Survey: M.B.A.s Are The Biggest Cheaters. Grad students are quite the cheaters according to this CareerJournal.com article. More than half (56%) of M.B.A. candidates say they cheated in the past year. For the study, cheating was defined as plagiarizing, copying other students’ work and bringing prohibited materials into exams. This borders on the absurd: However, what’s holding many professors back from taking action on cheaters is the fear of litigation. How pathetic is that? If these students are willing to risk their academic career by cheating, what will they be willing to state on their resume once they join the work world?
Continue ReadingCover Letter Help
After all of my cover letter enjoyment, CareerJournal.com offers up a short article to assist candidates – Six Tips for Writing A Winning Cover Letter. Thank goodness for CareerJournal. Their last suggestion (my emphasis): Proofreading. Double-check the letter before you send it. When you’re applying for multiple jobs, it’s easy to send the wrong cover letter, or not change the company name. Make sure you have addressed the letter to the correct person and have included the correct company name and job position. Check also, of course, for spelling and grammar problems. And if you’re sending your resume via an attachment, don’t forget to attach it before you send it.… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Persistence
Hopefully you can see a pattern to the Aptitudes we are defining. We have progressed from Self-Starting Ability to Personal Drive to today’s installment – Persistence. Successful selling requires persistence whether it be calling through a list of names for a transactional sale to tracking a prospect over many months for a complex sale. We can measure this aptitude in salespeople. Persistence This is a person’s capacity to stay the course in times of difficulty. It is the ability to remain motivated to accomplish goals in the face of adversity or obstacles. A salesperson with a strong aptitude in this capacity will be able to remain motivated to achieve success… Read More
Continue ReadingEmail Covers Potpourri
Base on this subject line, I don’t think this person is lacking confidence: The god of office administration soon to be in Twin Cities! And here is an objective to avoid: My expirience and work ethic make me a great canidate for any opening you may have. I am looking for an opportunity that is full time with benefits. And a subject line to avoid: John Doe looking for work This one almost hurts: Help change my life. I’ve been stuck in a rut for a few years . . . I need to get a jolt so I can start to live again. Looking for any opportunity to get… Read More
Continue ReadingWalking With Dinosaurs
Desperately Seeking Sales Stars is a long article from Sales & Marketing Management’s online edition. There is much in this article to dissect, but I will focus on some key points. First, don’t do this: “There are various [hiring and assessment] tools out there, but I still tend to be a seat-of-my-pants guy,” says Maher, now a speaker and sales consultant based in Helendale, Calif. “I’ve been hiring salespeople for over thirty-five years…and if they can sell me on their skills, that’s perhaps the most impressive thing.” And that is perhaps the only thing they can sell. These dinosaurs are still amongst us and still believe their intuition is more… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Mobile Coffee Shop
I’m a coffee addict and I’m ok with that. I hand craft my own latte every morning to exacting standards. I consider myself a coffee snob. Until now. If you visit this page and look halfway down you will find a picture and description of a mobile espresso maker. For your car. I’m not kidding – part of the description: The heavy-duty plastic coffeemaker plugs into a car’s cigarette lighter and requires no additional cups or spoons. Add water and espresso-grind coffee to the pre-set markings inside the stainless steel inner core, screw on the top cap and plug it in. Six minutes later, two servings of espresso flow into… Read More
Continue ReadingWhen Google Hires, People Interview
Google Adjusts Hiring Process As Need for New Talent Grows provides a glimpse of the extended hiring process of a suddenly large company. When I write suddenly, I mean this: During the quarter, the company brought in an average of 16 new employees daily, up from 13 the quarter before. Its breakneck hiring has boosted staff from 1,628 at the end of 2003 to 3,021 a year later and 5,680 at the end of 2005. The article illustrates the hiring challenges that occur when a company experiences explosive growth. The large company effects can be seen in that they have brought in a new, young VP of HR with new… Read More
Continue ReadingGet your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
Another embellished resume survey is out from CareerBuilder. I assumed educational background was the most common lie, but that is not so according to their survey. Stretched dates to cover up employment gaps is the most commonly-caught resume lie, with nearly one-in-five hiring managers saying they have found this on a candidates application. Other top resume lies include: Past employers (18%) Academic degrees and institutions (16%) Technical skills and certifications (15%) Accomplishments (8%) As naive as it sounds, it would be a pleasant surprise to see a downward trend in the percentage of resumes with distortions in them.
Continue ReadingThe Job-Hopping Path
CareerJournal.com has to be one of the best sources for hiring information on the web. Today is no exception as they release this article – Job-Hop to the Top Of the Corporate Ladder. To cut to the quick of the article: If you want to make it to the top of the corporate ladder, job-hopping may actually be the only way to get there… Yup, this is a common strategy amongst the younger generation. We wrote about it in this article from earlier this year. Our perspective focused on the manager’s viewpoint while the CareerJournal article focuses on the employee’s viewpoint. First, from the CareerJournal article: Identify what you want… Read More
Continue ReadingOpen-Minded Hiring
Another good article from the new Selling Power newsletter – Open Minds Open Doors. The topic here is Hiring Salespeople From Outside Your Industry. If you follow that link, you will see that this topic is of great importance in our world. From the article: “I believe the way the market is today, finding the perfect combination of industry knowledge and sales experience may not be possible for many companies,” says Hardin. “With the unemployment rate at an all-time low, candidates are not as abundant as they were three years ago. Companies will have the greatest long-term success by hiring candidates who possess the necessary sales skills and then training… Read More
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