Primary Causes of Hiring Mistakes
According to Lou Adler (http://www.recruiterswall.com/ ) there are three primary causes of most hiring mistakes: bad job descriptions, making the assessment too quickly, and basing the hiring decision on criteria that doesn't predict on-the-job success.
If you don't solve the "Big Three Hiring Challenges," better interviewing or sourcing skills won't help. If you're not seeing or hiring enough good people, or the people you're hiring aren't as motivated as you expected, one of the big three is probably the reason. Here are some ideas on what you need to do:
1. Preparing performance-based job descriptions when starting a search is a great way to clarify expectations up front. As part of writing a job description it's important that job success is defined as a series of measurable performance objectives. All candidates then need to be evaluated on their ability and motivation to do the work described. This approach opens up the talent pool to a larger group of more diverse and talented prospects by converting jobs into career opportunities.
2. Delaying the yes/no hiring decision until all the evidence is evaluated eliminates many common hiring mistakes. A series of short 30-minute interviews or instant judgments based on first impressions, affability, or communication skills are a recipe for making the wrong decision. Ensuring objectivity is a critical step in evaluating competency, fit, and motivation. If you've ever lost a good candidate due to a narrow, superficial, or biased assessment, you know how important it is to separate performance and presentation.
3. Conducting a pre-hire performance review ensures the right factors are fully evaluated. Success is much more than raw technical ability or possessing a set of desirable competencies. How a person's skills and abilities are used on the job, a track record of achieving consistent results, collaborating with others, and how decisions are made are far better predictors of success. All of this must be filtered by actual job needs, the manager's leadership style, and the company culture. Collectively, this is what drives motivation, satisfaction, and on-the-job success.
The Differences Between Sales and Marketing
The Differences Between Sales and Marketing
by Peter Cotton, founder and president of Best Sales Talent, LLC
It never ceases to amaze me that people don't seem to know the differences between a marketing job and a sales job. Especially recent grads looking for their first career. They frequently use the two words to describe the same functions. Sometimes sales people tell me that they employ unique marketing techniques to get customers, but when I learn what they are doing, it is obvious that they are talking about sales tactics and strategies, not marketing.
Here are the differences:
Definition of Marketing
Marketing is the Process of Planning and Executing the Conception, Pricing, Promotion and Distribution of Ideas, Goods and Services to Create Exchanges To Create And Maintain Relationships Or That Satisfy Individual and Organizational Objectives.
…….American Marketing Association
In general, marketing activities are all those associated with identifying the particular wants and needs of a target market of customers, and then going about satisfying those customers better than the competitors. This involves doing market research on customers, analyzing their needs, and then making strategic decisions about product design, pricing, promotion and distribution.
What Comprises Marketing?
Some or all of these functions may be employed:
Marketing Research and Competitive Analysis
Strategic Marketing Plan
Telemarketing
Direct Mail
Advertising
Public Relations
Trade Shows
Special Events
Promotions
Brand Building/Brand Recognition
Packaging
Pricing
Distribution
Relationship Building through Strategic Alliances & Affinity Groups
Definition of Sales
Personal selling is a process of finding new customers, or doing business with existing customers; through conversation, understanding the customer’s business and finding out how they do what they do and why do they do it the way they do…then discovering customer needs, matching appropriate products and services to their needs, and communicating benefits on these products and services to the customer in such a way as to inform, educate, remind and persuade them to make a purchase. Sales is regarded as positive manipulation – getting the customer to do what the sales person wants them to do (make a purchase) when it is of true benefit to the customer to do so. It is sometimes referred to as the engineering of persuasion.
Sales involves carrying out the company’s objectives by increasing sales, revenue and profits. It requires that a person organize their day and their territory so as to maximize the amount of time they have to be in front of customers in a face-to-face selling situation. It also requires that the sales person does appropriate follow-up to be certain that the customer receives what has been promised and making certain that the customer is delighted with his decision to buy.
What Comprises Sales?
This list is not all-inclusive:
Becoming an expert in the company products and services
Developing a sales presentation that can be modified based on the audience it should be delivered to
Knowing the capabilities (strengths and weaknesses) of the competition
Time and territory management
Lead generation
Prospecting
Presentations
Closing the sale
Follow-up
Goal setting
Review of progress against objectives (self-imposed or company objectives)
Modification of all approaches to achieve objectives
Regular sales training to improve one’s skills
Counter Offers - Road To Ruin
Counter Offers - Road To Ruin
by Peter Cotton, founder and president of Best Sales Talent, LLC
Castle Hill Lighthouse is located on Narragansett Bay in Newport, Rhode Island at the end of the historic Ocean Drive. It is an active navigation aid for vessels entering the East Passage between Conanicut Island and Aquidneck Island.
As small as Rhode Island is, it has over 450 miles of coastline – some of it with fabulous beaches and some of it quite rocky. Lighthouses like the one at Castle Hill direct boats at night and when it is foggy, showing them the way. They also warn sailors to steer clear of the dangerous rocks along the shore line.
