From CollegeRecruiter.com:

Generation Y a/k/a Millennials promise to:

1. Hold only productive meetings. Hallelujah!
2. Shorten the workday by focusing on productivity.
3. Bring back administrative assistants — even if Gen Y pays for them out-of-pocket and even if they’re virtual.
4. Redefine retirement by taking multiple mini-retirements.
5. They’ll find real mentors by teaching older workers about technology and in return be guided through office politics.
6. Put human back into human resources.
7. Promote people to management based on their managerial skills, not their seniority.
8. Continue to value what their parents have to offer because Gen Y respects their parents and their parents respect their Gen Y children.
9. Trade off potential raises and promotions for higher starting salaries.
10. Re-invent the performance reviews by increasing their frequency from semi-annual or even annual to on-the-spot.

I’m with them on number 1 and 2.

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$4.50 here in the Twin Cities.  According to this Pioneer Press story:

And if the price hits $4.50 per gallon, more than half of the commuters in the Twin Cities said they’ll be looking at changes in their daily commute.

The survey found commuters are most aggressive about looking for options in Atlanta, Dallas and the Twin Cities. They are slowest in San Francisco.

The gas price is a strong lever in sales recruiting right now, but you have to be prepared to discuss the reimbursement side of the equation.  We have noticed a definitive upclick in the discussion of mileage reimbursement/car allowance.  In fact, this topic is coming up in the first or second phone discussion.

Nationally, some 31 percent of 2,915 respondents indicated they’d be scoping out options once gas hits $4. That can include more flexible working hours, taking mass transit, telecommuting or other changes.

“Other changes” is where we step in.  Working closer to home or from home are important incentives in today’s market.  If your company does not have a remote workforce option, you need to implement one - it is that important for sales.  Second, use this option in your sourcing efforts.  I guarantee this topic is at the forefront of almost every salesperson’s mind.

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Here is a list you do not want your company to be on.  From MSN Money:

That reality is borne out in the results of MSN Money’s second annual Customer Service Hall of Shame, a ranking of companies with the worst customer service, based on a nationwide survey commissioned by MSN Money and conducted by Zogby International.

The winner, or is it loser?  Whatever, it is no surprise:

AOL Time Warner

A remarkable 47% of people who had an opinion of AOL’s customer service said it was “poor.” Analysts said that rating may have something to do with its effort to transition from an Internet service provider — where it still has more than 9.3 million paying subscribers — to an ad-supported Web portal.

I simply have never been a fan of AOL even though I have never been a customer of their’s.

The rest of the infamous list:

I am a customer of 4 of these companies, but one of them stands out for me as being the worst.  I won’t say who.

Sprint

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According to Albert Einstein, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  According to a recent post on Recruiting Trends and a 2007 survey from DDI & Monster regarding corporate hiring systems:

Less than 50% stated that they were satisfied with current selection systems. At least two-thirds expressed dissatisfaction with the efficiency of hiring systems, even with access to automation technology to help organize and track applicant information.

From our experience in the sales world, I would have to say those dissatisfied numbers are much higher when it comes to the results of their hiring system or process for salespeople.  So why not change the system?  It could be that they are comfortable with what they are doing or don’t think that there is a better way.  Any answer would only be speculation on my part, but it is quite clear from the survey that what they are doing, for the most part, isn’t working well.

In  the sales world I believe that using an applicant tracking system (ATS)  is not the right answer unless your sale always goes through an RFP/RFQ process.  Before you go off the deep end, hear me out.  In an ATS-structured process, you are not even considered an applicant until you enter your info into the system much like a company putting an RFP or RFQ out for bid responses.  If the candidate’s information doesn’t trip the right keywords, they may be missed all together.

But what if a top notch salesperson contacts you directly?  Are they even considered or do you tell them to apply online and you will review their information?  Would you want a salesperson that just goes along with the system, i.e. responds to the quote and waits for a call from you?  Or are you hiring them to get your value proposition in play with a new prospect?

So why not try something different and increase your likelihood of success?  This is the biggest hurdle we face as we move through our unique process with new customers.  Clients seem to get uncomfortable or nervous and want to revert back to their old habits.  I know that Einstein’s quote is often quoted, but the next time you are going to hire a salesperson, stop and review your system before you start down that same path.  Call us if you are stuck in that rut and not sure how to get out.  We would love to help you break the rut.

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Quick-hitter article here from HotJobs.com - Good-Paying Jobs Are Ample, But Training Is Critical.  The article is a fast read and worth your time, but here is what caught my attention:

The job market is always churning. About 7 million workers lose or leave jobs each quarter and, when the economy is growing, more than 7 million are added to payrolls. Companies hiring right now include makers of aircraft and medical equipment, shipbuilders and refiners of petroleum and sugar. At the same time, losses continue to sock the textile, apparel, auto and other industries.

7 million jobs churn each quarter.  That is a staggering number and helps to define what a large economy we have been blessed with here in the US.  But our economy is slow right now so where does this leave us?  From the article (my editing):

The current slowdown is expediting a trend in play for decades: a shift from jobs that produce goods to those that provide services, which are up to 80% of the total.

