A strange story from here in Minnesota is the founder and CEO of Lifetime Fitness. The CEO has had numerous encounters with the local authorities including his latest incident – allegedly harassing a teenager at a local high school parking lot after a driving incident. I bring this up simply for the fact that I would guess this CEO fits a specific selling style – a very high Dominance factor and a very low compliance factor. This style leads to a rebellious, quick-tempered person. This CEO takes that style to an extreme. We have a customer who once employed a salesperson with this type of style (we assessed him). He… Read More
Continue ReadingHow Not to Stand Out
From a generic cover letter of a person who claims to be a “walking think tank”: I currently have a job, which pays well, but does not allow me to allow my creativity to flourish. So here, I pose an offer. If you represent a company that can recognize an innovative mind with unlimited potential for improving your company, please contact me immediately. An interesting approach that makes them stand out. Unfortunately, it does so by sounding quite arrogant. “…unlimited potential for improving your company” speaks in what I term the infinitive condescension. My immediate suspicion is that this person is more concerned about meeting their own needs as opposed… Read More
Continue ReadingMarketing to Baby-Boomers
Let’s continue with the marketing-themed Tuesday posts. We have discussed Gen X & Y on this blog and we have published articles on how to hire them. Marketingprofs.com pens an article today – A Holistic Approach to Marketing to Baby Boomers – that looks at the largest generational group. Seems silly now, but we have conveniently ignored the boomers in our posts. Let me give you one reason why we shouldn’t ignore them: An American turns 50 every seven seconds. Staggering. I am intrigued by this point from the article: Although boomers are veering away from rocking chairs, research shows the desire for achieving a balanced life as they age.… Read More
Continue ReadingUpdated Home Page
Today we have completed some minor updates to our home page. Our goal is to make the page easier to navigate, offer a complimentary assessment and provide a news section for general announcements. We will have more updates and releases coming soon. And thanks to Matthew Mills at Piperdown Studio for his ongoing expertise in developing our relatively new website design.
Continue ReadingHandling Leads
Since our topic du jour seems to be lead generation, here is a very quick read from Sales&Marketing Magazine about how to handle leads once you receive them. Nothing revolutionary in the approach, but the author’s point is accurate – salespeople prefer to work only hot leads and ignore the warm to cool ones. The best sales management approach we have seen is to categorize the leads. That can be A, B or C or some other manner. The frequency of contact and focus of time needs to be defined for each level of lead. The A leads are obviously the priority, B is second and C is last. Simple,… Read More
Continue ReadingMarketing vs. Sales
The title of this post is an age-old battle much like lions and hyenas, isn’t it? Brian Carroll has an interesting post on his B2B Lead Generation Blog – Optimizing Lead Generation – What’s the Payback? The dilemma he addresses is where should executives invest resources – in more salespeople or into lead generation programs. I suspect many executives view salespeople as lead generation programs. Granted, some salespeople are relentless prospectors who generate many new leads. This style usually comes at price, that is, their ability to retain customers is usually degraded. A strong hunter normally requires a back-end support team since they tend to move on to the next… Read More
Continue ReadingInternet Talk Radio
We may be behind the times here at The Hire Sense, but we keep trying to catch up. I’m sure most readers are familiar with You Tube which is a fantastic site for uploading videos to share. Today I just discovered WSRadio which is internet talk radio. I was shocked at the number of business shows already on the “station” (is that what it is called?). These are completely web-based radio shows – no over-the-air versions that I could find in a cursory scan of the site.
Continue ReadingManagement Shortage
Forbes.com article – Are You Corner Office Material? (I am not) The article discusses techniques companies use to assess candidates for C-level positions. These techniques include a $12K, 1 day in-person assessment. Now that is pressure-packed role playing. The quote that caught my eye: Michael Butler, a vice president at Valtera, an HR consultancy, says companies are increasingly interested in his firm’s executive evaluations, partly because so many retiring baby boomers need to be replaced. Many firms will lose half of their senior executives in the next few years, “and they don’t even know it,” Butler says. “It’ll be a crisis in three years.”
Continue ReadingQ3 Hiring Outlook
The upcoming quarter looks to maintain the strong growth in hiring that has been occurring for the past 2 years. Some interesting statistics from the Manpower survey: Construction, 24%, down from 28% in the second quarter Durable-goods manufacturers, 23%, flat from 22% in the second quarter Finance, insurance and real estate, 23%, about flat from 21% Services, 23%, about flat from 21% Wholesale and retail trade, 21%, flat from 22% Transportation and public utilities, 20%, about flat from 17% Mining, 18%, down from 33% Non-durables manufacturers, 18%, about flat from 19% Education, 17% about flat from 16% Public administration, 16% up from 12%
Continue Reading“Digital Dirt”
I’ve never heard that term before (the title of this post). This CareerJournal article discusses methods for candidates to clean up their digital dirt. I suspect the solutions offered in this article sound good but I doubt they clean up the dirt all that quickly. Google seems to cache information for some time. Still, there are some good tips for using Google and I am a big fan of Pubsub. Now do what I just did, go Google your name!
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