that most of the increases are attributable to new job creation.

The increase in job postings reflects the level of corporate confidence. That’s why we at The Herman Group feel comfortable in forecasting a slowdown, rather than a recession in the U.S. economy for 2008.

For the last five years, the time between Christmas and New Years for job boards was “totally dead”. This year, VetJobs signed on a number of major corporations and their mid-size clients called because they need to hire people “right away”.

A few of the hottest job categories: information technology, engineering, water management, computer numerically controlled (CNC) machining, healthcare, and service industries.

“Many companies would like to expand, but are holding off because they can’t find the skilled people they need”, reports Daywalt.

If you are looking to hire, now is the time to start the process.  And we can help.

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Older article here from our local StarTribune paper - Sales Skills Hiring Managers Seek.  There are some interesting points from the quotes in the article, but one thing that stands out to me are these quotes from different recruiters:

…and have achieved in athletics.

and

A sports background also helps.

This background is couched around the competitive nature of sports transferring to successful selling.  I’m not sure I buy into that correlation, but it does intrigue me.  I played sports throughout high school and college and can envision many self-centered teammates I would not recommend for any sales position.  Still, I am probably over-focused on the exceptions.

However, I do find these pieces of information far more valuable:

“In general, however, companies are seeking salespeople who listen well, ask pertinent questions and bring creativity to the sales process.”

He also seeks people with a good emotional quotient or EQ. “You need to understand your personality style and that of others to be successful in sales,” he adds.

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Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are widely employed on corporate websites and by recruiting agencies.  I understand the automated efficiency of a computer program in handling a large number of applicants.  Yet, I don’t find them helpful for hiring salespeople.

When we place an ad for a sales opportunity, we provide the option to email or call for response.  We do not ask respondents to fill out an online form.

First off, if they send a resume (the most common response these days), I get the opportunity to see how they present their experience and abilities.  Formatting, presentation, flow…these are all pieces of information that can be gleaned from their resume.  Are there any errors?  This is their document that they prepared so I expect perfection, or close to it.  If they are entering data into a field, there is a higher probability for error.

Second, we give extra credit to respondents who call.  I simply like the fact that a salesperson would pick up the phone and call me to qualify the opportunity.  I should say qualify it before sending in a resume.  This approach hints at a salesperson who is not afraid of the phone, wants to qualify before completing a task and has confidence in their rapport-building abilities.  Believe me, the strong ones typically stand out from the first minute that you talk to them.

Those two considerations are neutralized by a highly-automated, ATS approach to sourcing.  Perhaps you are thinking that you would be swamped with applicants without the ATS.  My take - if you are being swamped you need to write tighter ads.  Hiring strong salespeople is difficult work, maybe the most difficult position to determine if you have the right person.  Don’t trade two of the most insightful aspects of sourcing for sterilized expediency.

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