You can bet there will be lots of good jobs. They’ll be in health care, engineering, management consulting, accounting, education and legal services. Also needed will be sales representatives, executive assistants, carpenters, auto mechanics, truck drivers, nurses, office managers and more. On average, many will pay as much or more than those in manufacturing.

Three decades ago, earning a high school diploma was enough to land a job in a steel mill where a person could move up the ladder to a $30 an hour job. Only 41% of jobs were filled by workers with some college or a college degree.

Today, 60% of jobs are filled by those with more than a high school diploma, and that share will rise to about 70% by 2020.

Education will be the first step, specialized training will be the second.  Finding the right person for the position will be the same as it ever was (to quote the Talking Heads).

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Anesthesiologists.  From Forbes.com’s America’s Best- And Worst-Paying Jobs:

…the mean annual salary for America’s 31,030 anesthesiologists is $192,780, up 4.6% from a year earlier.

Not surprisingly, the top 9 jobs are all in the medical field (surgeon, orthodontists, etc.).

Oh yes, and the bottom end of the scale:

The lowest paid of all? People who cook, prepare and serve in fast-food joints, followed by dishwashers, busboys and the folks who shampoo your hair.

I am proud to say that I was a dishwasher in high school.  Technically, we called it a “dishlicker” and we were at the lowest end of the totem pole.  That is the type of job that should be on Dirty Jobs.  I can’t describe the funk that permeated my clothes.  Despite my mom’s extreme laundry efforts, she could not remove the odor.

Nasty.

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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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The Wall Street Journal provides an article that does a nice job of laying out the upcoming shortage of workers.  The focus is upon the different generations and the general drive behind each.  The article is rather rudimentary, but it provides a clean view of the problem.

First:

Americans of childbearing age simply are not producing enough kids to meet the economy’s future need for workers, notably in fast-growing fields such as medicine and engineering. The shortfall is coming largely because the fabled baby boom generation was so huge—75 million Americans born in the 18 years from 1946 to 1964—that no other generation can be expected to match it any time soon.

Ok, that point leads to this:

They are being replaced by two younger generations, each with its own desires regarding the opportunities and rewards available at work. The challenge for hiring managers is to figure out what these workers’ needs are, so that employers will be able to find them, hire them, and keep them on the job.

Retention is going to be a top business initiative over the next couple of decades which is a simply outcome of supply and demand.

The baby boomers: They place a heavy emphasis on work and successfully climbing the corporate ladder. Work is an anchor in their lives.

The Gen Xers, born between 1965 and 1980: They enjoy work but are more concerned about the work-life balance.

Generation Y, also known as Millennials, born after 1980 and now age 28 or younger: They often have different priorities than their Gen X and baby boomer counterparts, Smith says.

“Because of their reliance on technology, [Millennials] think they can work at any time and any place and believe they should be evaluated on the basis of work produced—not on how, when or where they got it done. Curiously, most Millennials want long-term relationships with employers, but on their own terms,” Smith says.

And finally, here is the rub we have seen between Baby Boomer managers and Gen Y employees:

The Millennials respond poorly to those who act in an authoritarian manner and those who expect to be respected due to higher rank alone. They believe they can learn quickly, take on significant responsibility and make major contributions far sooner than baby boomers think they can.

Exactly.  There has to be a balance between the boomer manager allowing the Gen Y worker to grow quickly in the role and the Gen Y worker not expecting too much, too fast.  There is distinct tension between these two goals.

As they see, read the entire thing.

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The online job posting statistics provide a look at general hiring trends…I think.  My question is always in regards to which online boards are being tracked.  We are seeing a marked migration away from the big boards to the still-developing niche boards.

That migration may be skewing the data from this Inc.com article - I’m not certain.  Nonetheless, the year-over-year tracking of the big boards is still noteworthy (emphasis mine):

The number of online job postings last month declined 16.4 percent from a year ago, the Conference Board reported Friday.

In total, there were 2,591,500 new jobs posted online in April, with healthcare and management accounting for more than 450,000.

Alaska continued to lead the online job market last month, followed by Nevada and Massachusetts, while the sharpest declines were reported in Maryland, Vermont, and Connecticut.

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I haven’t heard this term before, but I absolutely love it.  From the Wall Street Journal’s How Stay-at-Home Moms Are Filling an Executive Niche:

The decision among some highly educated women to stay home with children is sparking a countertrend: The rise of the mommy “SWAT team.” The acronym, for “smart women with available time,” is one mother’s label for all-mom teams assembled quickly through networking and staffing firms to handle crash projects. Employers get lots of voltage, cheap, while the women get a skills update and a taste of the professional challenges they miss.

What a fantastic idea.  The differentiation:

Skilled workers taking temp projects isn’t new, of course. What’s different about these teams is that they’re available on short notice because the women are usually at home; they tend to work cheap because their main motive is to keep their skills fresh; and they’re often extraordinarily well-qualified, having left the work force voluntarily when their careers were on the ascent.

The work world becomes more flexible every day.

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