In a way, a recruiter does the same with candidates, guiding and providing ample warning of things to steer clear of – one of which is a Counter Offer.
The Fordyce Letter is a newsletter for the recruitment industry. It’s Founder, Paul Hawkinson, is a former executive recruiter and consultant. At the time he was Editor in Chief of The Fordyce Letter he wrote the following article on Counter Offers. I couldn’t have said it better myself. It appeared in the Wall Street Journal many years ago, but it's just as important to understand today as it was the day it was written.
I tell candidates BEFORE they begin interviewing with my clients that they should expect to receive a counter offer. I recommend they read this article before their first interview. I also recommend it to employers who are thinking of making counter offers. I provide them sound reasons why it is not the best course of action for them or their company.
Statistically, employees are gone within six months or less after accepting a counter offer. Either the employer has found their replacement and let the counter offer acceptor go, or the employee has found that nothing really has changed. In fact, things may have gotten worse in many ways after accepting the counter offer. Either way, a counter offer can lead to ruin.
Let this article serve you well….like the Castle Hill Lighthouse.
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By Paul Hawkinson
As the economy rebounds, companies are focused on retaining their best employees. This may be because they sense that top performers, exhausted from being overworked and underpaid during the recession, have new options.
Counteroffers are one talent-preservation tool companies use to prevent being "left in the lurch" by an employee who leaves. In making such an offer, your employer might appear to be doing you a big favor. Don't be deceived, though. You aren't the main beneficiary of an accepted counteroffer.
During my 40 years monitoring the hiring scene, primarily from the standpoint of the executive-recruiting industry, it's been clear that the company reaps the benefits when employees take counteroffers.
Industry pundits may argue that this is no longer true now that the employment paradigm has changed and the loyalty contract between employers and employees has been irrevocably broken. Employees control their destinies more now than a decade or two ago and it's sensible for them to use counteroffers to improve their earnings or careers.
But human nature is unalterable -- even as the workplace changes around it. Employers aren't charities. They want to avoid the transition turmoil generated when a key player leaves. They also know that for employees, changing jobs ranks as a major stressor with death, divorce, moving and other of life's undesirable speed bumps. They make counteroffers knowing that employees would rather avoid leaving the familiar and starting new someplace else.
As one human-resources executive told me, "My core belief is 'Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.' We understand that matching the salary, changing the job title, creating a new project or promises of any kind can tip the balance between going and staying. It is a lot cheaper to keep someone than the expense and aggravation of finding a replacement."
The Boss Saves Face
Accepting a counteroffer also makes bosses look good. They feel somewhat like jilted lovers or spouses when someone they need resigns. They think to themselves:
What did I do wrong?
Why didn't I recognize the problem earlier?
This couldn't happen at a worse time.
My own boss will be furious.
This is one of my best people and his leaving could cause serious morale problems.
I've already got one opening in my department. I don't need another right now.
What if this resignation starts a mass exodus?
Let's face it. When someone quits, it's a direct reflection on the boss. Unless you're really incompetent or a disrupting thorn in the boss's side, he or she might look bad by "allowing" you to go. The gut reaction is to do what's necessary to keep you from leaving until it's convenient. That's human nature, too.
If you accept the counteroffer and stay, you'll always be viewed differently. In essence, by agreeing to stay, you've "blackmailed" your boss. From now on, he or she will consider you a "fidelity risk." You lose your status as a team player. You're no longer viewed as an insider.
Nothing Changes, Really
Meanwhile, your reasons for wanting to leave still exist. In almost every case, a counteroffer is a temporary fix -- a stall technique to keep you in your seat until the organization can find a suitable replacement. Ask yourself: If and when I feel underpaid, overworked or otherwise mistreated again, will I have to solicit another offer to correct it?
What about the prospective employer, which spent long hours and considerable expense to get you to the offer point? Presumably, you negotiated in good faith and arrived at a mutually acceptable offer. If you renege on your commitment, you taint your reputation. It's a smaller world than you may think. Word of your lack of integrity can poison your career for decades.
Not only can your reputation for untrustworthiness hinder your career progress among executives in your sector, but search professionals also will consider you untouchable for the openings they handle. If you think recruiters don't talk among themselves, you're dead wrong. Being blackballed by the search community can be career suicide.
In my four decades in the hiring community, only a small percentage of counteroffer acceptors I've known haven't regretted their choice. If in your naïveté you believe that your current company loves you despite how it's treated you, you deserve the ho-hum career it may offer.
But my advice is to refuse the guilt and the sweet talk it tries to lay on you. The momentary flattery just isn't worth it. Decent and well-managed companies don't make counteroffers. Their policies are fair and equitable, and they won't bow to coercion.
When you say, "I quit," mean it. It's really your only honorable option.
