According to Gartner, Inc., the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, more than 25 percent of the content that workers view each day will be dominated by pictures, video or audio by 2013.

As of this past February, emarketer.com ranked YouTube as the fifth-most popular website in the United States, eclipsed only by the likes of Google (who owns YouTube), Yahoo, and Microsoft.

Video, combined with the Internet, is a game-changer for recruiting. Used together they create a better candidate experience and raise the likelihood of a better hire. They also enrich recruiters by giving them a much deeper perspective on a candidate, in less time, than has ever been possible.

Video is particularly attractive to Gen Y — those young people between 20 and 29 who total about 70 million people. They are avid users of video and expect to be marketed to, taught, entertained, and recruited by video. Go to an Apple store and watch what young folks are doing: watching videos or movies or looking at pictures using the Internet. I rarely see any of them reading an article or an online newspaper.

They have been raised on television and those in the 25 to 34 age group watch more than 140 hours of it each quarter. The percentage of people watching videos and movies on the Internet has nearly doubled since 2006 and is now over 60% of all Internet users.

Some organizations are already leveraging the Internet and video to give them a competitive edge in reaching the millions of people who regularly use such sites as YouTube and Hulu.

Here is how they are doing it:

To showcase their company
They are creating career sites that are heavy with short videos featuring tours of the company, interviews with executives, candid chats with employees, and day-in-the-life scenarios of what people in particular positions do all day. They may include videos about the local area or videos that have been made by news agencies about the company. Examples of excellent career sites that contain video include those of KPMG, Deloitte, and Whirlpool. These have all won awards for excellence based on the success they have had in recruiting the talent they need using their career site. Companies such as RecruitTV and Thinktalk provide the expertise and service to help you produce these kinds of videos.

An interactive, video-based website is the core requirement for employment branding and may be the single best thing you can do to improve your success in attracting and hiring the people you want.

To post or distribute jobs
It is now possible to make a short video specifically describing a particular position, and then use that video instead of the usual written description. In London, three career magazines now provide this as an alternative to the written word. A Twitter-like application called 12Seconds allows you to make, yep, you got it, a 12-second video about a job and distribute it to a group of followers.

Monster Canada allows you to insert a streaming video into any job posting. And climber.com posts your video job description focused on Gen Y candidates to 45 different video sharing sites.

To hold career fairs
Virtual career fairs have been around for a while, mostly focused on college recruiting. CollegeGrad.com offers this type of virtual careers fair. For a broader audience CareerBuilder, Unisfair, and InXpo. A virtual career fair has much greater reach than a physical one and allows candidates to learn more about the positions you have and your organization. They are cost-effective ways to reach out to a broad geographical slice of people, quickly.

To do targeted marketing
Advanced and emerging uses of video include, for example, having your job video display when a person goes to a particular website or webpage. All clicks on your job display are tracked so that you can see who and how many show interest. This information will allow you to narrow down the sites where you display the ads, improve the content of the videos, and control costs.

Product marketers have used similar technology for a while and are now making it available for recruiting. As this technology matures, it will be possible to greatly reduce the number of unqualified applicants by limiting who actually sees a job ad.

To interview candidates
Interviewing candidates by streaming video is becoming more popular now that more than 60% of Americans have broadband access from their homes. With a simple webcam and a decent Internet connection using Skype, a recruiter or hiring manager or both together can interview a candidate from anywhere. This lowers costs and time to offer and provides a candidate and the hiring authorities an experience that is often as good as if not better than a face-to-face appearance.

Many companies offer video interviewing including Greenjobinterview.com, Clooks.com, and Hirevue.com.

For assessment and screening
A final way that video is being used is in candidate assessment. By creating scenarios and games that stimulate real-world experiences, recruiters can gain insight into how people would potentially react to them. These job simulations have been used by the U.S. Army and by retail stores intent on seeing how potential sales associates might respond to different customer problems. The U.S. State Department has recently started using a game to assess potential Foreign Service officers. It is called American Diplomat and recreates many of the scenes and issues a diplomat may encounter.

Another aspect of assessment is the self-assessment that candidates make when they actually see what it is like to do a particular job. Shaker Consulting does a good job of creating validated job previews that help candidates self-assess, as well as help recruiters and hiring managers.

Video is rapidly becoming core to recruiting success. Organizations that do not start to build video into every aspect of talent acquisition will find that they are at a competitive disadvantage, especially with college students and younger experienced hires. This is the age of video and we all need to learn to use it better.

The just-completed study reaffirmed a finding first reported in January 2008 that visitors who arrive at a retailer’s site by clicking on a paid search ad were more likely to make a purchase than were those who got there by clicking on an organic search result. How much more likely? Sixty one percent more.

The highest conversion rate — 7.38 percent — came from those visitors who arrived at the site by typing in the address or using a bookmark. Those who arrived by clicking on a link in an email or another site, converted at a rate of 6.58 percent.

The Engine Ready study also found PPC (pay per click) search advertising — buying keywords that appear on search engine results pages — yields higher sales volumes than does a user clicking out of the organic (free) listings. In fact, buyers who found the site via PPC ads spent on average almost $8 more per purchase than those who came in by clicking a link from elsewhere, which was the next highest category.

I don’t want to overstate what these numbers might mean for recruiters, but there is a striking similarity between retailers seeking to attract quality (high spending) customers and employers searching for quality workers. Whether you buy that or not, the Engine Ready study is worth considering when debating where to put limited marketing dollars.

Microsoft, as Marvin Smith explained in Thursday’s ERE article “Sourcing Insights: SEO is Not Enough!”, is fully engaged in a program to elevate its job openings to the top of the first page on Google. That effort — Search Engine Optimization — has resulted, he reports, in 97 percent of his division’s jobs appearing on that first page. A success to be sure and one which has resulted in “a significant increase in traffic” to the jobs.

For recruiters without the means to provide a distinct landing page for each job as well as keyword-laden job descriptions, and to simultaneously finance a PPC campaign on the major search engines, the Engine Ready report offers some guidance about the most effective use of online recruitment marketing dollars.

With the vast majority of companies lacking an effective SEM strategy, according to Arbita’s Recruitment Genome Project, a strategy that at leasts tests the conclusions in the Engine Ready report is an improvement.

Look over the January 2008 report (the 2009 report has not yet been publicly posted). You’ll find that the current findings mirror those of 18 months ago. One curious finding of that earlier report is that the value of every visitor arriving from a referral source — this includes email — was higher than from any other source other than by direct access (typing in the address or using a bookmark).

Here, again, the parallels shouldn’t be taken too far, but the result does suggest that building a relationship with quality candidates can pay off.

Creating an online recruitment marketing strategy based on an e-retail study is not what I’m advocating. Instead, consider the implications of the report before deciding where to invest limited marketing dollars.

The changes don’t affect the standing of other job boards nor the 51 percent growth in the overall jobs category, which according to comScore was still the fastest-growing content category on the Internet.

comScore didn’t explain the error, except to say in a footnote to its chart, “The December 2008 Monster.com Job Search data have been adjusted upward from 3.7 million unique visitors to 6.7 million unique visitors due to classification of additional job search-related URLs that were not originally included.”

Even with the revision in the December 2008 numbers, Monster is hearing the footsteps. Once all but written off as a player in the recruitment market, HotJobs has dramatically grown its traffic through its partnership with about half of the daily newspapers in the U.S. as well as its higher visibility on Yahoo’s homepage and its channel position.

The comScore data shows HotJobs grew its unique visitor traffic 146 percent in December 2008 over December of 2007. Monster’s traffic grew 62 percent and CareerBuilder’s increased 78 percent. The biggest gainer, however, was SimplyHired, the jobs search engine. Its unique visitor count jumped 161 percent.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that Monster’s CEO Sal Iannuzzi told an audience of Wall Street analysts Thursday that despite the global recession, “… we feel it is a time to aggressively pursue the market share rather than retreat.” Spending on marketing, among other expenses, will push the company into the red for the 1st quarter of this year.

For the first time since 2004 Monster will air a commercial during the Super Bowl, at a cost of around $3 million per 30-second spot. It will go to head to head with arch-rival CareerBuilder whose “monkey” commercial of 2005 routinely makes the list of best Super Bowl commercials. Is the high price worth it? According to the website multichannelmerchant.com, CareerBuilder experienced a 89 percent traffic spike on the Monday after the game-day ad ran in 2005. The following year, CareerBuilder’s day after traffic jumped 71 percent to 1.45 million visits.

