Monster.com – The State of Free Agent Nation in 2006 – is an article that discusses using “solo professionals” (contractors) as opposed to full-time employees. I don’t know if I would use the term free agent since that usually connotates someone who signs with a company. Mercenary may be a better euphimism for a short-term, contract worker. Nonetheless, good points from the author: It’s always taken courage to attempt professional independence, and the practical barriers continue to evolve. The lack of company-paid benefits is an increasing burden for free agents. “Rising health insurance costs inhibit people from going out on their own,” says Pink. “Another barrier could be that Americans… Read More
Continue ReadingNew Article Released Today
We just released a new article this morning titled Selecting Salespeople from Outside Your Industry. This article is tactical in its approach to finding transferrable skills amongst sales candidates who do not have direct industry experience. This topic is one we are constantly promoting, but we have no doubts it is becoming the most important topic in hiring. The candidate pool is shrinking, not growing, as the boomers exit the workplace. Some companies still subscribe to “shark tooth sourcing.” Sharks can lose a tooth without fear since they already have developed, duplicate teeth lined up in their jaw to replace the lost tooth. Many companies still expect sourcing to occur… Read More
Continue ReadingBad Boss Stories
Tory Johnson from abcnews.com has a quick, mailbag article from last week that I missed. I truly enjoy these anecdotal topics. This one covers “bad” bosses – I give you my favorite from the article: “While working for a computer company, I would take dictation from one of the vice presidents, an owner. He’d take his shoes off, put his foot on the desk, and clip his toenails while dictating letters to me! Yuck.” Hope you weren’t eating when you read that one. I have a similar story regarding a former boss who would chew his fingernails during meetings and then spit them on the floor. One time he he… Read More
Continue ReadingFun with Junk Mail
It’s Saturday morning so why not browse through the email junkyard? I receive many junk emails every day but my filters are fairly robust. However, every once and a while I go in there and look at the trapped messages. I suspect you are familiar with many of them too. I was thinking of embellished resumes when I read a junk email that had this (their spacing, not mine): Ha ve you ever thought that the only thing stopping you from a great job and bet ter pay was a few letter s behind you name? Well now you c an get them! BA BSc MA MSc MBA PhD Within… Read More
Continue ReadingFrequency of Rewards/Incentives
I’m not a fan of gambling, but this CareerJournal article contains an interesting point: Many newer programs incorporate elements of behavioral psychology, offering more targeted incentives for increasing sales or productivity, for example. They tend to offer smaller rewards more frequently so that employees make a mental link between their behavior and the reward. Ravin Jesuthasan, managing principal at consulting firm Towers Perrin, says employers are shifting to instant-recognition programs, instead of quarterly or yearly incentives. The article is clearly based on more of a B2C selling model (banks are prominently mentioned), but as a psych major, I appreciate their Pavlovian approach to reinforcement. Reminds me of rat lab –… Read More
Continue ReadingMore About Hiring Experience
Our latest article is finished and has been submitted for editorial review. Look for it early next week – can it really be that the Fourth of July is just over a week away? I was reviewing some of our previous articles and came across these paragraphs from Retooling the Hiring Process for Today’s Market: One key to properly retooling will shift the current focus from experience to talent. This fundamental change will be precipitated by the need to develop talent as opposed to hiring experience. The experienced candidate will become a product of a supply and demand marketplace. There will be more demand with less supply which leads to… Read More
Continue ReadingInterview Questions That Numb the Mind
100 Potential Interview Questions. Nothing we like more than a list here at The Hire Sense. Some of the questions from monster.com are utterly inane. I give you number 96: With your eyes closed, tell me step-by-step how to tie my shoes. I’m not kidding. Some I wouldn’t know what a good answer would entail if I were asking the question. For example, number 40: If you were an animal, which one would you want to be? I shouldn’t be too harsh since there are some good ones also in the list like number 27: Tell me about a time where you had to deal with conflict on the job.… Read More
Continue ReadingGhost Written Sales Resumes
Direct from an online posting at a job board: The job search is a sales and marketing endeavor. YOU are the product, YOU are the salesperson and YOU must define your customers and promote yourself to them via a powerful, focused resume. If you’re able to do that on your own, great! If not, let us help. Can’t stress it enough – make sure you read all resumes with a huge grain of salt.
Continue ReadingHiring Experience
I’m putting the finishing touches on an article we are going to release next week that deals with hiring salespeople based on experience vs. talent. We advocate sales talent first. A couple of points to whet your appetite: First, the vast majority of resumes are embellished. We have written about that topic at length. Here’s the rub, if you hire based on experience, I guarantee you are drawing inferences from their embellished resume. You will never truly know the scope of their experience since you cannot reconstruct every aspect of their previous positions. When you interview the candidate, they are going to put as much positive spin on their experience… Read More
Continue ReadingNiche Employment Sites
Sourcing will become the most difficult task in hiring within the next 5 years if it isn’t already. CareerJournal has an informational article today – Niche Sites Catch On With More Job Seekers. The article basically tracks a handful of higher level employees and their use of niche boards to land their new positions. We have seen a distinct migration to the niche sites and have had success ourselves with them. Dice.com is particularly effective for finding technical talent. The stat that caught my eye in the article: Specialized boards today make up some 70% of the roughly 40,000 job sites on the Web, compared with 50% or 55% of… Read More
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