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Photograph of The Lighthouse at Castle Hill courtesy of Stephanie Izzo, from her book:
Rhode Island – Ocean Sites & Ciity Lights: A Collection of Photographs.
Be sure to see her beautiful photographs at www.stephanieizzo.com
Drill Bits or Holes?
Drill Bits or Holes?
by Peter Cotton, founder and president of Best Sales Talent, LLC
On evaluating a sales candidate’s skills before assisting him making a job change, I frequently ask the question:
“What do you envision your next sales job to look like?”
Frequently the response given is in self-centered terms:
“I want it to be a salaried job, with commission, plus a car, benefits and expenses.”
So I ask it again a different way:
“What do you envision yourself selling?”
The response to this question is often:
“I want to sell a tangible product.”
I ask why and the reply usually is:
“I have to be able to hold it in my hand to believe in it and to be able to sell it.”
The last response tells me that the person I am speaking with has little sales experience, little sales training, or simply doesn’t truly understand his profession. I’m fascinated by this response and usually tell the following story with a question at the end.
“There is a company called Cleveland Twist Drill. They manufacture drill bits of every size and for every application imaginable. Their drill bits are used by various industries as well as do-it-yourselfers to drill into wood, metal, cement, plastic and a host of other very specialized materials. If you were a sales representative working for them, what would you be selling?”
Usually, the sales candidate hardly hesitates and says: “Drill bits!”
“No,” I respond. They look at me as if I were nuts. “Think again,” I say.
Confused and not sure why I am asking such a seemingly obvious question, they look at me with a questioning look and ask, “Isn’t it drill bits?”
“Nope. That is not what the customer is buying from Cleveland Twist Drill. The customer really wants holes. As an example, Cleveland Twist Drill sold their drill bits to Boeing, who makes aircraft. Boeing needs consistent, perfectly-formed holes so that all the rivets fit into the aircraft they are making. They need the holes to all be uniform so that everything will fit together properly. The drill bit provides the ultimate desired benefit of the perfect hole. So what you’d be selling is not the tangible product of the drill bit, but the intangible benefit they provide, which are the holes. Boeing is also receiving some other intangible benefits, like increased production, time savings and money savings – all of which are intangibles.”
After my little story about Cleveland Twist Drill, the sales candidate starts to understand.
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(As an aside, Cutting Tool Supply, Inc.'s website shows the following example: Drilling a 0.228" Diameter Hole 1.1" Deep in 316 Stainless
The Problem:
A customer was drilling 0.228" diameter holes 1.1" inch deep in 316 stainless steel. The tool he was using was a TiCN coated cobalt drill which he was buying at a cost of $9.95 each. The drills were being run at 600 RPM and being fed at 1.8 IPM in a peck drill cycle. Productivity and tool life were unsatisfactory. Each drill was lasting about 200 holes before having to be replaced.
The Solution:
We proposed an RTW Type H solid carbide coolant through drill at a cost of $75.00 each. This drill was run at 1,200 RPM in a straight drill cycle (no peck drilling) feeding at 3.6 IPM. One drill ran the entire lot of parts (2,000 holes), and was put back in the drawer for the next run of parts. Total tooling cost was reduced from $99.50 to $75.00. More importantly, the customer reported an increase in productivity of 100% and was thrilled with the results.
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All businesses are service businesses. The problem is that many sales people don’t truly understand what business they are in. Nobody wants to buy the things or the services that are being offered. They want what those things or services DO FOR them.
Budweiser isn’t selling you how good the beer is – they are suggesting that drinking it is fun, something to do with friends at a party, at a sports bar watching a game, being around members of the opposite sex or where everyone is having a good time on a sunny day at the beach. That’s what people want. Herbal Essence Shampoo isn’t selling you on how good their shampoo is, but on the silky feeling and fragrant smell you will have after using it. That’s what women want. Old Spice Aftershave isn’t selling aftershave, but the wonderful aroma you will have that women will adore. That is what men want. GM’s Cadillac division isn’t selling you on the expensive components of their car, but on the prestige you will achieve by owning one. Chevrolet’s Corvette line isn’t selling you on their fiberglass body vehicle, but on the macho image or the feeling of power you will get from diving it. Toyota’s Camry Hybrid isn’t selling you an electric/gas hybrid engine, but the economies that you will enjoy from not spending so much on gas. Life Insurance companies are not selling policies, but the peace of mind that your family will be well provided for in the case of your untimely death, and that by purchasing it, you will avoid feeling guilty for not having provided for them. Women are told that a particular laundry detergent will save them the embarrassment of sending their husbands off to work with a yellow stained collar on their shirts. The admiration your friends and family will provide as they comment on your sparkling dishes and glasses, since you used the latest dishwashing detergent. A pharmaceutical company isn’t selling pills, but the good health you will enjoy by ingesting them. And so on.
