{"id":2199,"date":"2009-12-15T14:45:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-15T20:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2009\/12\/swamped-by-applicants\/"},"modified":"2009-12-15T14:40:20","modified_gmt":"2009-12-15T20:40:20","slug":"swamped-by-applicants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2009\/12\/swamped-by-applicants\/","title":{"rendered":"Swamped By Applicants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am hearing more discussions about incredibly large responses to sales job postings in this present economy.\u00a0 Some of the companies I talk to are overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of resumes they receive.\u00a0 I went back to look at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.selectmetrix.com\/Newsletters\/2005\/2005_Feb_2.html\" target=\"_blank\">an old article<\/a> we wrote back in 2005 when the economy was in a much stronger position.\u00a0 In today\u2019s economy, the points are even more applicable:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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.\u00a0 If your sale involves many competitors, state in your ad that the successful candidate is able to close deals in a competitively crowded market.\u00a0 You get the idea \u2013 stay focused on the successes you desire from the salesperson in this role.\u00a0 The primary goal of the ad should be to move the sales superstar to respond.\u00a0 They should see themselves, or better yet their abilities, in the ad \u2013 the skills they possess today, their motivations to succeed and the parameters for success in the position.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The key is always to write the ad with the ideal salesperson in mind.\u00a0 Often I read ads that are clearly just job descriptions posted my HR on a job board.\u00a0 Some are amazingly bad \u2013 listing amount of weight one has to lift, detailed dental insurance plans, obtuse software references.\u00a0 There is a time an a place for these things, but not in the approach ad.<\/p>\n<p>I always tell our clients to view the hiring process as a sales call.\u00a0 Imagine a salesperson cold calls you and starts doing a detailed data dump about a product or service.\u00a0 The salesperson doesn\u2019t even qualify you for need, they just start rolling.\u00a0 I find overwritten sales employment ads elicit the same response from me.<\/p>\n<p>The better approach is to think of your ideal salesperson when constructing the ad and write the ad using the <em>most salient<\/em> points to illustrate the position.\u00a0 This will keep your writing to a minimum while staying on topic.<\/p>\n<p>And the reason why this is important is defined in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/managing\/content\/nov2009\/ca20091124_282104.htm\" target=\"_blank\">this Businessweek.com article<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Such employees are taking a &#8220;scattershot&#8221; 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Write a better ad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am hearing more discussions about incredibly large responses to sales job postings in this present economy.\u00a0 Some of the companies I talk to are overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of resumes they receive.\u00a0 I went back to look at an old article we wrote back in 2005 when the economy was in a much stronger position.\u00a0 In today\u2019s 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.\u00a0 If your sale involves many competitors, state in your ad that the successful candidate is able to close&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2009\/12\/swamped-by-applicants\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16,15,5],"tags":[1461,472,330,596,38,273],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-zt","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2199"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2200,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199\/revisions\/2200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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