The days of posting your employment ad on the weekend are over. I think the whole weekend approach is a hangover from the Sunday paper days of job hunting. Nowadays, few – few – people look for a job on the weekend. According to The Career News newsletter (sorry, no link): In a trend that has held true for three years, job hunting takes off on Monday, peaks on Tuesday and is still very busy on Wednesday, according to Monster.com. Job hunt traffic on Tuesday is 28 percent higher than on Friday, said Steve Sylven, a spokesman for Monster. EQuest, which manages job boards for companies, used to see Tuesdays… Read More
Continue ReadingTightening The Ad
I’ve been reading through many sales employment ads recently and am seeing a trend – the ads are written tighter. A couple of examples: -Minimum of 5 years of related public accounting and/or corporate sales -A minimum of two years’ business development experience in a pharmaceutical and/or CRO biotechnology, or drug development company. Nothing wrong with this approach since the candidate pool is still relatively large due to the slow economy. One thing to be sure of – the labor pool will tighten up again soon. At that point, it is wiser to move these requirements into preferences and look outside of your industry for transferable skills. One interesting point… Read More
Continue ReadingWriting Clear Ads
Another odd line from a sales ad: make direct fact-to-face sales calls I did a double-take on that one, “fact-to-face”…is that some new business lingo with which I am not familiar? I think it is a typing error, but even if it isn’t, ads are better served with common language (i.e. no buzzwords/phrases).
Continue ReadingRun The Spell Check
This job summary is from a sales ad for a FORTUNE 500 company: Job Summary Responsible for developing and maintaining customer relationships within the transportatin industry. Is that unbelievable? The irony here is that this company probably holds candidate resumes to a higher standard than their own ad. One other thing – a one line job summary is probably too short. I like quick-read ads, but there should be some specificity to the summary. And no spelling errors.
Continue ReadingEven Big Companies Make Mistakes
This is from a sales ad for a large U.S. company: Qualifications To be considered for this role, candidates must meet the following criteria: Bachelor Perhaps that is a truncating problem, but I am feeling left out as a married man.
Continue ReadingA Common Sales Ad Spec
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?
Continue ReadingOnline Job Movement
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.… Read More
Continue ReadingA Line For Every Sales Ad
A bullet point from a Business Development Sales Position ad: Demonstrated ability to persevere and remain positively motivated when faced with negative response or rebuff from the customer What they are describing is the ability to handle rejection. I think there is no more important differentiation between average salespeople and sales superstars. That quoted line could, or maybe should, be in every sales ad.
Continue ReadingWarning: Dinosaur Title Writer
I just read an employment ad for a sales position that had this for the title: Salesmen Honestly, how out of touch can you be?
Continue ReadingAssonance Alert: Archive Annual Awards
Well, I should qualify that; I suppose an Oscar, Grammy, Tony, etc. is a timeless award. However, I just read an employment ad from a large recruiting firm that had this bolded statement at the top: #1 Ranked Executive Search Firm – January 2006 January 2006? My first thought was who beat them out for the past 2 years. Maybe they have drastically declined in some way? Call me a minimalist, but I prefer to get right to the meat in an employment ad. In fairness to this firm, this was an internal hire. Still, I would think they would have a bit more sense to remove that statement since… Read More
Continue Reading