Customers buy prestige, ego-gratification, security, time-savings, money-savings, success, improved self image, recognition, a need to feel worthy, respected and even loved, as well as many other things. They will pay to get it, too. Bottom line is that people buy the benefits that a tangible product can provide, not the tangible product itself. Once a sales person truly understands this, they will advance from a mere peddler of products to a well-respected consultative sales professional.
See my earlier blog post here: Selling Benefits
How To Be Extraordinarily Unimpressive To A Recruiter
How To Be Extraordinarily Unimpressive To A Recruiter
by Peter Cotton, founder and president of Best Sales Talent, LLC
Written In the Spirit of Humor & Edification
I’ve just returned from gassing up our forklift truck out back in our expansive, two-story, 200,000 square foot resume warehouse. We’ve stored all the paper resumes we have received over the last 40+ years back there. Thank God for the advent of computers, word processing software and the Internet, otherwise the earth would be totally devoid of trees for all the wasted paper. But now that I have stacked the last bail of resumes, it has given me pause to reflect on resumes in general and the candidates who send them out electronically.
Our office gets a ton of resumes every week via email or through our website’s SUBMIT RESUME portal. Most of them come in on an unsolicited basis. It never ceases to amaze us how some candidates put such little thought into their resume presentation and their approach to recruiters like me when using electronic approaches via email. They can make themselves extraordinarily unimpressive to recruiters like me. Here is a sample dozen from a longer list of dreadful things we see and how recruiters like us regard them:
1) Blank emails. No subject line. No message in the body of the email. No cover letter. No introduction. No indication what the candidate is looking for in his/her next career. But a resume is attached.
Good idea to demonstrate that you took about as much care in contacting a professional to assist you in obtaining your next career as you do in throwing out the garbage. Don’t address an email to us personally though, we might take notice of it and actually try to be of assistance.
2) An email that has 1,259 addresses of other recruiters visible in the SEND TO: line of the email message.
This is an excellent way to make us realize that you are about as selective in choosing a recruiter as a Gatling gun firing 625 rounds a minute from the nose of an Apache attack helicopter. Can you spell S-H-O-T-G-U-N-N-I-N-G? It’s always nice to see which (and how many) of our competitors will be receiving your resume. For those of you who think we get more motivated knowing that you are looking for help from 1,258 other recruiters and that it will make us rush to be the first to assist you – think again. If you don’t have the smarts to understand how to email using the BCC line, we seriously doubt you have the smarts to work for our clients. We have a special key on our computers for dealing with this type of approach. It’s the DELETE key.
3) Resumes from an automatic resume mailing service that use the same cover letter for all candidates that starts off with:
“I have attached my resume for your review. You are receiving this resume because your firm specializes in the industries and functions I selected while using…blah, blah, blah.” It may appear that our email address is the only one in the SEND TO: line, but we know better. As in #2 above, we know that the other 1,258 recruiters are getting the same message and we have no intention of working on your behalf introducing you to our best clients. We present our best candidates to our best clients. If offered a job, they will accept and they won’t be shopping around to see what kind of a better offer they can get from any of the other 1,258 recruiters’ clients. Another example of a standard cover letter we see coming from job-seeking candidates via a resume blasting service – we get several of them a week that all looked identical, word-for-word. Every recruiter and employer knows this email introduction is from a blasting service, especially when the email address it comes from is yourname@resumeblaster.com Here it is in all its glory (with comments):
Subject: I saw you were recently hiring, here's my Project Manager resume.
[Really? Where did you see WE were recently hiring? Also, we don’t work with Project Managers, so we press DELETE. How many other recruiters that don’t work Project Manager jobs did the blasting service send this to? And you paid for that? How many misdirected emails like this are being sent? How up-to-date is the blasting service’s database?]
Dear Sir or Madam: At this time, I am seeking a challenging position with an organization such as yours.
[Presumptuous: You don’t know anything about OUR organization or an employer’s organization when you use a ‘standard blasting cover letter” that says this. You obviously have done no research on who we are or on who the employers are.]
I believe strongly that my professional experience and skill sets are an excellent fit with your company objectives.
[Presumptuous: If you don’t know who we are – letter not addressed to anyone specifically – and you don’t know anything about our firm or the employer firm who received your unsolicited resume, how do you know you are an excellent fit to our objectives or an employer’s objectives?]
As you will certainly agree after reading my resume, which is attached for your consideration, I possess all the attributes and abilities that you are seeking in an ideal candidate.
[Presumptuous: How do you know that we, or an employer, is seeking anyone, and how do you know you are an ideal candidate for either of us? You know nothing about us, about the employer this went to, or what either of us think may be an ideal candidate].
To further discuss how I can become a productive member of your team, please feel free to contact me at your convenience via telephone or email. I look forward to your favorable response and thank you in advance for your time and consideration.
4) Resumes of accountants and other non-sales candidates, coming through our website (when our website makes no secret about who we are and what we do). We are called Best Sales Talent and we recruit sales, sales management and marketing talent – no other kind of professionals.
