Original Post: By Beth Braccio Hering, CareerBuilder Writer
"I know right away when a candidate doesn't know the current news about our company," says Chris Brabec, director of leadership talent acquisition for Western Union. "If you don't know the CEO is retiring, or if a company made a big acquisition recently, that's not a good sign. If a candidate can't tell me what the company does (or think...
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13 Reasons for Poor Sales Hires by Hard Working Sales Managers
Lance Cooper of Sales Manage Solutions invites you to imagine this picture... Turnover occurs - sometimes at an excessive rate. Sales managers work hard and struggle to find quality candidates for open sales positions. They place ads in local newspapers and get many responses. Some use Monster. Some use recruiters. However, many of their candidates come from people who cannot find a job anywhere e...
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Who’s Most Likely to Fail the Background Check?
Original Post: Monster.com
By Dona DeZube, Monster Finance Careers Expert
If you’re working in construction, there’s a good chance you’re laboring next to someone with a criminal past. But if you’re working in the nonprofit sector, you’re more likely to be sitting next to someone who has lied about his education.
Those differences came to light when Kroll analyzed “hit ratios” for the eight...
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Where Are The Coolest Jobs Hiding?
Original Post: Phil Rosenberg, reCareered.com
Yes to each and every one of those possibilities of where cool jobs are. Sure, some jobs are hidden, but most are out there. Cool jobs are everywhere but take different strategies to find them, depending on where they are found.
The first question to consider is what’s a cool job? Is it cutting edge, flexible, telecommuting, career enhancing, educatio...
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Are You Getting Interviews, But Not the Job?
Original Post: How to Diagnose Where You Might Be Going Wrong
By John Rossheim, Monster Senior Contributing Writer
Your resume has earned you interviews with several employers over the past year. That's impressive, especially in this economy.
But none of those interviews has yielded a job offer. You've done the standard interview preparation. You've shown up on time and dressed in appropriate in...
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Sales Recruiting & Gen Y: Nightmare or a Learning Opportunity?
With Generation Y continuing to expand its numbers in the sales force, employers and hiring managers alike are finding that these young professionals present some unique challenges. The camps are decidedly split on how business will be affected by this generation, which has earned a reputation for being difficult.
I believe that the challenges presented by Generation Y are offset by the fact th...
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Step-by-Step Guide to Negotiating a Great Salary
By Kim Lankford, Monster Contributing Writer
Here's a secret: Employers rarely make their best offer first, and job candidates who negotiate generally earn much more than those who don't. And a well-thought-out negotiation makes you look like a stronger candidate -- and employee.
"We found that those people who attempted to negotiate their salary in a constructive way are perceived as more favor...
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Always Be Recruiting!
Dave Kurlan wrote an outstanding post: Bench Strength – The Key To Replacing Salespeople. He mentioned that managers must always be recruiting. It’s such a simple concept, but Dave Brock is constantly amazed at how few managers–at all levels do this.
Here’s how the cycle goes. We have a bad performer in place, we worry about firing the person because it leaves an open territory - too often we thi...
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Three Ways to Recruit Top Sales Talent. Even in Tough Times.
The Brooks Group
From what we see, the economy might be turning around. A lot of our clients are asking for our help hiring new, top-performing salespeople. It’s work we enjoy. We’re told they’re having a hard time because two things are happening:
The best salespeople have jobs and aren’t looking.
When sales managers start actively looking for candidates, they get a flood of weak ones. That ...
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The Interview Was Awesome. Now What?
By Don Straits
Original post: The Ladders
Thank-you letters are so boring. You feel compelled to write one because the career books, career counselors, and HR managers tell you that’s what you are supposed to do. If you don’t do it, then you failed to show professional courtesy. If you do send one, it is rarely the defining factor that gets you the job. Furthermore, they all sound alike. Yawn.
...
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Can Recruiters Find YOU? 5 Online Methods to Borrow
Joe Turner was a recruiter for more than 15 years, so job seekers often ask him for advice on how to meet recruiters and how to make working with recruiters a beneficial experience. His reply is not always what they want to hear: Top recruiters don't want to meet you. They don't want you to call them, and they don't want you to send your resume to them.
They are already wired into their own netwo...
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LinkedIn Profiles: Avoid the Most Common Mistakes
By C.G. LynchPublication: CIO.com
In the midst of the recession, many job seekers have spent more time on LinkedIn to connect with colleagues, customers and partners in an effort to land a new gig. Unfortunately, many people commit common errors in their LinkedIn profiles that cost them new opportunities, says Jason Alba, CEO of JibberJobber , a company that provides web-based tools for managing ...
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Job Search and Online Presence : The Ultimate Guide
The blog site “The Applicant” has been talking about online job searches. They wanted to create a guide that talks about different platforms and how you can utilize each of them.
Gone are the days when people used to knock on doors to pick up job application forms. More people have started utilizing the power of internet and harnessing the social aspect of it via popular platforms such as twi...
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Where Does Your Resume Really Go When You Apply Online?
By Barbara Safani
We'd all like to believe that when we send our resume via a job board or a company Web site that there is someone eagerly waiting on the other side ready to read every word of it. But these days, job applicants are lucky if an actual person is reading any of it, at least on the initial screening.
As companies continue to be inundated with resumes, more and more employers are tu...
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Author Dave DeMelo: How To Get Out of an Interview
I have been an executive recruiter for the past 5 years and throughout my tenure in this profession I have heard a plethora of excuses as to why a candidate cannot attend an interview. Often times, the cancellation comes the day of the interview, leaving recruiters like myself to scramble and put out the fire with our clients. There have been instances where a candidate has to cancel an intervie...
