In first reading this I thought I was reading a line from one of Jeff Foxworthy’s jokes, “You know you are a redneck if you write on your resume, “hobbies include sitting on the levee at night watching alligators.” Nope, this is one of many odd resume inclusions from an article on CareerBuilder. If you have ever run a recruiting process you probably can come up with your own list, but CareerBuilder has put together some beauties: Candidate included that he spent summers on his family’s yacht in Grand Cayman. Candidate attached a letter from her mother. Candidate used pale blue paper with teddy bears around the border. Candidate explained a… Read More
Continue ReadingJob Change Motivators
I like to say that people are the ultimate variable – there are almost limitless possibilities, variations, surprises, etc. One aspect of hiring that often gets overlooked is motivation. In sales, money is the common, assumed motivator. In many cases this is accurate, but money motivation can manifest itself in different forms. Our website illustrates some subtle differences between motivators. Selling Power has an article that speaks in slightly more general terms. I think these 4 are quite accurate in terms of my own interviewing of candidates. The second one is quite prevalent amongst Gen Y: Situations. This usually doesn’t have anything to do with the actual job, says Radin.… Read More
Continue ReadingA New Green Initiative
Here is a good Friday anecdote – I was doing some research on a company and I came across this line on their website: Expansion of our business recycling programs to include employees What in the world? This is a fairly sizeable company so I am surprised no editing occurred on the site. However, it is rather humorous. I’m not sure I want to know how they recycle employees. It certainly seems to take “green” to a whole new level.
Continue ReadingKeep The Perks
The Herman Trend Alert has a surprising report on a survey looking at employee perks for 2008. The economy may be tanking, but employers are aware of the need to retain talent. In spite of the drastic effects of the economy on the labor market with announced workforce reductions up 30 percent, a surprising majority of companies (66.7 percent) have chosen to preserve their employee perks. Ten percent of those employers said they had considered trimming perks, but decided to leave them at current levels. Despite their need to reduce their expenses, almost 55 percent still plan to distribute year-end bonus checks this year (2008). Only 20 percent of the… Read More
Continue ReadingAre You Really Running A Behavioral-Based Interview?
Behavioral-based interviewing has been the buzz in hiring for the past few years and rightly so. This technique brings real-world clarity to a sales interview as opposed to theoretical, positional answers. Selling Power provides a good article to assist you in your interview strategy. In order to ensure you are using a behavioral-based approach (emphasis mine): “A lot of people think that they are conducting behavioral-based interviewing when they’re really not,” says Wolf, who defines behavioral-based questions as questions that allow candidates to relate real situations and demonstrate how their strengths and weaknesses are exhibited on the job. “Many times hiring managers are asking theoretical questions, such as, ‘How would… Read More
Continue Reading8 Things Not To Do On A Sales Call
I read this post on Bnet and got a chuckle out of a couple of the points and thought I would share this article by Geoffrey James with you. I especially laughed when I read don’t flirt with the admin…who does that?! Anyway, here are the 8 things not to do: Flirt with the admin. It may seem tempting, but unless you’ve got soap-opera-quality looks, chances are you’re only going to annoy (or even alarm) the admin, who will tell the boss. Fix: Stay polite, friendly and respectful. Talk more than you listen. Initial sales calls are all about relationship building and gathering information, which you can’t do if your… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Extended Unemployment Rate
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has put out their numbers for October and the unemployment rate rose to 6.5% and non-farm employment fell by 240,000. The job losses occurred across all industries other than healthcare, which rose by 26,000 for the month. Not surprising, the Healthcare industry has grown in employment by almost 350,000 in the past year alone. Manufacturing took the biggest fall with over 90,000 losses (27,000 of them are the results of strikes in the aerospace sector) with construction employment second, falling by 49,000. But reading a post from Liz Wolgemuth over at US News & World Report provided some interesting facts that I had not seen before. The extension… Read More
Continue ReadingCover Email?
We are sourcing for a sales position and are running some ads in different locations. I received an email from a candidate that listed the title of the ad in the subject line – good move. But this is all that was in the body of the email: Would like to learn more, thanx!
Continue ReadingJob Churn
The Career News newsletter has a short article about “job churn” that provides some good news for our present economic situation. The immediate reaction of companies, in a slumping U.S. economy, is to pull back on hiring activity, declare hiring freezes and even make layoff announcements. But these are only short-lived strategies as employers soon realize that they are deficient on talent in a competitive job market. After a period of reactionary cutting and freezing, hiring activity will return to a level of normalcy. Hiring is largely a function of ‘job churn’ and there is no evidence that churn will do anything but accelerate in the coming quarters. Churn is… Read More
Continue ReadingActual Excuses For Missing Work
CareerBuilder.com usually runs some sort of “unusual reasons for missing work” story every year. This year’s offering is refined down to 8 entries, but is still fairly entertaining. Thanksgiving karma | Employee hit a turkey (yes, a turkey) while riding a bike. Author’s Note: Animals – turkeys in particular – seem to be a hot topic this year. See our “Unusual Jobs” survey results for more on this phenomenon. Near-death experiences | Employee said he had a heart attack that morning, but that he was “all better now.” Just can’t find a thing to wear | Employee’s wife burned all his clothes and he had nothing to wear to work.… Read More
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