Just five years ago, less than 1:10 Fortune 200 companies had a dedicated role to manage the employment brand, yet today more than 1:4 Fortune 200 companies have dedicated headcount and budget to the practice.

Employment branding is the practice of managing your firm’s image or reputation as an excellent place to work. Because so many factors influence how an organization is perceived, employment branding is loosely defined.

Most of the individuals involved in employment branding use a “learn as you go” approach, actively trying a market basket of brand manipulation activities to see what works and what doesn’t. Quite often, initial employment branding efforts are weak and full of elements that need serious improvement.

To have an effective employment branding function, periodically conduct an assessment or audit of the three critical branding areas:

• Your branding program’s design elements.
• The information that you provide.
• The approaches used to establish each of your sub-employment brands.

Whether you want to audit your existing effort or get a new effort off on the right foot, here is a quick audit checklist you can use to judge where you are now and where you need to be.

Incidentally, if your goal is to build a powerhouse employment brand like Google’s, recognize upfront that each individual audit item is important, so don’t skip a single one.

Audit Part One: Assessing the Critical Program Design Elements

When you assess the design of your branding program, the following are critical elements that must be included if your effort is to be successful:

• Program plan. The program has a written plan with milestones, timetables and individual accountabilities.
• Program goals. The program spells out each of its specific measurable goals. These goals must be widely communicated and there must be a specific metric (with a measurable target) to assess whether each program goal is actually met.
• Focus on job acceptance criteria. It’s critical that there be a process for identifying the “job switch criteria” of the candidates you’re trying to attract. Successful programs have a process for matching your firm’s strengths with the requirements of potential applicants. The program should then focus image-building efforts on those targeted factors or brand pillars.
• Excitement. Branding is a sales and bragging effort, so identify and spread several specific WOW’s or features that will measurably excite potential candidates. Branding can’t be successful unless it excites potential candidates to take action (i.e., visit your website or apply for a job).
• Emphasis on “hot” topics. Assess whether your overall campaign sufficiently emphasizes all of the current hot topics including green/sustainability, innovation, emerging technology, global reach and job security.
• Minimize advertising. Recruitment advertising adds value but does not constitute employment branding. If you must “pay” to get your branding message out, it’s just not as credible. A focus on leveraging traditional recruitment advertising is the most common employment branding error. The best employment branding messages are spread virally.
• Clearly differentiated. If you mention programs or features in the information that you provide that everyone has, your firm cannot appear superior. As part of your audit, compare your branding programs, features, and messages with those of your talent competitors to make sure that your programs and features stand out as clearly superior in more than one way.
• Focus on stories. Great branding works because it emphasizes stories which can be easily spread by your employees and the media. Stories about what it’s like to work at your firm are the most effective tool for spreading your brand message. If your information doesn’t contain stories or if the stories are not compelling enough to be repeated, you have missed a great opportunity.
• Focus on referrals. Nothing is more credible or powerful than having your own employees tell stories and provide examples about how great it is to work at your firm. If your referral program has not been refurbished so that it results in over 40% of your hires, you have to grade your branding program as mediocre.
• Relying on collateral materials. In an electronic world, brochures and handouts send a message that you are antiquated. Because ads and collateral materials cannot contain video, blogs, or detailed information, you cannot justify their high expense or rapid obsolescence.
• Referral cards. Providing powerful referral cards (both hardcopy and electronic) to key employees is essential if you are to take advantage of their broad social and professional networks.
• Your website. Every potential applicant will visit your website as a mechanism for validating whether what they’ve heard about your company is really true. Your “careers” and “jobs” websites must provide opportunities to read detailed information, to review employee profiles, to read blogs, and to view videos.
• It is tested. Never assume that your materials and approaches are effective. Test information you provide on your target audience in order to assess the resulting image and the action that each message obtains. This involves surveys and focus groups among the targeted individuals that you are not currently able to attract. (Do not ask them whether they liked it, only whether it would lead them to make an application.)

Audit Part Two: The Information You Provide Has the Maximum Impact

The next phase of the audit is to assess whether the information that you provide effectively sends the correct message to your target candidates. Regardless of how you communicate with your target audience, your efforts should meet these criteria:

• A story. The information has at least one repeatable compelling story contained in it.
• No trite words. It doesn’t use a single trite word or phrase (i.e., teamwork, values, ethical, a challenging career, exciting opportunities). If these vague words are used, there must also be examples included so that the reader can easily differentiate what you offer from what everyone else offers.
• Quantified results. Using numbers to differentiate is one of the most powerful ways of improving program information (e.g., we offer 25 days of vacation the first year versus “we have paid vacation”).
• Degree of participation. Potential applicants often view HR programs with a degree of skepticism. Overcome some of that cynicism by showing the degree that the program or feature is utilized by your workforce (e.g., 96% of the workers participate in our flexible work schedule).
• Dollars and time spent. List the amount of money (or time) spent on it each year (e.g., employees devoted 2,005 hours of paid time to community-based programs).
• Direct comparisons. Already powerful stories with examples and numbers can be made even more powerful when they include comparison numbers. This might include comparisons like “we spent an average of $2,000, the highest in the industry, while the average in the industry was only $700.” Stating that you were the first in the industry to do something can also be a powerful brand builder.
• Compelling quotes. Almost any bit of information can be improved and made “more real” when a compelling quote from an employee or customer is added.
• Programs have names. HR and people management programs get more recognition and are more likely to be passed on if they have compelling names (e.g., periodic meetings versus “departmental CEO coffee talks”). Program names should be tested to ensure that they convey the right message.
• Involving ordinary people. Almost universally, applicants like to read information or hear stories that involve the success of “ordinary” people. Providing information and stories where the “little guy” becomes very successful within the corporation is a strong brand builder (even if your applicant isn’t an ordinary person). Assess whether these powerful programs are open to participation by hourly and even part-time workers.
• Testimonials from individuals. Where more detailed information can be provided (i.e., the corporate website) effective branding information includes testimonials from employees. These can be narrative but they’re more effective if they are available on video and in podcasts. Profiles of your employees who are compelling can also be effective.
• Real examples. Examples can highlight either program features or of a typical employee’s experience with the program. Without compelling examples, programs can appear dull and ordinary.
• It includes media coverage. Narrative information about people management programs becomes more credible when it includes quotes or an actual newspaper/magazine clipping from when the program was profiled in the media. When possible, provide access to the actual media stories for the visitor to review.
• Videos. Any successful branding effort must provide one or more compelling video clips. Nothing is more powerful than seeing and hearing what it’s like to work at your firm. Often, the most effective videos are prepared by your employees in an ad-hoc manner. These videos can be made available for viewing on your website or on popular sites like YouTube.
• Pictures. When writing articles or including information on your website, always include a compelling picture showing the involvement of an actual employee (not a “canned” diversity picture with actors).
• Imperfection. Nothing reduces the credibility or believability of information more than the fact that it appears to be perfect. When you assess the information that you provide, rate it lower if it’s overly glossy or if it provides a 100% perfect story. Instead, make a story appear “real” by including one or two things that are currently being improved.
• An opportunity to read in-depth. Link to detailed information on a particular topic (the additional information is usually provided through a link to a website or blog entry).
• Values. Nothing is drier and less compelling than listing a firm’s mission or values without providing details and examples to prove that these values are real. If you can’t differentiate your values and how you act on them from other firms, don’t list them.
• Technology. Almost every picture and “nugget” of information that you provide needs to emphasize the fact that your firm is an extensive user of technology. Don’t provide pictures or descriptions that show antiquated equipment or methods. Instead show in every bit of information that technology permeates the firm
• Trite slogans. After the use of trite words or phrases, the next most common brand killer is the use of trite slogans (e.g., “We care about our employees!” or “We focus on quality!”). If you must use these slogans, at least provide examples or illustrations to bring them to life. Avoid all slogans that can’t be demonstrated and differentiated.

Audit Part Three: Your Branding Effectively Covers Each of Your Employment Sub-Brands

Although every firm has an overall employment brand, few realize that a firm’s brand includes up to 12 employment sub-brands. Two examples of sub-brands are a firm’s image on the Internet and your firm’s image as a “green” environmentally conscious firm.

