I am hearing more discussions about incredibly large responses to sales job postings in this present economy.  Some of the companies I talk to are overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of resumes they receive.  I went back to look at an old article we wrote back in 2005 when the economy was in a much stronger position.  In today’s economy, the points are even more applicable:

If your ideal sale starts at the VP level, state in your ad that a needed skill is the ability to communicate at the VP level.  If your sale involves many competitors, state in your ad that the successful candidate is able to close deals in a competitively crowded market.  You get the idea – stay focused on the successes you desire from the salesperson in this role.  The primary goal of the ad should be to move the sales superstar to respond.  They should see themselves, or better yet their abilities, in the ad – the skills they possess today, their motivations to succeed and the parameters for success in the position.

The key is always to write the ad with the ideal salesperson in mind.  Often I read ads that are clearly just job descriptions posted my HR on a job board.  Some are amazingly bad – listing amount of weight one has to lift, detailed dental insurance plans, obtuse software references.  There is a time an a place for these things, but not in the approach ad.

I always tell our clients to view the hiring process as a sales call.  Imagine a salesperson cold calls you and starts doing a detailed data dump about a product or service.  The salesperson doesn’t even qualify you for need, they just start rolling.  I find overwritten sales employment ads elicit the same response from me.

The better approach is to think of your ideal salesperson when constructing the ad and write the ad using the most salient points to illustrate the position.  This will keep your writing to a minimum while staying on topic.

And the reason why this is important is defined in this Businessweek.com article:

Such employees are taking a “scattershot” approach to job hunting, sending resumes for openings whether they are qualified or not. That can create headaches for an HR organization. One executive I met with recently told me he had received 200 resumes for a top managerial position. Twenty of them were excellent, but the rest were well-crafted resumes of people who were in no way qualified for the job. Better filtering systems are going to be essential to streamline the hiring process and keep time and costs in check.

Write a better ad.

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“Generation Unretired” according to this BusinessWeek.com article.  That is a new term to me.  According to the article:

The AARP says that 8 out of 10 baby boomers will work part- or full-time past retirement age. That’s 64 million unretiring Americans, the biggest demographic shift in the American workforce since WWII—and 93% of the growth in the American labor market from now until 2016, according to the Pew Research Center.

This trend is one that has been in the making for some time.  The current recession and housing bubble burst has only exacerbated the trend.  Clearly there will be new management techniques needed to handle the Gen U employees.  The article illustrates some excellent hiring suggestions, but this one stood out to me:

Define Roles. How is the former senior vice-president of a multinational going to feel about reporting to a project manager? Your Gen U staff may need to report to others with fewer years of business experience, yet more advanced or specialized skills. While you may not supervise the prospective Gen Uer, it may helpful to engage in some of the interviews so that you better understand the mindset of various Gen Uers.

(You’ll want to be sure that your less senior staff is not threatened or that the more senior member is not threatening. It works both ways.)

There in lies the tension, doesn’t it?  Later in the article comes this management point:

Remember that it’s an upside-down world for retired executives returning to the workplace: Their junior colleagues are actually “senior,” and they are reporting to managers who have far less experience than they do. As a result, Gen U hires may not be feeling entirely secure about their position. Micromanage them and many may feel particularly boxed in. Give them the benefit of the doubt—and watch what can happen. Often, strategic thinking that is the Gen Uer’s greatest asset.

The next decade will provide a unique management landscape for Gen X as we ascend into the majority of the  management ranks.

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The Great Recession roars on during this holiday season.  Our company is focused on sales hiring, both assessing candidates for our customers and running full recruiting processes.  The hiring outlook is of great importance to us and a topic I try to track closely.

That being said, this abcnews.com article provides a mixed bag (emphasis mine):

The November outlook by the National Association for Business Economics, which is set to be released Monday, shows economists expect net employment losses to bottom out in the first quarter of next year. Employers are seen starting to add to their payrolls after that.

I would be more comforted by these economists if I didn’t read so many unemployment stories that are saturated with phrases like “economists were surprised by the numbers….”  However, any possibility of recovery is a welcome thought.  It does appear that the hiring environment will be reserved:

But even if companies do start restaffing next spring, they aren’t expected to ramp up hiring very quickly. Some 7.3 million jobs have been lost since December 2007, according to NABE. Of the 48 panelists surveyed, 61 percent do not expect a complete recovery of those lost jobs until 2012. And they expect the unemployment rate will remain “stubbornly high,” averaging 9.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010.

“Stubbornly high” should be in quotes.  I would have used the adverb “dangerously,” but that is me.  One point to make here is that strong salespeople are a valuable asset to any company and even moreso during depressed revenue times.

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From ABCnews.com:

The 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates, by percentage, are:

1. North Dakota 4.2

2. Nebraska 4.9

3. South Dakota 5.0

4. Montana 6.4

5. Vermont 6.5

6. Utah 6.5

7. Virginia 6.6

8. Iowa 6.7

9. New Hampshire 6.8

10. Kansas 6.8

I’m guessing many of these states are dominated by agricultural professions which are obviously less effected by corporate employment.

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Every week more numbers come out to reveal another level of ugliness in this economy.  Today comes this article from CNNMoney.com.  The state that speaks volumes:

Every state had an unemployment rate in October that was higher than a year ago, and every state has lost jobs over the course of the year.

