Many thanks to Eric for his compelling comment to this post from a couple days ago. I thought this was too good to leave in the comments. It may come as a surprise to know that there are ways to assess the potential value of ‘professional actors’ when they show up in your selection process net. Two of my early careers were production stage manager and theatrical stage director – and key to the success of our productions were selecting the best actors for the roles and the show. If you can imagine – many actors are a lot better at auditioning than actually performing. Anyone familiar with the process… Read More
Continue ReadingSalespeople Are Professional Actors
Inc.com offers this article – When Is It Safe To Hire? The focus of the article is a software manufacturer’s assistance to their rep companies in hiring salespeople. Basically, the manufacturer will provide $10,000 to the rep company to assist them in hiring salespeople. The money can be used for assessing, training, supplementing salary, etc. Apparently this approach is relatively common in the software industry. The article discusses the pitfalls of hiring salespeople in the context of small business owners ($1-2 million revenue). This ground is well travelled by us. I am convinced that in companies this size, sales hires are a make-or-break proposition. And when I say “break” I… Read More
Continue ReadingWhat If All Your Senior Execs Left?
What If All Your Senior Execs Left? from BusinessWeek addresses a topic we have been shouting from the mountaintop. First, a great point that I haven’t considered: Organizations today are running with lean, highly productive staffs. While such streamlining is great for budgets, the fact that workplace productivity levels have continued their upward trajectory has created a dearth of available talent.Losing multiple key executives within a short time can tear a hole in the business plan and hurt both a company’s bottom line and stock price. Companies are highly streamlined today which makes every position important to overall corporate success. Technology continues to drive productivity increases, but I believe the… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Informed Sales Candidate
Our friends over at Hidden Business Treasures have paid us a nice compliment by posting about The Hire Sense last week. They allowed us to be a guest writer on their blog and we offered up this post – Searching for the Sale. The topic of our post is the importance of finding sales candidates who possess the web-searching skills needed to prospect today. We provide 3 techniques for determining a candidate’s information literacy. If you are interested, please follow the link and leave a comment for them if you are so inclined. While there, take a look at their consistently thoughtful posts.
Continue ReadingMedian Hiring Time Shortens Slightly
3.7 months. According to this CNNMoney.com article, that was the median time it took to hire in the fourth quarter. As long as that may seem, it trended down from third quarter which is a good sign. U.S. workers needed less time to land a new job in the fourth quarter of 2006 than they did in the prior quarter, according to a survey released Thursday.After hitting the highest level in more than three years in the third quarter, the median job search time fell 12 percent in the fourth quarter to 3.7 months, according to the survey by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. While fourth-quarter job search times improved, they… Read More
Continue ReadingMechanistic vs. Humanistic
Let’s keep this ad riff going. From another sales ad (I removed the city name from the ad): About this Career Opportunity: We are currently seeking an experienced Sales Professional to work at our showroom store location in the TH-CitySSP to help accelerate our growth further! A large company posted this ad and they serve the B2C (business-to-consumer) market. I am guessing from the frequency of their ads that they have consistently high turnover. However, when I read such obvious boilerplate ads, I get the impression that this company’s culture is mechanistic. Might not be fair, but impressions are the subjective interpretation of the person. The poorly-spaced, strangely-coded city field… Read More
Continue ReadingTypos In The Ad
We posted about typos in resumes back in September and mentioned a significant survey result: Eighty-four percent of executives polled said it takes just one or two typographical errors in a resume to remove a candidate from consideration for a job opening; 47 percent said a single typo could be the deciding factor. Time to turn the tables on these executives. I just read a sales ad from a sizeable company that had this typo in the description: …seeking an outstanding individual for Territory Account Manger Perhaps Christmas is still on their mind, but this error leaps from the page. Obviously from the survey mentioned above, typos on resumes are… Read More
Continue ReadingWhat You Need
If you have read The Hire Sense for any length of time, you know that we are consistently reading sales employment ads looking for strong formats. Unfortunately, the majority of our reading reveals poorly constructed ads. I personally believe these ads are the starting point for companies who end up criticizing online job boards. They pay the exorbitant fee to place the lousy ad and then receive a lousy response. Their defense mechanism is simple – the online boards are an unproductive waste of resources. As I’ve stated before, if you don’t catch any fish in a lake renowned for good fishing, it doesn’t mean the lake is inferior. The… Read More
Continue ReadingCover Letter Threat
I’m having more fun today digging through online resumes and came across this intro to a cover letter: SPECIAL NOTICE:I ONLY accept 1099/C2C/Freelance Web Development assignments. No other offers of any sort or job description will be considered beyond what is stated below. Anything else will be considered SPAM and dealt with accordingly, up to and including reporting the offender to proper authorities. I’ve never seen anything of this sort in my lifetime. Nothing like indirectly threatening potential customers/employers!
Continue ReadingThink Sourcing – Part 2
CNNMoney.com takes the today’s job report even further – Skilled worker shortage hurts U.S. The article’s opening sentence: The biggest problem with job growth right now isn’t too few new jobs. It’s too few skilled workers. And later: “It’s down to the nub already,” he said. “Supply and demand is completely out of whack.”Some experts say part of the blame for the slowdown in the economy in last year’s second half can be laid on labor constraints – companies couldn’t expand as fast as they wanted due to a lack of workers with the right skills. Notice that the comment is not a lack of skills, it is a lack… Read More
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