The very best employment branding programs focus on providing information that effectively builds their image in each of these areas. When conducting your audit, assess the effectiveness of your efforts on each of these sub-brands:

• Your Internet brand. This includes information on your own site and information that potential candidates can find on other sites, on blogs and in videos. Effective branding programs ensure that it’s easy to find the desired information about your firm.
• Your internal brand. Your internal brand reflects how well your employees are enabled to bring the organizations brand to life based on their experience with the organization. Internal brand strength can be measured through surveys and by assessing customer reactions to employee service levels.
• Visibility in the media. Effective branding programs proactively spread their message in highly credible business and trade publications as well as on TV and radio. Assess the amount of exposure that your firm receives in the desired outlets and to what extent that coverage is positive.
• Professional event brand. Assess whether your leaders have successfully increased your firm’s exposure and image by speaking at industry events.
• Your referral program brand. The image and the information that your employees present when they are talking to potential job referrals is your referral brand. Assess its effectiveness both by the messages and the stories that employees convey, as well as by the percentage of new hires who come from referrals.
• Your image post-orientation. How well your firm manages and improves your image during orientation/on-boarding is critical because so many individuals call new hires during their first few weeks to ask them “what is it like there.”
• Your brand among college students. How well-known and how positive is your image among the college students you’re targeting?
• Your “well-managed” brand. Many firms choose to bolster their brand image by offering excellent pay and employee benefit programs. An alternative approach that focuses on your firm’s excellent management practices (incidentally, the approach CEOs prefer) is more effective in attracting top performers, innovators, and game changers. This “well-managed brand” approach communicates that your firm has great managers and excellent management practices. Focus on surveying only top performers and innovators who care more about excellent management practices than the average worker.
• Your “negative” brand. Assess the visibility of negative messages that can be found about your firm. Counter or “bury” those negative messages so that they are difficult to find.
• Green image. A strong branding effort proactively builds the firm’s image and reputation in the important area of the environment. If most of the potential applicants to your firm view it as having a positive impact on the environment, you have done a good job. However, if they view your firm as a leader in this area, you should rate your effort as outstanding.
• Your community brand. Your image in the surrounding community as a result of your proactive efforts to “give back” to the community is your community brand. This brand can aid in recruiting and in minimizing local legal and business restrictions.
• Your geographic brand. Firms need to assess how well they have provided information that causes potential applicants to view the local area and the region in which a job is located in a positive light. Great branding identifies any potential negatives associated with your locations and provides information to counter them.
• Your industry brand. If the industry in which your firm operates has a neutral or negative image, build up the image of your industry as an exciting place to work (i.e., retail, fast food, nuclear power, oil industry). Ask applicants during interviews if they have seen or heard any of your firm’s “pro-industry” messages.

Final Thoughts

Whether you are just now designing an employment branding program or if you are auditing one that is already in operation, it’s critical that you understand which factors make a program effective.

By using this simple audit checklist, you can force your efforts to focus on the critical elements that lead to a successful employment brand. If you need additional help on branding you will find numerous articles that I have written on the subject on ERE or on my personal site at www.DrJohnSullivan.com.

I don’t run into many recruiters/staffing/HR professionals who don’t agree with the statement: Recruiting is just like sales.

While we can argue over the differences between the two professions (please don’t lose sight of the trees through the forest on this one), we all know the parallels are overwhelming.

Consider the following shared business philosophies:

• Recruiters prospect/source for candidates, while sales people prospect/source for new business opportunities/contacts.
• Recruiters develop relationships with prospects to turn them into candidates, while sales people develop relationships to turn prospects into viable business opportunities.
• Recruiters assess the candidate’s skills to determine whether they are a fit for the organization, while sales people assess the business opportunity with a potential client.
• Recruiters “negotiate” compensation and turn (close) candidates into employees, while sales people close deals and turn prospects into customers.

So if recruiting is just like sales, shouldn’t we be benchmarking the most successful salespeople/organizations and learn from them?

While there are many things we could learn and benchmark from top sales producers, you will find a lot of their energy and true passion is around the following topics:

• Monthly/weekly/daily meetings about pipelines, activity, etc.
• Incentive-based compensation models.
• Ongoing motivational contests to reward top performers.
• Emphasis on ongoing learning, execution, and time management.
• Aggressive attitude about achieving goals and performance management.

Although many agency/staffing recruiters subscribe to some, most, or even all of these types of behaviors, I am always surprised to find that many corporate internal recruiters do not function like a sales organization!

Investigating the Trend

Why is this?

Is there really a big difference between internal and external recruiting? Again, we know some obvious differences, but really, recruiting is recruiting, isn’t it?

To this point, I am often amazed at the response I get from corporate/internal recruitment leaders. With one statement they will say “I need my recruiters to think of recruiting like it is sales. I need them to act more like consultants.”

But when I start discussing the topics and behaviors above, they get uneasy.

They say things like the following:

• “That won’t work in our culture.”
• “We are not a staffing/agency.”
• “We have large req loads, so that won’t work.”
• “We are all too busy to do these things.”

Desperately Seeking Sales-Minded Recruiters

There are many corporate recruitment organizations that function and think like a sales organization, and it’s time these people speak up.

I am not making these points to “bash” corporate/internal recruiters. That is not my intent. The main reason I bring this up is because whenever I start talking about these subjects, many (not all) people say, “Oh, that is for agency/staffing recruiters!”

But I just do not see it that way. If you can see the parallels between the two and believe that recruiting is just like sales, then you need to start benchmarking the most successful sales organizations, thought leaders, etc., and start learning from them.

Do this regardless of what type of recruiter you are!

With that said, I would love to share best practices around a variety of topics (i.e., internal, external, staffing, HR, corporate, agency recruiters, all are welcome):

• Monthly/weekly/daily meetings about pipelines, activity, etc.
• Incentive-based compensation models for corporate recruiters.
• Motivational contests to reward top performers.
• Emphasis on ongoing learning, execution, time management.
• Recruiter goal setting and performance management.
• Best sales organization, thought leaders, etc. to benchmark.

I will present these best practices in future articles on ERE!

In my sales management career, I would bet that I’ve seen about 5,000 resumes for salespeople. Yet, I still haven’t seen one that shows someone who has achieved 40% of quota. Every single resume shows 100%, 200%, or 2,000,000% of goal. Where are all of the people who have had less-than-stellar sales performances? Did they all leave the sales profession? If all of the resumes that I saw truly represented the performance of the individual, the U.S. economy would be thriving, to say the least. Every company would be enjoying record revenue performances.

If you have read my past articles, you’ve felt my passion for creating sales marriages, those relationships whereby a mutually-beneficial relationship is formulated between a sales professional and a company based on synergistic matches of needs. This is not easy to do as, right off the bat, the relationship begins with a flawed tool: a resume. It is this tool, not necessarily the individual, that dupes, tricks, and stretches the truth of a person’s pedigree. Yet, as an employer, that is what you have to work with when hiring a sales professional. You need to find a way to mine through the information in a quest for the complete truth.

There are also cases where the tool isn’t at fault, but the truth has been stretched. I spend a tremendous amount of time preaching about the importance of honesty and integrity in sales. Those are two words that are not often associated with the profession. As such, I believe that the quest to find salespeople who represent a company’s brand well starts with a thorough resume review. Plain and simple, dishonesty in a salesperson’s resume means he or she doesn’t play on my team. There are more than enough statistics to support the issue of what I call “resume inflation.”

I can recall a time when I ran a sales organization in the employment screening industry, a company that provided pre-employment background screening for other companies. We made an offer to a sales candidate who had impressed everyone he met, including the CEO. When we ran his background check, our core business, we found that his claim to have worked for a company for two and a half years was actually two and a half months.

The funny part is that when we asked him about the discrepancy, he lied again and said his former employer made a mistake. Fifteen minutes later, he called back (I think he remembered that background screening was our core business) and confessed. Needless to say, we couldn’t have this person selling our background screening services.

Think about this: If someone would apply for a sales job at a company whose core business was employment background screening and lie about his background, what candidates do you think you are seeing? Every day, new technologies are introduced to the marketplace to make the screening process better and easier for hiring managers. Yet, none of these technology companies advocates using their technology as a replacement for a strong screening process. Assessments, for example, serve as a tool for the process, but they do not replace the process itself. Thus, it all begins with a strong resume review.