The recovery from this recession is going to take a long time as the hole keeps getting deeper.  I think it is safe to say that the unemployment rate is higher then what is being reported:

Unemployment rates, which are taken from a separate survey, tend to rise even as the employers start hiring again, because the survey only counts people who are looking for work. When times are bad, many people become discouraged and give up their job search, so they are not counted in the unemployment data.

We’ve seen this first-hand in our business as one of our customers simply stopped their salesperson search and decided to hunker down until the economy turns.  I certainly understand the approach as long as your competitors are taking the same approach.  If one of them is well-funded, they may realize that this is an opportune time to grab some market share.

I’ll close with a ridiculous headline from the same site:  Is TARP bailout helping the economy?

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Everything is so serious these days that it is nice to find some levity.  This is good – a company recently tracked aspects of 75,000 tech support calls.  They have some gender-related data (emphasis mine):

Male callers: 64% didn’t bother to read the instruction manual before calling for help.

Female callers: 24% didn’t bother to read the instruction manual before calling for help.

Male callers: 12% just needed to plug in their gear to “resolve their issue”.

Female callers: 7% ditto!

Female callers stayed on the phone with tech support 32% longer than male callers.

66% of tech support operators said they preferred dealing with female clients, anyway.

So according to the first point, 36% of guys did read the instructions?  I am embarrassed that so many did.  Time to check their man cards.

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Isn’t that the truth?  Here are some sobering points from a CNNMoney.com article:

Businesses with fewer than 50 employees cut another 75,000 workers in October, according to estimates released Wednesday from payroll processor ADP.

…

A telephone survey of 830 small business owners conducted by management consulting firm George S. May International from Oct. 28-30 found that 74% of the owners polled do not plan to increase their staff headcount in the next 90 days.

It has been our experience that sales hiring typically slows down during the holiday season, but companies often discuss their Q1 hiring plans with the intention of a fast start to the new year.  Unfortunately we simply aren’t hearing that talk this year.

The article provides insight into the small business world today (my bold):

After three years of growth, sales at small companies — those with annual revenue of less than $10 million — have declined by nearly 4% this year, according to a recent analysis by Sageworks, which tracks financial data at privately held companies.

There is one type of company that continues to hire – aggressive companies set to grab market share.  We are still working with them in assessing sales candidates at a reduced, but steady rate.

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Here is a job title of a job posting I read this morning on one of the 2 large boards:

SECRET CASH LOOPHOLE

Here is the opening line of the ad:

EARN AN EXTRA $1,000 a Week Working Less Than an Hour a Day, or $500 a Day Working 2-3 Hours a Day.

As an aside, it is a good policy to be highly suspicious of any position that leads with your ability to earn more doing less.  Perhaps couch potatoes are their top prospects.

I realize in a recession with extremely high unemployment that these types of positions materialize.  However, the two big boards are being overrun by these ridiculous ads.  It hasn’t taken long for these ads to swell up to 25-35% of the sales ads for any given day.

Clearly the job boards are trying to survive this economy, too, so I understand their desire for revenue.  However, the quality, and usefulness, of the two big boards is falling precipitously as these types of ads become a higher percentage of the listings.

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From a CNNMoney.com article this morning (emphasis mine):

Private sector employment fell more than expected in September, but the pace of job losses continued to slow, according to a report released Wednesday.

Automatic Data Processing, a payroll-processing firm, said private-sector employers cut 254,000 jobs in September, down from a revised 277,000 in August. It was the smallest monthly total since July 2008.

The decline was greater than the 200,000 loss economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast. But the difference was “not statistically meaningful,” according to Joel Prakken, an ADP spokesman and chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC.

“Not statistically meaningful” – tell that to the 54,000 people who lost their job this month.  Safe to say 10% unemployment is only a couple months away.

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I’m back from a needed break in this sour economy.  Everywhere I go I ask people about their business.  It is fairly consistent – something from “could be better” to “really down.”

That economic context allows some freedom for hiring companies to incorporate what I call contextual hiring techniques.  These are typically techniques that take longer to measure and allow the hiring company to see the salesperson in action.

Some examples:

Job Shadowing – just as it sounds, the candidate spends time with an existing sales rep to get an understanding of the position.  Peggy McKee at Medical Sales Recruiter has a post on this topic.  A friend of mine recently did this for a sales position that provided him the opportunity to ask many questions that would be difficult to ask in a formal interview.

I am a fan of this approach especially if the job market is slow.  It can be difficult if the market is hot and candidates have many opportunities.  However, this approach is a strong qualifier for the candidate’s interest.

The one caveat here is to pick the right salesperson for the candidate to shadow.  My friend learned many topics about the hiring company from the sales rep.  The topics that the rep offered up were too much of “inside baseball” to be sharing with a good candidate.

Trial Periods – yes, every position is technically a trial for the first 90 days.  What I’m talking about involves is a 30 – 60 day trial for observing a new salesperson.  Again, I’m a fan of this approach in this type of economy.

The main topics that can be ascertained in this time period is the candidate’s fit to your culture, his or her approach to the job and his or her interaction with you the boss.  Unless you have a short sales cycle, you won’t be able to observe them through the entire sales cycle.  You will have to monitor/observe their activity and extrapolate from that data.

It is a short window, but combining pre-hire assessments with a day of job shadowing and a trial period and you will have an in-depth understanding of your newly hired salesperson.

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