Those Lyin’ Candidates

Sales candidates have a propensity for…expanding the truth.  That fact could be stated differently, but let’s stick with this wording.  Elon Musk has accepted this fact, according to this Entrepreneur article.  His approach:  …the mogul asks his aspirants to tell him one of the most difficult problems they have had to solve or face in their life and how they managed to overcome it. According to the employer, the people who solved the problem know exactly how they did it and can describe the little details. However, those who lie will not be able to tell their story convincingly. This approach is effective and revealing.  We use a similar approach… Read More

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Bad Hiring Trend-Lack of Decisiveness

This HRE article addresses a worrisome trend in hiring today – slow hiring decisions. Decisiveness is the most important trait of successful hiring managers.  Lacking today because people are unsure of who they are hiring.  Can use assessments to assuage this fear. Gartner found that, in 2018, the average time between the initial job interview and the hiring manager making an offer was 33 days—an 84% increase since 2010. “The longer decision-making stage is causing a 16% reduction in candidates accepting offers,” says Lauren Smith, vice president of Gartner’s HR practice. “Ultimately, hiring managers are losing out on prime candidates because of this lag in decision-making.” In sales hiring, I… Read More

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5 Hiring Hacks For Full Employment

The job creation numbers are slowing down yet I don’t think that is due to a catastrophic economic slowdown.  The most recent jobs report shows that we have 50-year record low unemployment that is holding month-to-month.  The average hourly wage rate is rising at over 3%.  These factors are signs of a still-strong economy settling in to a cruise control speed for the time being. What is an ongoing problem is hiring…a problem due to a nearly full (100%) employment situation.  In fact, the latest jobs report revealed there are 6.7 million job openings and a total of only 6.4 million unemployed people available to fill them.  To say it… Read More

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Soft Skills Needed In Sales

The customer experience shift occurring right before our eyes is causing a sea change in sales.  The transactional sale is being consumed by a myriad of company websites offering products and solutions.  I think this description from the TTI blog deftly describes the trend in sales hiring: Only a few decades ago, a customer was mainly dependent on what was on supply. These days, a customer has so many options that the customer journey has become a key concept in the boardroom. Whoever delivers the most flexible, attractive, trustworthy and innovative product and/or support wins over the customer. The change is a supply issue – prospects have multiple solutions at… Read More

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Texting Is Trending

Texting is becoming the best communication channel in the business world.  It seems that phone calls are answered less often even when considering business lines.  The backdoor, surest communication channel is the cell phone and, specifically, texting. Texting/app messaging is the preferred communication tool for younger workers.  When you are hiring today, you need to keep this fact in mind.  I still find LinkedIn messaging to work well.  However, nothing works as well, or as quickly, as texting.  The response time is typically minutes or less.  The ability to send attachments and links has improved also. So is it a trend when dealing with Millennials?  According to HR Executive it… Read More

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1 Minute On The Internet

This information is difficult to comprehend.  These are the activities that happen in 1 minute on the Internet in 2019.  I don’t know how this information is calculated, the numbers are staggering.

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The Shrinking Attention Span vs. Relationship Sales

Here is a problem I have seen developing in sales over the past 10 years – shorter attention spans in salespeople having to deal with longer sales cycles. First, some background from a quick American Management Association: Whenever I teach students, I tell them, “Your chance of being successful has gone up exponentially because all you’ve got to do now is actually try to pay attention for more than five minutes.” Ok, that is disconcerting.  You can see where this is going.  The integration of the Internet into our lives has provided prospects with a unique ability to research your company, and more importantly, your solutions.  We often talk about… Read More

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Interviewed By A Robot

You’ve probably used the term “robot” to describe some of the people you have worked with or, in my case, some of the hiring managers with whom I interviewed over the years. But I’m not talking metaphorically now.  This BBC news article introduces (is that the right word?) us to Tengai, the job interview robot. Here is Tengai: If Tengai is here, surely our robot overlords are not far off in the future.  Can you imagine interacting with that robot on a serious job interview?  The European company that has created Tengai explains their thoughts on the robot’s interactions: The firm has spent the past four years building a human-like… Read More

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The Stressful Interview = Real World Sales

The BBC provides a look into a “stress interview” which is an interview approach that places an inordinate amount of stress on the candidate.  The goal is to learn how the candidate handles the pressure in an unexpected environment.  This approach should sound like a sales call.  It does to us and that is why we use some of these techniques in our structured interview process. From the BBC article(emphasis mine): “There are certainly different kinds of stress associated with many positions – achieving results, meeting deadlines, dealing with difficult clients, for example,” says Neal Hartman, senior lecturer in managerial communication at MIT. “The stress interview can create conditions to… Read More

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How To Fix Employee Conflicts

If you have been in leadership for any length of time, you have had to deal with employee conflicts amongst your team.  Some of the issues are trivial, others substantial, but what do you do to fix these problems?  The source of most conflict in the workplace flows from one specific area – Motivations. We assess motivations as part of our tools in helping companies hire and evaluate talent.  Motivations are an interesting aspect of our psyches.  They are deeply seated and have the power to drive behaviors, decision-making, and more.  The difficulty of motivations is that they are difficult to determine from simply interacting with someone.  Maybe if you… Read More

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