As is so often the case in this economy, the market is sending mixed signals.  From one article on abcnews.com:

The economic strength, both in U.S. and international markets, plus cost cuts, higher rates and fuel surcharges led to a 33 percent increase in first-quarter profit. UPS boosted its full-year outlook when it pre-released its earnings two weeks ago.

And one paragraph later:

UPS Inc., also known as United Parcel Service, restructured its business over the last 18 months, cutting jobs in the process. The shipper doesn’t plan any significant hiring anytime soon, at least until the recovery is on more solid footing.

Jobless recovery anyone?  The difficulty is that hiring is a lagging indicator and it does appear that 2010 will be a slow hiring period in spite of a potential recovery in process.

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From the indeed.com blog:

For the first time in 2010, our Job Market Competition report shows all major metropolitan areas have fewer than 10 unemployed persons per job posting – a notable lessening of job competition since our last report.

Washington D.C. has only one unemployed per job posting, maintaining its first place position as the city with the least competition for jobs.  At the other end of the scale, Detroit moved up one place from the bottom position: it now has nine unemployed per job posting, an improvement from 13 earlier this year.

The post contains the top 5 and bottom 5 metro markets based on number of unemployed per job posting.  No surprise that D.C. is number 1 considering the ever-expanding government.  Did you ever think we would be at a point where moving below 10 unemployed people per opening was improvement?

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How is this for a spam approach to applicants?

You have been accepted for a high paying work from home job.

Click the link below to get all the information:

Click Here

Sincerely,

Hiring Manager

p.s. Please claim your position today or it will be given to the next applicant.

The “p.s.” line is fantastic.

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We’re an assessment company so you can imagine how adamant I am about assessing candidates (not just for sales positions either).  However, in sales it is crucial to use assessments to cut through the sales candidates’ well-developed social skills.  Unfortunately, many assessment tools focus on personality only which is not a reliable or repeatable predictor of sales success.

My experience has been that most people focus on big personalities when it comes to selling.  If the person is a good talker, tells funny stories, lights up the room, etc., then they must be a good salesperson.  The bigger the personality, the more they will sell.  Ok, I grant you that is oversimplifying it, but you get my point.  I have encountered it for years when working with hiring managers.

The issue becomes more pronounced when these same hiring managers employ a personality assessment only.  Now they look for big personalities with highly extroverted assessment results to confirm their gut-level decision to pursue a boisterous candidate.  Sales is a listening profession – asking the right questions, gathering information and directing decisions are the core competencies of sales success.

I always tell prospects who are using personality assessments that it is good they are using assessments.  They do tell you something of the candidate’s style that hiring managers can use in interviewing.  But if you want to know how they will perform in the role, you have to measure their skills, aptitudes and motivations.  These items are predictive of success and provide a detailed view of a salesperson’s abilities.

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I read a sales ad today that started with this line:

Are you a career-minded salesperson…

What does that mean?  I bet if I asked 10 people I would get 10 different answers.  I call sentences like this “throw away lines” because they do nothing for the ad.  It is vitally important when writing ads to only include sentences that describe the position and the type of person who will excel within it.

Anything else is wasted space.

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From the Herman Group newsletter:

According to the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Surveys, the US will have a year-over-year increase of about five percent with a record-tying 73 percent of employers keeping staff levels stable. Twelve of the 13 industry sectors surveyed report positive net employment outlooks, meaning employers in most industry sectors plan to add staff during the second quarter.

The only sector expecting negative growth is Government, however with the passage of the recent healthcare legislation, we believe that may not be an accurate forecast. Moreover, among the 201 local metropolitan statistical areas surveyed, “94 percent indicate a positive or neutral net employment outlook, indicating cautious optimism is becoming more widespread geographically”.

I also believe that negative growth prediction in government “may not be accurate.”  In fact, I know it isn’t.  Anyway, it is a mildly optimistic outlook for the remainder of this year.  The US economy always comes back from a recession so the doom-and-gloom suggestion that we are in the next depression is overstated.  However, the anti-business disposition of this current government has definitely delayed the recovery process.

Nonetheless, we are starting to see some activity trickling in again in our business which is a great sign (at least for us).

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The title of this post is one that brings pause to many people.  Are we headed towards a double dip recession?  I don’t think we can say one way or another quite yet.  However, today’s numbers are not good:

The number of Americans filing for initial unemployment insurance surged to just below the 500,000 level last week, and have climbed more than 12% over the past two weeks, the government said Thursday.

…

The 4-week moving average of initial claims was 473,750, up 6,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 467,750.

I have talked to many companies who are in a holding mode for hiring.  Thankfully, I have not encountered as many who are looking at any further layoffs.  I take that to be a good, but not great, sign.

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I’ve been busy over the past week or two handling a myriad of business topics and tasks which has decreased my blogging time dramatically.  One item has come up during this time at one of our customers – a battle of wills amongst managers.  This is no small battle, it has turned into an ongoing war for which I am now in the midst of the battlefield.

Without going into specifics, I can tell you where we start in these situations – motivations.  The first place to look when there is interpersonal conflict within an office team is the motivation pattern for each individual.  In the instance with our customer, we have two people with almost polar opposite motivational patterns.

Here is why this matters – neither person can understand where the other is coming from, especially in terms of decision-making.  Each person finds the other one to be inconsistent, off-base and…well, wrong.  The relationship has deteriorated into acerbic communication.

Unfortunately, this customer did not assess this employee when they were in the hiring phase.  Instead, they made an emotional hire.  This employee has the skills to succeed in this role, but the hiring manager was never informed of the employee’s motivational pattern.  If he had been, he would have known the differences between the two of them and he could have managed through them.

I’m not sure the relationship is salvageable.  I am certain it was avoidable.

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I just read an ad for a mid-level sales position.  Interesting part was the location listed in the ad:

Milwaukie, WI

The hiring company is based in Fresno, CA which is, I suppose, in relative proximity to Milwaukie, OR.  However, the Wisconsin town of the same name is spelled “Milwaukee.”

In hiring, details matter.

(And wouldn’t you think Monster would have a checker of some form for these errors?)

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From abcnews.com regarding the “jobs proposal” working its way through Washington:

Obama’s proposal has an additional provision that would award $5,000 tax credits to companies that add workers in 2010.

Honestly, has anyone in this administration ever run a private company?  I’m no economist, but my experience is this – companies hire more workers when revenue increases (i.e. growth).  One-time minimal tax credits do not spawn hiring booms.

This fact puts the pressure solely on the sales department to find new prospects and close more deals in this depressed economy.  No small feat.

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