It’s always a good idea to show us that you cannot read. It helps us separate you from those who can. Once again, can you spell S-H-O-T-G-U-N-N-I-N-G?
5) A real pet peeve. Resume filenames tell us so much about you and what you are doing. Here are three examples:
Broadcast_Sept13_2004.doc
broadcastresume.doc
massmailresume.doc
Suggest you go back and read # 1, 2 & 3 above.
6) More resume snafus
Calling your resume: RESUME.DOC We have received tens of thousands of resumes called RESUME.DOC. Sure, you can tell what the file is on YOUR computer at home, but once it gets to us with that filename, we have to take the time to change it, otherwise we won’t be able to find your file as easily on OUR computer. Worse…a new administrative assistant might save your RESUME.DOC file and over-write the one with the same name we got five minutes earlier. Oops…it happens to yours, too… the next time we get the same filename in our inbox five minutes from now!
Some try to help us by calling their resume johnsresume.doc But, please don’t try to save us time by making the filename: John_Doe_Resume.DOC…it might set you apart and we know how much you want to blend in with the crowd. Resumes that are titled, John_Smith_customer_service_version.doc are excellent when the job you are submitting the resume for is an outside sales representative’s position. And don’t forget that titling your resume as: version 4.doc is very helpful to us. It’s always nice to know that you have the ability to change who you are depending on the situation. Recruiters also love to see your resume formatted in a Microsoft WORD resume template…especially when you forget to insert your own information and instead of a phone number the resume shows [PHONE], prompting you for your own.
7) Microsoft WORD is a very colorful program. It underlines in red all the spelling mistakes you make, and in green, all the grammatical or capital letter mistakes you make in your resume.
We love to get colorful documents. Please leave in all your mistaken spelling and poor use of grammar. We need a few laughs to get us through every day. If you actually spell-checked your resume document before sending it out, a good part of our day will now have to be spent on more serious pursuits. Besides, it gives us a very good idea how much care you put into a sales presentation of the most important product you have to sell - YOU. It also gives us a good idea how much care and forethought you’d give to preparing for an interview with one of our clients. The word CARELESS comes to mind, as in, you could care less.
Oh yeah…remember that spell check is not intuitive. If you type manger, when You mean manager, it won’t correct it. Same applies for other sound-alike or similar words that are spelled differently, like: one and won; accept and except; affect and effect; advise and advice; its and it’s; lead and led; their and there; to, two and too; your and you’re. Once again, we request that you don’t pay attention to these subtle differences. Our job is pretty tough and we really enjoy a little levity every day.
8) Unreadable resumes in formats created by archaic word-processing software programs that, when opened in WORD, become nothing more than code…not text.
This conjures up a scene in the movie, A Beautiful Mind, with Russell Crowe (http://www.abeautifulmind.com/main.html ) trying to decipher a complicated code. We may not have the genius IQ of John Nash, the man he portrayed, but we do thank you for providing us with a daily challenge of trying to decode your top-secret documents.
9) Blank documents
This ranks up there with #8. Be sure not to verify what document you are attaching to your email. We like surprises, too. Perhaps a blank page tells us more about you than you know. Along the same lines, we always get a kick out of an email that refers to your attached resume when you have forgotten to attach it.
10) Sending your resume when replying to job postings that say "MUST currently reside in Providence R.I.," but you live in Bosnia or Fiji.
This really presents no problem to our clients. They will happily reimburse you for travel to the office from your home location and back again each day. Please let us know in advance however, if it’s OK with you if all the flights are coach class. Be sure to supply your frequent flyer number when sending in your resume. May we also suggest the book titled: Overcoming Jet Lag by Charles F. Ehret, Lynne Waller Scanlon? (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0425099369/qid=1095182747/sr=ka-1/ref=pd_ka_1/104-8573843-9455115 )
11) A cover letter addressing me on a first name basis and with a tone, or specific wording, to make it appear that we spoke or corresponded previously. (i.e. “When I last contacted you, I was the Director of Sales for….”)
Call me old fashioned, but I think most recruiters would prefer to be addressed by Mr. or Ms. on a first contact. But don’t do it, because it might reflect on you in a way that shows you are respectful. And it might demonstrate to us that you will be that way with one of our clients on a first contact. I’m sure the Vice President of one of our clients would want to be called on a first name basis when you walk in the door for your first interview, too. Trying to make me think we spoke or emailed to one another before, when we didn’t, annoys me. It makes me think I am suffering from memory loss and I am not yet that old.
12) A cover letter in the form of a template that you forget to fill in:
September 20, 2013
Mr./Ms.
Company
Title
Address
City, State, Zip
Dear.........................:
After extensive research, I have identified (name of company) as an organization that recruits sales professionals for the Pharmaceutical Industry. Once again, do not address us personally, or we might actually think you are being a professional in your approach. Go back and read #2.
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How effective is YOUR resume at selling who you are and what you have accomplished in a concise, easy-to-read format?
We’d be happy to help you improve on it.
