I have a weakness for bizarre interview questions so Yahoo’s Oddball Interview Questions was a must read. Apparently these questions are couched as a method for determining if a candidate will fit into the corporate culture. Right. Anyway, the article provides more insight into how to handle these questions as opposed to the actual questions themselves. Still, a couple of dandies are in there: “What would I find in your refrigerator?” “What did you want to be when you were 10 years old?” You know, some times just having an open, clear discussion with a candidate will accomplish more than some loaded, oddball question.
Continue ReadingOnly College Grads Are Smart
This excerpt is taken from a sales ad by a well-known, national recruiting company: But you must be sales orientated – it (sic) you have a specific industry or occupational background such as IT, engineering, or whatever that is good but again not a requirement. You must be smart – normally a college grad. Boy, where to start on that short piece of bad writing. I would not recommend using “whatever” in an ad – sounds like a high school student. I doubt the author’s intention was to state that college grads are the only smart candidates, but you can see how the mangled syntax of that sentence could be… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Conveying Role Value
This week we focus on another important sales leadership trait. We’ve seen this trait firsthand have the effect of holding a sales team together during turbulent times. Conveying Role ValueThis ability draws upon a variety of traits (empathetic, interpersonal and leadership) to instill in an employee a sense of value for the task at hand. It is the ability to convey to another the value and importance that a given role carries with it. This is not a measurement of a person€™s ability to understand a role€™s value, but to communicate that value to another or group of others. A sales manager with strength in this capacity will be able to effectively… Read More
Continue Reading9 Most Common Hiring Mistakes
Relying on the interview, benchmarking top performers, cloning yourself…these are all common mistakes that lead to bad sales hires. These 9 mistakes are provided by ManageSmarter.com’s article: Mistake 1:Relying only on interviews to evaluate a candidate Mistake 2: Using successful people as models Mistake 3: Too many criteria Mistake 4: Evaluating “personality” instead of job skills Mistake 5: Using yourself as an example Mistake 6: Failure to use statistically validated testing to predict job skills most critical to success Mistake 7: Not researching the reasons that people fail Mistake 8: Relying on general “good guy” criteria Mistake 9: Bypassing the reference check That is a solid list of common mistakes. … Read More
Continue ReadingGen Y’s Favorite Cities To Work
The Herman Group’s weekly newsletter (sorry, no link) covers what young jobseekers want and that is a specific urban area. A just-released study from the Segmentation Company, a division of the market research firm Yankelovich reports that 65 percent of 1,000 respondents aged 24 to 35 said they preferred to “look for a job in the place that I would like to live,” rather than “look for the best job I can find; the place where it is located is secondary.” The most popular qualities of a city (78 percent) were tidiness and attractiveness; the characteristic €œwill allow me to lead the life I want to lead€ was a close… Read More
Continue ReadingHiring Outlook Still Strong
The hiring outlook for the remainder of the year is being bandied about by the media, but the latest Manpower survey paints a fairly clear picture of a strong market: Of the 14,000 U.S. employers surveyed, 27% expect to increase their workforces during the fourth quarter of 2007, while 9% expect to trim their payrolls. Fifty-eight percent expect no change in the hiring pace, and 6% are undecided about their hiring plans. The seasonally adjusted survey results show that in the majority of industry sectors the hiring pace is expected to remain steady during the final months of 2007. Employers in Construction, Durable and Non-Durable Goods Manufacturing, Wholesale/Retail Trade, Finance/Insurance/Real… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Automatic Cover Letter
From my junk mail: Stop writing cover letters the hard way. _____________ helps you quickly and easily crank out a killer cover letter that is guaranteed-to keep your phone ringing. With just a click-of-a-button, fill in the blanks and in just 3.5 minutes out pops a brilliantly worded and perfectly crafted cover letter – 100% customized for you. I think “customized for you” needs further clarification. We are receiving a handful of cover letters with the exact same wording in each of them.
Continue ReadingTelecommuting = Retention
This isn’t shocking news, but telecommuters are more satisfied with their work when compared to the traditional office worker. CareerJournal.com’s Working From Home Fosters Job Satisfaction does provide some detail to this difference that I found noteworthy. First the background stats: Seventy-three percent of the remote and home-based workers surveyed said they are satisfied with their company as a place to work compared with 64% of office workers, according to the survey in June of about 10,000 U.S. workers. But here is the section that points to retention (emphasis mine): Some of the differences were striking, Wiley said, pointing to the 10 percentage point difference between the 54% of telecommuters… Read More
Continue ReadingSourcing Without A Surplus Of Candidates
5-6 years ago sourcing was a much different market for sales candidates. The economy had gone into recession and there were many talented salespeople looking for an opportunity. We used to run ads that required candidates to call in on a certain day between certain hours. We would then schedule them for a phone screen. We didn’t even offer an email response option though some would still respond that way. My how times have changed. We used to get 50 to 75 call-in responses to our ad. Today, we get 20 responses almost all via email. Job postings used to be all that was needed to find numerous candidates. Today,… Read More
Continue ReadingIt’s All About Talent
We beat our heads against the wall sometimes when we have to remind our customers that hiring experience is not a strong hiring strategy. More times than not, all you do is recycle mediocrity from within your industry. What truly matters is to hire talent and skills. Experience does not equal success. For instance, pro football returns this weekend so can you tell me what these players all have in common: Chad PenningtonGiovanni CarmazziChris RedmanTee MartinMarc BulgerSpergon Wynn Still wondering? All of these quarterbacks were selected in the 2000 draft ahead of Tom Brady. Tom Brady has won 3 Super Bowls, 2 Super Bowl MVPs, invited to 4 Pro Bowls… Read More
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