For the past 5 years, we have helped companies hire people who have started their own companies, worked as 1099 contractors or were freelance workers. Some companies shy away from these people since the natural inclination is to assume they have failed in some way. We strongly encourage companies to refrain from filtering these candidates out of their process simply for their recent experience. Their experiences and skills are often broader and richer than a career corporate employee. How to turn failures into selling points provides tips to candidates for explaining their recent career failures. The author provides coaching to candidates regarding their failures – I like this advice: Rather… Read More
Continue ReadingFree Agent Update
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 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 ReadingAnecdote – Proof is in the Clothes
It is Friday so let’s go to another anecdote: I was involved in a face-to-face interview with a very confident candidate at one of our customer’s offices. We were trying to determine if the candidate was as good at developing new business as he was claiming to be. He had a strong “D” factor so we knew we could ask him very direct questions. So our customer asked the candidate, “How can you prove to us that you are as good at developing new business as you say you are? In your sales process, what type of close do typically like to use?” The candidate responded: “Usually business casual unless… 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
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
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