The resume review should not occur for the first time with the candidate sitting in front of you. An effective interview requires preparation. As such, the resume should be studied and areas of questions identified so that questions can be asked of the candidate during the interview. What areas should be perused? Here are five areas of a sales resume that require detailed attention.

Accomplishments

In sales, there is an old expression that says if you can’t prove it, don’t say it. This usually refers to the dialogue between a salesperson and a prospect, but it is also applicable for a resume. As a hiring manager, you are well within your rights to ask candidates for documentation of the accomplishments they list on their resumes. If they don’t have documentation, perhaps a request for a reference for that accomplishment is appropriate.

Checking every single accomplishment is over the top, but checking one or two accomplishments makes sense. I suggest those that seem the most impressive to you about the candidate be verified. If someone told me that they personally doubled the size of the company in one year, I would want to see proof of that!

Title

Salespeople have more titles than there are prospects in the world. I can’t keep track of all of them anymore. However, those titles don’t necessarily correspond to responsibility. A small company may call their only salesperson a vice president, while a large company may call a person performing the exact same role a sales representative. While reviewing the resume, don’t limit your perusal to the title. Dig a bit into the responsibilities that the individual had. During the interview process, ask questions to understand the role and responsibility that goes with the title.

Where some companies get into trouble is when they look to hire a senior salesperson and don’t consider candidates with higher-level (vice president, for example) titles. Analyze the responsibilities that the individual had in his or her capacity to see if this individual matches your needs, regardless of what you call this role. If the resume is unclear about this, ask the candidate for details.

Employer Dates

If a salesperson has a gap, or gaps, in his employment, meaning he did not leave one job and go directly to another one, he will show years of employment, but not months. This creates the illusion of continuous employment. If you background screen as part of your hiring process and employment verification is part of that scope, this will be identified at that time. However, that takes time and dollars. (If you haven’t seen my white paper titled, “Are There Criminals on Your Sales Team?” send me an email for your copy.)

But, why wait until the end of the process to learn something you can know now? When you see years on a resume, ask the candidate to provide months of employment, too. Ask questions to understand the gaps. You may still elect to hire the person, based on the explanation. At least you get the complete picture.

Training Programs

Many salespeople list the training programs that they have completed on their resume, but no one verifies that. When hiring IT professionals, it is common to check training and certification completion. Not so with salespeople. So, the salesperson has no risk by stating that he has completed the “Miller-Heiman Strategic Selling” course on his resume. Ask for a copy of his completion certificate. If he has truly taken the course, you will see a confident reaction. If he has only read the book, or perhaps not even that, you will see him squirm in his seat.

College Degree

When I look at the education section on a resume, I expect to see college name, degree completed, and graduation date. However, I regularly see that degree or graduation date or both are omitted. Red flag! Sure, a background check will expose that too, but why wait until post-offer to find out?

When you see missing information on the resume, ask candidates point-blank if they graduated college, what year, and with what major? Some omit their graduation year to hide their age, but others do it to create the illusion of degree completion. Unfortunately, you will find many salespeople who list a college and year, hoping you won’t ask any other questions.

I don’t believe that most salespeople intend to dupe their potential employer, but I’ve also been around the block long enough to know that the percentage that “inflate” is high enough to warrant a circumspect analysis of the resume.

Editor’s note: On March 26, join Lee Salz for a free, one-of-a-kind webinar entitled “Why Can?t I HIRE the RIGHT Salespeople?” Click here to learn more.

As recruiting professionals, quite often our clients solicit our advice when defining the roadmap of a particular business unit within their organizations. Some of us even go so far as to become third-party consultants on subject matter with which we have particular expertise.

Regardless of the industry vertical in which we specialize, our clients rely on our guidance to assist them in reaching/exceeding their revenue goals by leveraging the benefit of our experience. Telephone selling brings with it a unique set of challenges and opportunities that, if managed correctly, can produce new incremental revenue streams and deliver an impressive ROI.

Most hiring officers and the corporate recruiters with whom they work appreciate the importance of delivering consistent, above-plan results and recognize that this is tantamount to any sales organization’s success. Here’s how you can ensure that your inside-sales team will succeed.

Defining Key Performance Indicators

Before hiring their first salesperson, most companies need to decide upon how they will measure the efficacy of individual performers.

Variables like the number of calls made, talk time, data capture, demonstrations scheduled, leads generated, sales closed, and customer conversion ratios offer a 360-degree view of the activity report and will provide upper management with the required business intelligence and performance analytics needed to make informed, strategic decisions. Metrics allow for transparency in activity-based selling and help forecast future performance based on past results. Most (if not all) of the Fortune 500 have data warehouses and legions of analysts dedicated to this very cause because they want to keep their fingers on the pulse of the business.

Understanding Their Mission and Being Accountable

The mission statement needs to justify the department’s existence and should effectively articulate the value proposition brought with it. Whether your business has an inbound customer-support call center, an outbound cold-calling business development team, or a combination of both, your representatives need to understand their accountabilities, have access to the necessary resources, and have defined protocols in place to handle customer service escalations, lead referrals, product/service questions, RFIs/RFPs, order provisioning, and more.

We’ve all had negative experiences dealing with telephone salespeople or customer service representatives who seem to adhere to a strict policy of zero accountability. It is extremely difficult to reconcile any misgivings a customer may have, so a little bit of preventative maintenance really does go a long way.

How Will They Manage Their Customers?

There are several effective approaches with regards to the best way to “carve up” an account base. The first is to segment accounts based on their relative location. Inside salespeople can individually manage customers within a defined territory (city, state, East, West, Central, etc.) and the customer base would be subsequently distributed based on geography. Many emerging companies use this method when first spearheading “greenfield” opportunities in a new market where they do not have an established presence.

Industry verticals such as health care, financial services, automotive, government, and education, are another popular method for dividing the account base. Telephone salespeople, like their counterparts in the field, typically specialize in a particular industry segment and do not sell outside of their vertical. Combining industry verticals with a specific geography (selling into the health care vertical in California, for example) is quite common and ensures that a company’s salespeople do not step on each other’s toes.

Alternatively, many companies subscribe to the “revenue threshold” system that essentially segments the customer portfolio based on annual revenues and assigns account managers at the enterprise, mid-market, and small/medium-sized business levels. This method remains widely popular among inside sales managers in established organizations because it allows them flexibility when managing incremental revenue within their sales teams.

Finally, a derivative of the revenue threshold system is that of the “named account” structure. The 80/20 rule typically applies here with 80% of an organization’s revenue being generated by only 20% of its clients. Inside salespeople frequently manage these “crown jewels” of the customer portfolio remotely and identify opportunities for up-selling or cross-selling within the account base in addition to shouldering the weight of any technical or contractual issues that may persist. These dedicated representatives normally handle a small handful of customers at the national or international level and are generally the executive liaison to the purchasing authority.

The Importance of Collaboration

This is where it starts to get tricky. The advantages of having an inside sales team are numerous; however, organizations must consider their own product portfolios, sales processes, quotas, sales cycles, and unique growth strategies before deciding to invest their resources in building an inside-sales infrastructure. Not all products and services are conducive to telephone selling, and there is no substitute for building valuable face-to-face relationships with your customers. To this end, the importance of collaboration between inside sales and field sales teams is vital.

In order to facilitate a cooperative consciousness, both teams must have incentives in place to recognize (and reward) over-achievement. Commission entitlements should be clearly defined and, to avoid confusion, account owners should be designated in advance of product/service provisioning. Many companies have detailed succession plans in place to promote upward mobility within their sales organization and to improve retention rates among their top performers.

What Should I Look For When Hiring?

As recruiters and hiring managers, we are always looking for ways to mitigate the risk of bringing somebody new on board. The essence of telephone selling is the ability to captivate an audience. Too often, it’s the intangibles or “soft skills” that are overlooked when we’re listing our prerequisites on a job order.

The most successful inside sales reps are highly self-motivated, tenacious, competitive, resourceful, charismatic, and articulate. Some companies are reticent when it comes to hiring somebody from outside of their immediate comfort zone. The fact is, however, that some of the best telephone salespeople in your industry made lateral moves from somewhere completely unrelated and have become enormously successful.