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Secrets Buried In a Sales Person’s Resume
The vehicle that introduces sales people to companies is a resume, but there are secrets hidden in the resume that hiring managers should know before they interview a candidate.
In Lee Salz's sales management career, he would bet that he's seen about 5,000 resumes for sales people. Yet, he still hasn’t seen one that shows someone who has achieved 40% of quota. Every single resume shows 100%, 200%...
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20 Characteristics of a Superior Inside Salesperson
What makes a superior salesperson? Not merely successful. Meaning superior. This question was posed by Ian and Jennifer, two very astute Inside Sales Managers with whom Geoff Alexander communicates with on a frequent basis. After training and coaching hundreds and hundreds of telesales reps, he does have some answers, because he's worked with many of the best. The list of the key elements that mad...
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Beware the Desperate Candidate
The longer they’re on the market, the more desperate downsized candidates become. As a result, they tend to be open to positions with lower base salaries and commissions and even less accountability – things they wouldn’t think twice about in more stable economic times.
While hiring managers may be tempted to snag a top-level sales professional at an entry level price, it is a decision that will ...
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Trends in Sales Hiring – 10 Questions for Kathleen Steffey
This month, Tony Smith had the opportunity to speak with Kathleen Steffey, owner and founder of Naviga Recruiting & Executive Search, a national sales and marketing recruitment firm, about trends in the sales hiring market. Kathleen also shared her insights about what it takes to make a sales hire a success. Over the last two years, Naviga Recruiting & Executive Search has been a strategi...
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Cultivating a Great Recruiter Relationship
In today’s bleak employment market, many job seekers are turning to professional recruitment firms for help. It’s a smart move, unless the candidate goes into the relationship thinking that their sole responsibility is to provide the recruiter with a resume and an idea of the job they’d most like to have.
To be effective, the recruiter-candidate relationship is one that must be cultivated and pro...
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What not to do in your job interview
Interviews can be stressful, especially if you’ve gone through a number of them with nothing to show for the time spent.
We can all be quick to place blame on the “other” party, but more often than not the reason someone has endured a significant number of interviews without a positive response lies with the interviewee – not the interviewer.
If this is happening to you, it’s time to take a clos...
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How To Find and Get A Job
I recently started working with an executive who approaches his job search like a sale. We speak every week about our progress and he closes the call just as he would a sales call; by establishing follow up and reporting expectations for himself and for us.
It’s a smart approach, because finding a job requires the ability to sell – you.
Unfortunately, most job seekers fail to view their search ...
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Preventing the Mis-Hire
In a recent posting, fellow blogger Dave Stein commented on what he views as an epidemic: the mis-hiring of sales executives. Dave notes that too many C-level executives don’t understand what sales leadership is all about and, as a result, continue to put non-qualified people into these positions.
“That’s why sales is last on line in many companies with respect to quality, discipline, process, m...
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Connections and Keywords are the Secret to Landing Sales Jobs
As unemployment lines continue to lengthen, sales professionals in search of work are finding they need more than just a resume and telephone to land a job. In today’s market, they need to know how to make the most of online networking and job search tools.
The online job search site is one of the most basic tools for people seeking employment today. However, it’s not enough to simply post your ...
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Job Hopping or Financial Survival?
I’m seeing a trend lately where sales reps – even A Players – are taking any job they can find, even if it doesn’t make sense for them in the long-term, then continuing to shop for the right position. In many cases, it’s an economic necessity. Which is why hiring managers may need to adjust their opinions of job-hoppers, at least until the economy recovers.
The reality is that professionals who w...
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Sales Hiring in this Economy; Perspective from a CEO of a North American Sales and Marketing Recruiting Firm.
Dave Stein, CEO and Founder of ES Research Group, Inc. and author of How Winners Sell, interviewed Kathleen Steffey, CEO and Founder of Naviga, for an interesting piece about the sales challenge of having the wrong people in sales jobs during these strained economic times.
As ESR continues to assess our clients’ sales challenges, we maintain that having the wrong people in the sales jobs is, i...
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Good Salespeople Are Hard to Find
"Successfully selling in specialized industries requires not only stellar sales skills but experience and industry-specific knowledge. Employers and salespeople alike need to focus on the salesperson's personal development, selling skills enhancement and their industry-specific training as well," discusses Daniel Sitter in his blog post for Idea Sellers. View the entire article at: http://ideasell...
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Naviga’s 2009 Economic Survey finds companies are cautiously optimistic for revenue and hiring growth in 2009
In some encouraging economic news, an independent survey conducted on behalf of my sales and marketing recruitment firm, Naviga Recruiting & Executive Search, found that companies are projecting at least modest revenue growth in 2009 and most are planning to expand their sales force to make that happen.
When asked how they project revenues to change in 2009 compared to 2008, more than 32% of ...
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Would An A-Player Use YouTube To Compete For A Sales Position?
If my own experience is any indication, video resumes are becoming more popular. I’m definitely seeing an uptick in the number of resumes I receive from sales professionals that direct me to a link on YouTube or another website to view their video resume.
For me, it creates a dilemma. There are some very real discrimination concerns because videos reveal information about the candidate such as r...
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Where do you stand on sales positions that offer no base and are 100% commission?
Would you take a 100% commission business-to-business sales position?
I wouldn’t, nor will I take on any company that insists on such an out-dated pay structure.
The turnover rates are just too high (something like 99% of commission-only sales reps fails to make a livable wage and are forced to leave for greener pastures) and it’s nearly impossible to find A-Players willing to accept t...
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