We provide two options to help you develop your resume.
Email your resume to us at info@bestsalestalent.com with the subject line of RESUME ASSISTANCE and we will follow up with a call to you to discuss your options.
Alternatively, give us a call at 401-737-3200.
Want a few laughs?
Check out more resume humor at: http://jobmob.co.il/blog/funniest-resume-mistakes (if the link above doesn’t take you to the website, copy the URL above and paste it into your browser)
Why Use an Executive Recruiter?
Why Use an Executive Recruiter?
by Peter Cotton, founder and president of Best Sales Talent, LLC
The services of outside professionals are used by prudent companies for legal, accounting and other special needs. Executive recruiters should be viewed in the same light: as skilled specialists who can identify the best candidates to fill important positions within the company. Recruiters provide strict confidentiality, an extensive network of contacts, objectivity in candidate evaluation, and negotiation experience and expertise.
Recruiters observe strict confidentiality.
Organizations with a key opening can be vulnerable. Confidentiality can keep competitors from being tipped off to management shake-ups, new product and market initiatives, and can protect against employee and supplier apprehension. Recruiters value the sensitive information they become aware of during the search process and respect their client’s vulnerability.
Recruiters can tap into a global network of contacts.
Most often, the best candidates are already employed, and many of them will deal only with a recruiter. They appreciate the worth of third-party representation, confidentiality and professional mediation. Recruiting superior candidates can be a complex process and is best performed by a professional.
Recruiters are cost effective.
The benefit of using a recruiter can be weighed against the cost of preparing and executing an advertisement campaign, screening and qualifying candidates, and operating without a needed employee for an extended length of time, compared to the relative insurance of getting the right person for the job. The use of recruiters is an investment in improving the quality of an organization’s staff. But even beyond that, the risk in not using recruiters can be great. For smaller companies – where one hiring mistake can have disastrous results – using recruiters is sometimes more important for them than for very large companies.
People are a company’s more important assets. They can make or break the fortunes of a business. Professional recruiters can deliver the right people for today’s highly competitive business environment.
Need new or additional sales, sales management or marketing talent?
Contact Best Sales Talent at 401-737-3200.
Usain Bolt
Usain Bolt
by Peter Cotton, founder and president of Best Sales Talent, LLC
I’ve been a recruiter for more than 40 years. There have been times when I have filled an employer’s job opening very fast -- sometimes from introducing just one candidate who gets the job. It’s in those times that some employers say: “You didn’t spend a lot of time on this search, so why am I paying you a full fee? It should be reduced.” For those employers I tell them this:
Usain Bolt is the first man to hold both the 100 meter and 200 meter world records since fully automatic time measurements became mandatory in 1977.
His 100 meter record time was 9.58 seconds.
He proved he is the fastest man alive.
He won three gold medals in 2012, yet the total time he ran in all three races was just 40 seconds.
40 seconds!
Some might say he didn't have to put out much effort to win those medals, if it only took him 40 seconds.
Do you think he didn't work hard to achieve his three gold medals?
Are you forgetting the intense workouts and practice he put himself through 8 to 10 hours a day, 7 days a week for the last 4 years?
Jackson Pollack
Jackson Pollack, the artist, gave an answer to a question that is a very similar analogy:
When a recruiter produces one candidate for an employer to interview for a job, and the candidate is a perfect match and gets hired, would you then assume that the recruiter didn't put in much effort to make the placement?
What if the recruiter has more than 40 years of experience in recruiting (and another 7 years in corporate sales and sales management) has worked with several thousand hiring authorities, has placed more than 600 candidates in new careers, and has studied and practiced his profession for all those years? Would you still say it didn't take him much effort to make that placement of sending out one candidate to one employer who gets hired?
Need new or additional sales, sales management or marketing talent?
Contact Best Sales Talent at 401-737-3200.
Why Recruiters Will Be at the Heart of Our Corporate Future
Why Recruiters Will Be at the Heart of Our Corporate Future
by Adrian Kinnersley -- Posted on ERE.net -- Mar 5, 2013, 1:37 am ET
My last post on why I believe LinkedIn will never kill the professional recruitment industry seemed to generate a lot of attention. While some of the numerous comments made a lot of sense, I can’t help feeling that there are still a lot of people missing the point.
Recruitment can mean different things to different people. There are a plethora of different business models within the staffing industry, so I thought it might be a good idea to define what I believe good recruitment is. This will perhaps put into context why I don’t believe that LinkedIn — or for that matter any other web-based product — can ever replace the service we provide. I expect this will be particularly helpful for those who seem to feel that they are qualified to comment on the impending death of our industry without having ever having been a recruiter, or in some cases ever having recruited a person themselves.