The sales skill-set is largely transferable, and the rules of engagement for hiring an inside sales rep remain subjective. I would look for a history of quota attainment, average length of tenure, motivation for leaving, and W-2 history as a preliminary screening, before “peeling the onion” and asking questions about methodology, due process, overcoming adversity, customer testimonials, and other references. The costs incurred with recruitment and training are significant, so investing some due diligence early on can yield dividends down the road.

There are few decisions more critical for a company than the hiring of the leadership of their sales organization. Yet, few know how to do it well. Many err and “promote” their best seller to a sales management position.

Why this is called a promotion is beyond me. The job of the sales manager is vastly different than that of a sales person, so why is this considered employment elevation? Often sales managers earn less than the top sales people. Promotion?

Some sales people make the transition successfully, but many struggle with the change. Sometimes it is a mismatch of the person to the role. More frequently, the struggle is caused by the lack of recognition by the company that this is not a promotion, but rather a move into a completely new job. How do you handle an employee in a new job? You train, mentor, and monitor their performance!

Look, most people don’t come out of the womb with the skills required to be an effective manager. It is a key responsibility of the company to recognize that when moving their top sales person into that role they need to own the development of that individual. A congratulatory handshake and smile just won’t get it done.

Many companies look for their sales management candidates from outside their organization. This approach also has its challenges. Whether you promote from within or hire from outside, consider these five points to make sure you find the right person for the role.

1. Selling versus managing. If you consider the broad spectrum of responsibilities from selling business directly to managing a team, what percentage of the time do you expect this person to be focused on personal selling versus managing? As mentioned above, the skills required for those two responsibilities are vastly different. It is difficult to find professionals who have equal strength in both skill sets. Often there will be a trade-off. If there is a sacrifice to be made, it makes the best sense to select someone who has their primary strength in the more predominant part of the responsibility. If the decision is made that the position has equal responsibility for selling and managing or the dominant responsibility is selling, it may make sense for an internal hire. This allows the company to develop a new manager. However, the plan falls down if the company is not committed to a development plan.
2. Creating versus executing. Another consideration is what your expectations of the sales manager are relative to developing the company’s sales architecture? (the framework of the sales organization). In some companies, there is a plan already in place and the job of the sales manager is to ensure the plan is executed as written. In essence, the job is to motivate the troops and coach them to make sure revenue targets are achieved. This is usually the case for mid-level sales managers. In other situations, the primary job is to establish the overall direction of the sales organization, formulate the compensation plan that supports that direction, and execute the plan. Needless to say, this is a very different profile than the sales manager described above.
3. Title versus responsibility. Check any job board and you will find a plethora of titles referring to sales management. However, there is not a direct correlation between title and responsibilities. This can create a disconnect with the new manager and with clients if those two are not synchronized. If you are going to give someone the title of vice-president, there is an inherent expectation that this is a high-responsibility, high-authority position. When clients hear that title, they believe that this person is a senior-level person in the company and can make decisions. Thus, this can create client frustration if the responsibility and authority are not consistent with the title. At the other end of the spectrum, calling this person a “sales manager” creates a more junior-level perception. There is nothing wrong with the term, but it is important that you recognize the created perception. Again, this can cause issues with both the person in the role and clients if the responsibilities don’t match the title. Some very good sales management candidates will elect not to apply to your company because they believe it is a junior-level role.
4. Interviewing. Probably the toughest role for which to interview is the sales manager. For one, they are experienced in interviewing and know the desired answers. To get past the fluff and get your real answers, develop a list of benchmark questions. (Send me an email and I will send you my favorite 20 questions.) It is important that the questions not follow a sequence so that the candidate cannot build off their prior answers. Document the responses to each so you can review them later. You will be amazed by what comes out of this step of the process. Also, consider the candidate’s future business relationships. For example, there is an inherent strife between sales and operations. However, the company will fail if the leaders of those two areas are not able to work together in a productive manner. Consider the various department leaders with whom this person will interact and engage them in the process. This also helps the new manager assimilate into the organization once they are onboard.
5. The ultimate screening tool. When the candidate has completed all of the other steps of the pre-offer process, the request for a one-page business plan shows how they would approach the job. I mention the one-page scope three times in the conversation so my expectations are clear. The candidate is asked when he or she can submit the document. It is important that the submission date be asked of the candidate, not the other way around, as you will see in a moment. The benefits of this step are numerous:

• First, it shows whether the candidate can communicate in written form. Writing is a lost art in business, but a critical one for someone in a leadership role.
• It shows whether the candidate understands what the role entails. A number of hours have been spent with the candidate by this point. If they are near the finish line, they should have a clear vision of the expectations.
• It helps to gauge synergy in the approach to the role. It is best to see before the marriage is performed if their approach is aligned with the leadership’s vision.
• It helps determine whether this person can meet a self-imposed deadline. I asked when he could have the plan to me. He provided me with a date and time. If it is late, the candidate is no longer considered for employment. End of story.
• Finally, in this role, I am the client. I’ve asked for a one-page plan, not an epic. Do they follow directions? Or do they ignore what the client desires and do whatever they want? While I don’t eliminate candidates solely for this, I refer to this in a follow-up session with the candidate.

One final point that is critical when hiring is to background screen. Resume fraud is at an all-time high! Candidates lie about employment history, salary history, and their education experience, not to mention criminal history. Find a reputable firm to do this work for you.

Many cars today tell the driver when it is time to perform maintenance. Even better, some tell the driver that maintenance is needed in 1,000 miles with updates along the way. It would be great if as a business executive or small business owner, you had this kind of technology at your fingertips.

Unfortunately, managing a sales organization will always be a manual effort. Sure, CRM systems and contact managers help, but there is no technology that replaces the leadership associated with sales management.

Not sure where to dig into your sales organization? Here are 12 areas that will show just how game-ready you are.

