We are sourcing many different positions right now so my antennae are up regarding resumes, phone calls and emails. At times, the responses can be overwhelming. Or underwhelming. Just yesterday I received a stammering voicemail about a position in which the candidate said they were going to send an email with their resume. I’m still waiting. I received another call a couple weeks ago in which the candidate wanted to fax a resume to me for a technical position. I told him he could email it to me instead. He said he doesn’t have email. It seems apparent to me that their is no more odd time in a hiring… Read More
Continue ReadingDoin’ Time On The North Side
Minnesota is not only a beautiful state to live in, we apparently have a popular federal prisons up here too. Jeffrey Skilling of Enron “fame” is going to do his time up here. According to the Pioneer Press, we have had some other infamous prisoners in the state: Former television evangelist Jim Bakker (convicted of bilking followers) Richard Miller, the first FBI agent convicted of spying Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, terrorist linked to Osama bin Laden Presidential fringe candidate Lyndon LaRouche (fraud, tax evasion) Comedian Tim Allen (cocaine trafficking in his early 20s) I don’t think that list is going to make it to the Chamber of Commerce literature.
Continue ReadingCandidates With Blogs
All right, we posted on Candidates with Personal Websites yesterday and now today we come across this Selling Power article – Blogs: Are You There Yet? This phenomenon is more than a fad, it appears to be a growing trend: “Blogs are, generally speaking, genuine,” says Krane. “A blog is one person’s voice. How someone blogs is probably an indication of how that person speaks and conducts him or herself in general.”Many prospective employees also keep blogs as a portfolio – especially in this town [San Francisco],” says Krane. “Having a blog shows that you are on the cutting edge of Web 2.0. It’s commonplace for a job candidate to… Read More
Continue ReadingOne of Them Must Be Wrong
A quote from my post on Tuesday: And don’t assume its about money. When someone quits her job, 89 percent of managers assume it was over money, whereas 91 percent of the workers who quit say it was anything but, Murphy said. From a CareerJournal article titled Opportunity Knocks, And It Pays a Lot Better: Managers like to say employees leave companies because of bad bosses or lack of career growth. A new report suggests a more straightforward reason: money.In a survey of about 1,100 U.S. employees, 71% of top performers listed pay among the top three reasons they would consider leaving their employer. Yet in a sister survey of… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Handling Stress
You could argue that this week’s aptitude – Handling Stress – is a key component in almost every job. In sales, it is critical because the typical sales position involves multiple levels of stress. Whether it be presentations in front of many Directors and VP’s or dealing with an irate customer, sales presents a wide variety of stresses. Handling Stress This is a person’s ability to balance and defuse inner tensions and stresses which, if allowed to build up, could interfere with a person’s ability to perform up to their potential. It is not the person’s ability to handle stressful situations, but rather their ability to appropriately separate themselves from… Read More
Continue ReadingPowerPoint Muggings
I must fall in the masochistic side of PowerPoint – I actually enjoy PowerPoint presentations. CareerJournal offers this article – Tips for PowerPoint — Please Spare Us – which comments on many pet peeves regarding Microsoft’s presentation software. Despite the barbs: …there are an estimated 30 million PowerPoint presentations given each day around the world… Some times I think people prefer to simply be contrarians to the status quo. 30 million presentations can’t be wrong, can they? PowerPoint proponents say slideware doesn’t bore people, people bore people. Oh do I agree with that statement. I wouldn’t castigate the program just because some people use it poorly. I have sat through… Read More
Continue ReadingCandidates With Personal Websites
We may be early on this topic, but we have seen candidates with personal websites. Now, I must clarify – I’m not talking about MySpace profiles. I am referring to full-fledged, personal, web domains. My initial take on this approach is that it is rife with vanity. But I have to confess, I took some time to browse their website and learn more about them. Now I just caught up to this MarketingProfs.com article title What’s Your Google Identity? From the article: People are googling you and making decisions about you from what Google reveals. Whether you are an employee looking to advance in your company, a professional seeking your… Read More
Continue ReadingCandidate Questions
We always say that interviewing is a two-way street. Both the hiring company and the candidate have to be impressed with each other to continue the process. Either one can terminate the process at any time. That being said, BusinessWeek has an interesting article dedicated to candidates titled Ask The Right Question. The author provides a strategy to 3 styles of questions all candidates should ask in an interview: Here’s My Brain Working Questions My Turn Questions What Happens Now? Questions I’ll let the author lay out the strategy for the questions (which is quite well developed). One overly simplistic tip I will share from our experience – candidates should… Read More
Continue ReadingWork-Life Perception
Sales & Marketing Management has an quick-hitter of a story titled Motivational Forces in the Workplace. I thought we could keep the motivational/rewards riff going from this morning’s post, but this article is a quick rehash of a Monster.com study. The article is rather unremarkable except for this bullet point: Work-life balance matters more to women. Forty-one percent of women would refuse a job offer that provided no work hours flexibility. Only 26 percent of men would do the same. Still, once on the job, work-life issues flip-flop across gender lines. Forty percent of men say their current employer is not flexible enough regarding work-family balance, while only 28 percent… Read More
Continue ReadingEmployee Retention Wake-Up Call
Speaking Up Helps Keep Star Workers appears in one of our local papers – the Pioneer Press. The article discusses a topic we have addressed before that many employers assume is not active in their company – job hunting. In case you were in doubt, some stats from the article: A recent workplace survey of 16,237 workers by Leadership IQ, a leadership training and research firm in Washington, D.C., found that nearly half the people regarded as stellar performers were actively trying to leave their current employers. That should grab every managers’ attention. 16,237 is a large sample size and 47% are actively looking to leave. Forty-seven percent of your… Read More
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