Talent Is Not an Online Commodity
Getting the best possible talent to join your company is not the same as purchasing a product online. Talent has opinions, options, and time constraints. Talent can be unpredictable, irrational, high maintenance, and uncommunicative. A product you buy online will always show up if you have paid the appropriate price and followed the correct purchasing process. A product won’t have any thoughts or feelings that it wants to discuss with a third party. It won’t have any opinions on how well you selected it. It won’t wait for a better company to buy it if it doesn’t like your communication style or your company values. A product won’t consult with family members, professional acquaintances, and even someone it met on the train to provide fresh objections about why they aren’t going to show up at your company.
Recruitment Is a Professional Service
The reasons above are precisely why a professional recruitment service is uniquely positioned in the digital age. The number of intangibles in any hiring process is the very thing that prevents it from being a replicable and reproducible process. The freedom of thought from all of the parties involved in the ultimate decision making prevents the viability of a “black box” recruitment solution.
The Barber Shop Analogy
There are many other more tangible reasons why service businesses won’t be replaced in the digital age. A good analogy is that the Internet won’t put barber shops out of business just because you can buy hair clippers on Amazon and get them delivered the next day. The margin for error and potential for public humiliation when cutting your own hair will prevent most sensible people from trying it themselves.
You may choose your barber shop based on price or service and it’s likely that when you have found one that you are happy with, you’ll not only return many times but also probably tip handsomely for the privilege of getting your hair cut just the way you want it without even having to ask. My barber shop is a busy place and I imagine that for my barber to be able to cut everyone’s hair in the style that they have asked for takes considerable skill, years of experience, and a huge amount of patience.
Similarly, the margin for error, the potential for embarrassment, and the risk of public failure is huge when attempting to recruit for yourself. If it takes too long or if it turns out to be a bad hire, that can be a lot more expensive than a recruiter’s fee. Just like your barber, a good recruiter makes the process look easy not because it is — but because they have years of experience, considerable skill, a huge amount of patience, and a raft of other qualities.
What the Client Gets Out of Using Recruiters
A good recruiter can help you qualify what it is you require. Sometimes a client hasn’t quite worked through exactly the balance between what they want and what they actually need. Talking this through with a recruiter to define a viable role can save a lot of time and heartache further down the road.
They can also give you advice on whether that role exists at your competitors, how they structure their departments, historically what has worked for them — and crucially what hasn’t. This can prevent you from heading down a blind alley when planning your department structure or defining a role that is not consistent with others within your industry. That’s not to say that you may still wish to pursue this path, but being aware of whether it is going to be easy or difficult sets expectations accordingly. Attracting the right talent isn’t always about paying top dollar. Money can’t buy something that doesn’t exist.
A good recruiter will also advise you on what type of candidate you can expect to get from varying levels of compensation offered; an indication of how straightforward or challenging it should be to find the skills you require; intelligence about who else may be looking for the same skills; and ideas on how to position your opportunity and company to appeal to candidates in the market.
A good recruiter will not merely source and present multiple candidates but they will also make you aware of what their hot buttons might be so that you can sell the role effectively. They will inform you of which candidates are most interested — and therefore most likely to take an offer. Crucially they will also keep a backup warm for you should your first choice not accept — so that you don’t have to go back to square one.
A good recruiter will manage and organize the whole interview process for you. Then they will manage the offer process. Contrary to popular belief, a quality recruiter won’t be looking to maximize their fee by demanding the highest possible offer. They will be aiming for you to secure your preferred candidate at the best compromise for you and the candidate so that both parties are happy. That way they will get repeat business and referrals. “Shoot and move” recruiters don’t tend to be able to maintain longevity in their markets; good recruiters, on the other hand, understand that easy business is repeat business, and a happy candidate will lead them to more good candidates. It’s not all altruism. It’s just that good service = good business.
What’s in it for the Candidate
A candidate will want to interact with a recruiter for all the same reasons that people deal with realtors rather than buying houses from pictures on the Internet. Prospective house buyers want to deal with someone who can show them around, give them advice, tell them things they wouldn’t otherwise know about the neighborhood, etc. The system might not be perfect, but dealing with an agent or consultant when you are buying a house is something that’s the norm the world over.
A good recruiter provides a whole range of services completely free of charge to a candidate. These will include a cross section of opportunities with different types of companies. Often a candidate has a clear idea of exactly what they think they want, but when presented with an exact match it frequently doesn’t feel right. A good recruiter can present a variety of options — and candidates regularly end up going for the option that matches their initial ideal the least on paper.
A good recruiter will negotiate the best salary without pricing you out of the market. This is a lot harder to do by yourself or direct with the company.
A good recruiter will prepare candidates for interviews with information on the person they are meeting, their background, interview style, and typical questions. They will give the candidate ideas how they can sell themselves and provide coaching on difficult questions. They will fill the candidate in on the company values, goals, successes, and in generally provide an insight that they would not otherwise get.
A good recruiter will expedite the recruitment process so that if multiple offers are likely, they will come through at the same time — and they will also coach a candidate through their resignation to make the process as painless as possible.