1. Business objective. In your capacity, I’ll bet you can cite the objectives of the business easy as pie, but do the key members of the sales team know them? Better yet, do they know the current one(s)? Business objectives change. It is important that those affected by the change are in the know. The business objectives serve as the foundation of the company’s sales architecture?, which is the overall selling system framework. If the foundation changes without reviewing the selling framework, there is a high risk of not achieving the objective. It is the equivalent of constructing a building with the wrong materials, or worse, in the wrong place.
2. Differentiation. Some argue that differentiation is the job of the marketing team. I see this as a shared responsibility between sales and marketing. The bottom line is whether your company is successful winning business at your desired prices. The comedian George Carlin has a great line about this: “If you nail together two things that have never been nailed together before, someone will buy it!” The target for differentiation is always moving. What is unique today is pass? tomorrow. However, sales people can differentiate themselves above and beyond the product by being a valued resource to their clients. This is critical in a competitive or commodity marketplace. One of my favorite questions to ask sales people is why someone should buy from them. The goal is to see what value they see that they bring to their clientele.
3. Ideal client profile. Hopefully, you already have one of these. This is the document that clearly defines the attributes of your ideal client. Think in terms of size, buying circumstance, budget, buying habits, etc. This is a profile that each member of the sales team should memorize and be held accountable for knowing. Their pursuit of new business should be aligned with this profile. As the objectives of the business change, this profile may change. Be sure that it still meets the needs of the business.
4. Messaging consistency. You spend time and money investing in a new campaign. Your sales people position the company using this new message, but the print material and website still convey the old information. Not good! The outbound message to the market must be consistent. If the sales people say it, the corporate presentation should reinforce it. The printed collateral material and website should help position the message. In essence, the entire approach should be aligned.
5. Intellectual capital. These are your “referenceable” clients. Other than your employees, they are your most valuable asset. This asset is critical for your sales team to help them win business. How are you growing your portfolio? How are you ensuring that your largest client is not over-utilized by the sales team for these purposes? Do you have clients who can speak to everything your firm does, coming from multiple buying circumstances (newbie, veteran, etc)? The use of references can serve as a key competitive advantage for your sales team. It is important that the portfolio be ever-growing and well-managed.
6. Sales performance. How are the members of the team performing relative to their assigned goal? While you may be tempted to measure only revenue performance relative to quota, this is not always the best approach for longer-term buying processes. In those circumstances, review of performance in the buying process itself is an important area for study. That said, the rule of thumb is to look to upgrade the bottom 20% of the sales team. Recruiting is an ongoing initiative of any healthy sales organization.
7. Pipeline analysis. There are various opinions on how large a sales pipeline should be to ensure it yields enough to meet the business objective. The challenge is that a strict quantitative value minimizes the importance of a qualitative one. I’ve seen salespeople with a pipeline of twice their goal finish the year at 150% of quota. I’ve also seen sales people with a pipeline of five times their annual goal miss the target. Quantitative studies aside, the best approach is to conduct formal, periodic pipeline reviews so that you and your executive team can dig into the pipeline to see what prospects are real. Quality supersedes quantity. Pipeline reviews are very helpful for executive teams with respect to learning market trends and competitive intelligence.
8. Ideal sales person profile. You need this tool if you are going to upgrade the bottom 20% of your sales team. The attributes of this profile change, however, as the business changes and matures. Think in terms of the Blackberry. About seven years ago, their sales people had to create demand in a minimally competitive market. Today, the Blackberry is a staple in business, but buyers have product choices outside of the Blackberry brand. The skill set required to be successful in their business initially is very different than today. Don’t have a profile? See my article titled “The Sales Marriage” to learn how to formulate your ideal sales person profile.
9. Revenue accelerator program. Again, you are probably asking yourself what this term means. I could have just written “new hire training.” That doesn’t convey the importance of getting sales people to a productive level as quickly as possible. Every time a salesperson is hired in your company, there is a cost to the business. Thus, the development of a program that is focused on reducing the time for a sales person to generate revenue is critical. To effectively formulate your revenue accelerator program, ask yourself what the sales person needs to know to effectively sell your product and when they need to know this information. Some err by using the fire hose approach. “Teach them everything in their first week and tell them to go sell!” The fundamental question is, how quickly is there a return on the investment for this hire?
10. Skill development. Many think that sales talent is born, not developed. Oh, if that were only the case. Companies need to invest in their sales team development just as professional sports teams practice their craft every single day. Sales is a profession, one of the few professions in which ongoing training is not required to continue to perform in the role. However, it is critical to success. One of the biggest disconnects between executives and sales people is when the sales team is criticized for not “selling the value.” When the executives are asked when and how they trained the sales team on demonstrating this value, a blank look appears on their faces. Sales people will perform based on how they are trained and how they are compensated.
11. Compensation. Does your compensation plan drive the sales behaviors you feel assist in meeting the business objective? It all comes back to the business objective. The blessing and curse of sales people is that they use their compensation plan as a job description. If you pay them for doing one thing, but expect another, you will be disappointed. This is also a very sensitive area. The plan must change as the business objective changes. However, if the plan changes too frequently, the sales team will grow distrustful and look to leave. Approach this with true circumspection.
12. Metrics. The beauty of sales is that just about everything can be measured. Some like sales for that very reason. It is incumbent on the executive team to create metrics with desired goals such that every aspect of the company’s sales architecture can be measured and analyzed. This is a great way to use your CRM. They are designed to track what needs to be measured. I suggest analyzing performance of team members, product lines, and the sales organization in total. Who sells the most of what product? Who sells the highest margin deals? What product is not selling as expected? Which sales person has the shortest buying cycle? Which sales person has the longest buying cycle?

A review of these 12 areas will ensure that your sales organization is finely tuned and ready to conquer the selling world.

It’s a common assumption. A good sales manager should first be a good salesperson, right? Wrong. It is a big jump from being a skilled “doer” to being a skilled “coach of doers.”

In many cases, the top sales person is an enigma. Salespeople are ego-driven and competitive and want to be recognized and rewarded. But like a cup with a hole in the bottom, no matter how much water you add Monday, it needs to be refilled by Tuesday. Top salespeople are often driven by ego-validation that comes from each sale and public recognition, and it never stops.

On the other hand, a top sales manager enjoys stepping back and letting others take credit. He or she takes pleasure in the success of subordinates and has a “smaller cup” to keep filled. Sales managers are like gardeners, tending and nurturing promising salespeople, having the patience to wait and watch them mature.

Defining Top

“Top” and “skilled” do not necessarily mean the same thing. Top salespeople are often measured by dollars or accomplishments; that is, the score at the end of the game. And like most folks, bosses tend to ignore how he or she got to the top.

For example, I once objected when a salesperson told a client we could do a job for 50K. I knew from experience the quote was about 1/5 what the final project would cost. The salesperson griped to the president; I was told to do the work; the salesperson won a sales award; and the client went wild when he saw the final bill. (Yes. It was my fault. I was unable to control the 80% gap. Shame on me. Mea culpa.)

Not only do top-dollar salespeople usually bend the truth to fit their ego needs, they often operate on automatic pilot. That is, top producers seem to instinctively know what to do and what to say. It is one of their gifts.

But instinct is often not something that can be broken down into coaching activities. The clue to an instinctive salesperson is, when someone asks for advice, they reply, “Watch?and learn.”

If learning were that easy, then we would all be experts just by watching a videotape. This instinctive condition is called “unconscious competence.” In other words, the person is unaware of why he or she is good; it just happens naturally.

A skilled producer, on the other hand, knows exactly what to do and when to do it. He or she can break down sales into small clusters of behavior such as initial relationship skills, questioning and discovery techniques, strategic analysis of the situation, and so forth. The big difference is the skilled performer is conscious of his or her competence: he or she knows when to choose certain skills. It’s not an automatic reaction; it’s a conscious decision.

The combination of sales-ethical behavior and general awareness of the situation generally makes the skilled salesperson successful, but not a top-dollar producer. Truly skilled salespeople put full effort on (this is a very important point) solving customers’ problems, not persuading people to buy. As such, the skilled salesperson will walk away from bad business because it is bad business.

Technical Knowledge

Both the skilled salesperson and skilled manager are knowledgeable. They know their product or service thoroughly; they know the marketplace; and they understand the world where their customers’ live.

A top-dollar salesperson, on the other hand, often blows off product knowledge as unimportant. These blowhards often claim they can “sell anything to anyone” (based entirely on their own opinion of themselves). They don’t seem to understand that people generally dislike being sold something they don’t want or need; further, people who feel manipulated make poor repeat customers.

Sales Skills

The skilled manager thoroughly understands how the sales process is divided into skills-sets that float back and forth. Relationship skills are necessary to open the dialogue and keep communications flowing. The main relationship skill is the art of helping the prospect or client feel comfortable.

Primarily, it includes words and actions that create an environment where the prospect feels he or she is the most important person in the universe. It includes projecting confidence, product and market knowledge, true empathy, and personal understanding.

Relating skills are brought into play when meeting, asking questions, encountering resistance, and giving assurances. If you think genuine relationship skills are difficult for an ego-centered person, you are right.

Fact-finding and discovery skills are the second most important skill-set. These include all the open and closed-ended questions associated with learning about the prospect’s environment (i.e., what is happening in the marketplace, how it affects him or her, what’s happening in the organization, their personal fears and aspirations).

The objective of discovery skills is for both prospect and salesperson to come to the same conclusion at the same time: “AHA! Here is a problem worth solving!”

A fly on the wall witnessing these two skill sets would see people chatting and discussing work. There would be no pitching. The salesperson would be gently fact-finding, offering helpful suggestions, and encouraging the flow of conversation. His or her objective would be to discover whether the prospect had a problem that needed a solution.

For example, it won’t do for a bypass-surgery salesperson to approach a weight-challenged prospect and ask, “Have you ever noticed your head is much too small for your body?” Sensitive people might find this question offensive.

A skilled salesperson, on the other hand, would take time to know the prospect as a human being and through discussion, both would agree that weighing 500 pounds was not only unhealthy and uncomfortable, but he or she would never be able to compete in the annual cardiac ward break-dance competition. Now we move into the third skill-set: sales nirvana!

Sales nirvana is when the salesperson finally gets to take center stage. He or she gets to talk. This is the time to recommend solutions, discuss why they will solve the problem, why they are the best of all solutions, and why they will continue to be effective both now and in the future. Eighty percent of all salespeople I evaluate tend to think this is the only part to selling.

However, unless our weight-challenged prospect decided to drop 65% of their body weight at 1 p.m., and a bypass-surgery salesperson walked in with a solution at 1:05, being “at the right time and the right place” takes work.

Of course, not all sales calls go this smoothly, and most prospects waffle back and forth between relating discovering and solving until they reach a decision. Skilled sales managers recognize these separate stages for what they are and know exactly what to do next. That’s what makes them good coaches. They are conscious of the sales process and competent to act (or coach) accordingly.