All of the above applies equally to permanent and contract hires. However, with contract hires the recruiter will also normally take care of all the employment and payroll issues both for the hiring organization and the candidate making the experience of hiring a contingent labor force truly hassle free. With the growth of contingent labor, particularly in the U.S., this is a huge value add for companies and candidates.
It’s Just Good Business Sense
A good contingent recruiter will fill approximately 1 in 6 of the roles that they work on but they will still provide the same service to all. They won’t place every candidate with whom they interact but they will still provide the same service. They will do this because every person they deal with will become a candidate again or they may become a client. Similarly a client may become a candidate.
Every time they deliver a below-par service they will lose money not just on that placement but also multiple other missed opportunities for repeat business or referrals. Contingent recruiters only charge when they are successful so the smart and successful ones deliver quality service every time to maximize the chance of success. You get so much service for free, it doesn’t make sense not to engage.
Disengage at your Peril
Just as successful retail companies in the digital age tend to employ multi-channel strategies to reach as many customers as possible in order to thrive, the really smart companies will obviously use multi-channel strategies to source their talent.
However, organizations that stop engaging with recruiters will be missing out on a huge amount of information and therefore cutting off a vital resource for their talent attraction strategy. Despite recent economic woes and a degree of ongoing uncertainty, recruiters who provide a quality service are thriving in this market and will become even more critical during an economic recovery.
Recruitment is innovating and evolving in order to adapt to the modern world. Those who predict its death alongside other ancient business models that are unfit for purpose in the digital age have, I’m afraid, fundamentally missed the point. The mobility and flexibility of talent in the global generation is the most valuable corporate currency of the future. Being able to see where talent is in a social network just doesn’t cut it. Talent never has and never will hop and skip from one company to another — and no digital strategy will influence that. The ability to attract, extract, and deliver talent is — and always will be — a high-touch service which will continue to put recruiters at the very epicenter of the corporate future. For recruiters and recruitment companies who provide a genuine service the future is very bright.
Need new or additional sales, sales management or marketing talent?
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Talent Wins - Performance Shows
Talent Wins - Performance Shows
Do you know if you or your company is positioned for success?
Are you at an "A," "B," or a "C," level?
"A" players manage their careers.
They will change companies until they are in an "A" company. Company size is often not the criteria for success - talent, properly employed IS.
"A" players know that companies that pack their teams with the most "A" players at every level Win!
"A" players want to play on "A" teams.
"A" players are the top 10% level of performers in every company, at their respective job and pay levels.
"A" players make things happen. "B" players watch things happen. "C" players wonder what happened.
"A" players are known in their industries. They will not put their jobs at risk by broadcasting their resumes.
"A" (& "B+") Companies:
Look for top talent. They provide an environment that both challenges that talent and supports its growth at every level.
"A" companies sell opportunity and make decisions.
"B" and "C" companies interrogate candidates.
Competitively reward "A" players for their performance and invest in training "B+" players up.
Recognize that talent without performance has no value, but talent without a place to perform only produces frustration or complacency.
This is the primary reason that "A" players do not stay in "B" companies or join "C" companies -and "A" companies know it.
"A" players know that they cannot self-actualize in "B" companies unless they have been hired with the mandate to help move the "B" company into an "A" position - and top management is in full support of the transition.
"B" Companies:
Look for talent, but are often unwilling to pay for it.
They find it difficult to attract top talent because they are unable to accept and act on the cost / value proposition. Therefore, they employ mostly "B" and "C" players.
Have no specific plan to employ, challenge and reward "A" players.
Instead, they hire only when they need to fill a position and try to attract the best person they can for the price they are willing to pay.
Are followers. They follow rather than lead their markets, avoid change, are slow to make decisions and tend to make them based on internal politics.
"Because that's the way we have always done it" is a typical response to a new idea.
"A" players avoid "B" companies. If they find themselves working in a "B" company, they change.
"A" players who stay in "B" companies become "B" players.
"C" Companies:
Can't attract top talent. They are mired in bureaucracy, focused on survival and maintaining the status-quo.
Employ the greatest number of "C" players of any company in their industry sectors.
[Special thanks to my colleague, Jack Bourque, President of Wireless Careers (wirelesscareers.com), for the content of this post]
Need new or additional sales, sales management or marketing talent?
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Selling Benefits
Why People Buy
by Peter Cotton, founder and president of Best Sales Talent, LLC
People buy because they can realize a benefit that is most important to them.
There are 6 major benefits and 28 minor benefits which could be expressed in selling any product or service.
Do you know what they are?
If you think in terms of tailoring your presentation to the most important benefit(s) that the customer/buyer/employer needs, you have a better chance of making the sale, or landing the job.
This not only applies to selling products or services, but in selling yourself on an interview.
There is a street in Providence, RI called Benefit Street. It has many historical homes, some of which date back to the 1700's.
If you keep the images below of the street sign (as well as the door at #1 Benefit Street) in mind, you will remember the importance of selling benefits!