On the other hand, top-dollar sales producers dance through the sales process like Savion Glover, Gregory Hines, and Fred Astaire all rolled into one. “Watch and learn,” they shout as their blazing feet disappear into a blur of motion. Right.

Conclusion

There are a few very important points to make about salespeople and sales managers. For one thing, in their efforts to keep top-dollar salespeople happy, bosses often unwittingly destroy them by giving them a promotion. (If the bosses are lucky, the incompetent sales manager will quit before the rest of the sales force is decimated). Wouldn’t it be better to let salespeople realize beforehand that management is not a promotion, it is an assignment to a different job requiring entirely different skills?

Another important point is sales skills and management skills are seldom interchangeable. When hiring a salesperson, look for someone who thoroughly understands each step in the sales process, not someone who is skilled at selling wastebaskets (or ashtrays) to the VP of sales. Don’t fall in love with the sales pitch; selling is more about fact-finding than persuading.

When hiring a sales manager, look for someone who not only knows the sales process, but is able to develop specific skill-sets among the existing sales staff. Forget about turning top-producing salespeople into skilled managers; this seldom happens.

After all, your head is not too small for your body, is it?

The importance of a good market analysis in your area cannot be over emphasized, and whether you’re a large corporation or a small firm, understanding your market will help identify many different factors that can have an impact on your business or clients.

As a recruiter or consultant, the employment market analysis will give you an overall projection of industries within a specific state, region, or ZIP code. There are many different companies offering detailed employment or industry data along with many different factors. I like to use www.economicmodeling.com, which has detailed data on occupations and industry location quotient, to name a few.

These reports are derived from information obtained through various state and federal agencies. I use this information in my workforce planning to clients and in business development.

Economy Overview. A good market analysis will have an economy overview, which is very helpful in understanding where your current market is and where it is going. My analysis focuses on five-year trends, which can tell me if a specific industry is growing or not. This can be important in identifying industries in your business development that you can capitalize on. It is also helpful in establishing parallels in which one industry may suffer but, because of the paralleled verticals, you can focus your candidates in another direction.

Shift Share Analysis. Shift share analysis, or regional competitiveness, isolates growth (projected to occur over the next 10 years) that can be attributed to regional causes rather than simply to national economic or industry trends. In my case, this is especially important in Hawaii due to our specific region. Local knowledge should be employed to discover why these industries in your market analysis are outperforming national trends and thus reveal the region’s competitive advantages. A very good report will give you these specific details in presentation-ready graphs, bars, tables, and maps.

Occupational Changes. My report usually shows the fastest changing occupations in my particular region and, as I previously mentioned in the article, this information will not only guide your business as a recruiter or consultant, but it will also be valuable in educating clients with respect to growth. The information in my report will give you a rough calculation of the change in five years. This may be very useful for a recruiter or consultant who is working in a new region or market and needs a snapshot usually arrived at with local knowledge.

Strategic Advantage. Providing your company or a client with a detailed report gives a strategic advantage with information and demographic analyses that can be used to analyze the regional economy and workforce. In my case, having a tool like the market analysis provides that advantage. Knowing the impact of businesses entering, leaving, growing, or shrinking in a region can be valuable not only to your success but that of your clients. I recommend taking a look at a sample of these reports so you can gauge how it will be helpful in your particular situation. The ability to understand current and future trends in a regional economy is more important than ever to both add value to your knowledge as a recruiter or consultant as well as to provide leverage in your area of business development.

A good market analysis is important, and I would recommend it to anyone looking to stay competitive in today’s market.

There is something truly magical about that precise moment when a product is bought or sold. I suppose it’s because our species has relied upon this most fundamental form of capitalism for so long.

As humans became more efficient in drawing sustenance and were no longer engaged 100% in the act of survival, we learned to plant a little more rice or catch a few more fish. This abundance was then taken to the “marketplace” where people traded it for something they didn’t have but nonetheless needed. I’m no evolutionary biologist, but I’d be willing to bet the act of buying and selling activates some ancient and primitive part of the human brain.

The act of selling, of course, requires a customer, and for years sales professionals have been taught that Customer is King. They learn about the product they are selling, learn how to counter objections from their customer, learn how to educate their customer, and learn how to generate new leads. When each person was responsible for selling their own extra crops, it was clear who the customer was.

As business grew, though, entire functions came into being that had nothing whatsoever to do with product, or customers, or selling.

It certainly makes sense. After all, there is no point in having every person in the company learn all the thousands of regulations associated with the accounting function. It’s a trade-off, though, as a smaller and smaller proportion of employees gets to participate in that most sacred act of selling products to a customer.

The company where I work makes products associated with eye care, and many of our products are sold to eye-care professionals. Recently, the recruiter who hires our sales professionals and I joined one of our territory managers for a day in the field. I’m not about to suggest that we contributed in any way to the sales that were booked that day; I’m sure our presence was more of a nuisance than help.

However, my “day in the field” was an awesome experience. I prepared by reviewing the training materials and learned a lot about our products. For the first time, I opened packages of the different products and held them in my hands. I was also able to meet the medical professionals who used these products to help patients.

No matter what business you’re in, you have a customer. I hope as a recruiting professional you don’t wait as long as I did to watch your product get into a customer’s hands. I know my colleague who recruits sales reps now uses her experience in the field to answer questions for potential hires. My major take-away was that, regardless of your business, there are a few fundamental characteristics all customers share.

Customers, Like People, Are Unique

The day we visited customers, we stopped at six different locations. Every single person with whom we spoke was totally different from the others. One was all business and wanted only the facts. Another was very friendly and spent most of her time asking about us. Still another was shy at first, and then became more comfortable as the conversation progressed. Anyone who makes the mistake of assuming every customer will respond to a single prescribed sales approach will realize quickly how wrong they are.

My friend Reid Buckley loves to tell the true story of an acquaintance who is generally regarded as one of the most successful salesmen in his field.

Looking back, though, his most vivid memory is that of a customer very early in his career who treated him brutally. He had invited the young salesman into his office, and then promptly ignored him for hours at a time. The lesson he had to eventually learn was how to sell to that customer “the way he wanted to buy.” He did, and paradoxically the lessons he learned from sitting for hours in front of someone who ignored and humiliated him ended up serving him very well.

Everyone will eventually encounter a customer like that. I watch many recruiters get frustrated with these “tough nuts” because they want them to respond to the sales pitch they’re most comfortable with. It’s important to be flexible in your approach, and learn to sell the way the customer wants to buy.

Your Competitors Are Always Around

When we’re immersed in the culture of a company, we’re surrounded by its symbols and imagery. Our company homepages have large logos, as do our stationery, brochures, and signs on our buildings. The first thing that struck me when I walked into the first doctor’s office was our lovely product display.

More specifically, I was struck by the way it was located right next to a competitor’s display case. And under another company’s calendar. Just beside still another company’s mouse pad.

It was jarring to see the look and feel of our company brand piled up so incongruously with other branded materials. It struck me that, when I go to work, I see only things that remind me of my own company. When my customers go to work, they see things that remind them of all my competitors. It’s important to keep that in mind and truly differentiate your product from all the others.

Unglamorous Things to Make the Sale

When we visited a doctor’s office, I helped straighten up the store room. I removed old product, put new product in the little drawers, and even made sure all the packages were facing the same way in the drawers. If you spend time with people who are passionate about what they do, you’ve already seen this level of dedication.

As I think back on specific leaders I’ve met who deliver strong business results, inspire their teams, and regularly deliver innovation to their businesses, they’ve all impressed me by their willingness to do whatever it takes to delight the customer. I remember when one of my favorite leaders agreed to attend a recruiting event I was coordinating several years’ back.

I expected that someone so successful and powerful would probably want to hole up in his hotel room and make phone calls or answer emails. Instead, he helped assemble welcome packages, directed people around the property, and delivered an impromptu talk to a roomful of students.

A cynic might think he did those things to show us he was a “regular guy,” or to demonstrate the traits he wanted to see from his subordinates. I myself was cynical, so I asked him why he chose to spend his time with us as he did. I remember his look of surprise.

He didn’t realize he had “sent a message” at all! Instead, he knew that attracting talent was a critical activity for the business because it directly impacted our ability to get product to customers. While much of his “attracting talent” activities did include approving multi-million dollar consulting agreements and overseeing talent reviews, he knew that the little activities were equally important.

Go to Your Customers

I forgot to look at the mileage gauge when we first got into the car, but we drove around a lot during our visits. In some cases, we went to one location, drove across town to another, then returned to another office just down the street from the first office. The reason is that, despite our best intentions, sometimes the customer’s schedule just couldn’t accommodate an ideal route and schedule.

I’m often struck by vendors who cold-call me and leave a voicemail informing me that they’ll be in my town on a certain day and will be stopping by at 9:45 a.m. to meet me to talk about a solution they’ve developed to “fix” my problems. One vendor caught me on the phone recently and told me that “based on her research, her company’s product would be a great solution for my recruiting challenges.”

I responded by asking her what data she gathered, how she gathered it, exactly what conclusions she drew, what my company does, who my competitors are, where my company is located, how many people are employed by my company, what sources I use to fill my jobs, and what about her product made it an ideal solution for me specifically.

Taking time to understand your customers’ needs is critical when our job is helping them identify talent with whom they must work and rely upon. Sometimes it’s not convenient, but it’s important to make that connection.

Maintain Your Enthusiasm

During our “day on the road” we met one customer for 15 minutes, one for five minutes, one for a quick drive-by hello, and we caught only a glimpse of another (though we waited 45 minutes to see him).

I was amazed by our host’s ability to deliver the same level of enthusiasm to our 4:30 p.m. visit as she did to our 8:30 a.m. visit. I think the reason she did it so well is that I didn’t get the sense that she was “psyching herself up” in the car before her visits. Instead, I had the distinct impression that she truly loved what she was doing and was taking special delight in visiting customers.

I’m sure you know people who are filled with energy and passion for what they do. They truly enjoy what they’re doing and can take pleasure in their work even when it seems like nothing is going right for them.

Customers don’t care if you just called 20 people and they all hung up on you, or if a hiring manager just sent a nasty note about you to your boss. The people I know who are happiest (and most successful) are those who are enthusiastic.

Customers Want You to Return

Sometimes customers can’t talk to you right then, but they want you to come back.

This was a minor observation, but one that has stuck with me. Several customers were unexpectedly busy when we arrived, despite the fact we’d re-confirmed the appointment the day before. I never felt like people were trying to get rid of us, but rather that there were patients who had showed up with serious issues that needed treatment.

I thought about how many times I’ve called or emailed someone who wasn’t able to give me the information I needed in the timeframe I wanted it. It can be tempting to tell one’s self a story about how they don’t respect the recruiting function or aren’t devoting sufficient time to their open requisition. In reality, they’re probably just trying to respond to their own customers.

I’ve tried to modify my own behavior as a result of this observation. Last week I received a cold call from an agency that wanted to talk about helping us with some open requisitions. I was on my way to another meeting, but I promised to call her back. She didn’t sound too convinced that she’d ever hear back from me, but several days later I did return the call.

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in. Everyone has customers, and it’s important to remember that they are the kings and queens. If you don’t have regular customer-facing interactions as part of your responsibilities, be sure to schedule some soon. You’ll be glad you did.

By Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnett

Over the course of the last three weeks, we have laid out a model for managing the portfolio of job opportunities an organization produces similar to that used by organizations to manage their product/service portfolio.

This model repositions the employment opportunity as a product, one that can be defined, engineered, packaged, marketed, and sold just like any other product.

If you missed the first three installments of this series, here’s a quick recap of the major points made:

• To be capable of hiring top talent an organization must first be perceived as a viable employer by top talent;
• Just as the labor market has become more transparent/accessible to employers, so too has the employer to the labor market (i.e., each party can learn about each other from a multitude of perspectives almost instantaneously);
• Employment branding is about a lot more than recruitment advertising and employee communications. It is the science of creating a predictable response from targeted talent based on manipulation of the collective snippets of information amassed about an employer from a multitude of sources by the targeted talent;
• Successful employment branding requires managing the experience of the target talent and those individuals who influence the target talent with the organization at every touch point;
• Most employment branding initiatives fail because they focus on advertising the existence of a single value proposition, that of employment with “the company.” Unfortunately, few organizations present a work environment that is consistent across the enterprise, because work environment is influenced by a multitude of factors, many of which are difficult to homogenize. Because of this, organizations do not have one employment value proposition. They have hundreds or even thousands, some of which are very similar and others of which are radically different;
• Successful organizations have long used product managers to ensure that products produced meet the needs and expectations of the consumers for which the product or service was designed. The time has come to apply the same model to employment opportunities;
• The employment marketing function must be reorganized around the product marketing model. Product marketers analyze product offerings, measure their value, develop positioning strategies, develop product packaging, and promote the product through communications to a target audience.

Having recapped the last three weeks, it’s time to turn our attention to constructing a new employment product profile that can be used in marketing employment opportunities. As you read through the sample profile template, notice how many of the elements focus on the longer term attributes of employment, and draw upon attributes influenced/inherited from the industry, the organization, the function, the department, the team, and the job itself.

Most current communications focus solely on the organization and a generic description of the job. By focusing on such mundane elements, recruiters drive all discussion regarding employment down to the here and now.

In Lou Adler’s recent article on Defend(ing) Your Candidate From the Competition and Dumb Decisions he pointed out that “when first discussing a job, recruiters and candidates alike over-emphasize the tactical reasons for considering moving forward, rather than the strategic ones. Compensation, titles, location, and the company’s public reputation are tactical issues. Job stretch, career opportunity, the leadership skills of the manager, and the importance of the job to the overall company’s business plan are strategic issues.”

Hopefully, you will see how this new profile format directly addresses Lou’s point.

Building the Employment Product Profile

In the first installment of this series, we identified that the defined feature set for any employment product should be expanded far beyond its current pitiful existence to include fact-based characterizations of:

• Management quality
• Leadership quality
• Peer quality
• Nature of work
• Development opportunity
• Project responsibility
• Performance-based compensation
• Standard benefits of employment
• Work-life balance
• Company reputation
• Innovativeness/progressiveness
• Market position

In reality, the categories of information presented in an employment product profile should be determined through market research. While a formal career planning process may be an important feature for entry-level marketing professionals, it may be less so for senior-level finance professionals.

When building out such a profile, it will be essential to understand what attributes your primary talent competitors are stressing, so that you can include fact-based characterizations that enable a direct side-by-side comparison.

While we would not advise providing candidates with a side-by-side comparison developed internally, providing candidates with a framework for conducting a side-by-side comparison with your information already provided would be a great influencer.

Sample Employment Product Profile

Employment Product Family: Finance (Band 5/6)

Employment Product: Financial Analyst

Product Summary: Financial analysts are aligned with specific products and partner with line management to evaluate and forecast the impact of tactical and strategic business decisions. This role is project-driven, meaning that primary job activities change frequently depending upon current market conditions and the company’s strategic plan. Recent project initiatives have focused on:

• Product pricing and promotion schemas
• Capital and factory capacity analysis
• Industry benchmarking of product prioritization
• Budgetary planning and dashboard development

Nature of Work

• Employee engagement on factors relating to work challenge and job responsibility in this department score 4.8/5.0. This score ranks in the top fifth percentile within the organization and the industry, according to the Boston Consulting Group. (Complete engagement scores for all factors related to this department, the organization, and the industry comparison sample are available from any employment specialist for review.)
• Seven practices developed here within the last four years have been identified as industry best practices by leading authorities. (A complete listing of leading management practices and the external validation of them is available from any employment specialist.)
• 87% of the employees in this department agree or strongly agree that their work plays a “significant” role in ensuring the success of this organization.
• In the previous calendar year, this department received more than 100 process benchmarking requests from other organizations and accepted 27 from a mixture of both public and private companies.

Management Quality

• Employee engagement on factors relating to management quality in this department score 4.2/5.0. This score ranks in the top tenth percentile within the organization and in the top fifth percentile within the industry, according to the Boston Consulting Group.
• Average tenure of managers within this department is 5.4 years.
• 69% of managers in this department were promoted from within the organization.
• Employee retention of new hires generated by the management of this department is 89.6% at two years.
• 57% of managers within this department have been recognized by professional associations for promoting excellence in the profession. (A complete list of awards and distinctions earned by the management of this department is available from any employment specialist for review).

Leadership Quality

• Employee engagement on factors relating to leadership quality score 4.57/5.0. This score ranks in the top fifth percentile within the industry, according to the Boston Consulting Group.
• 84% of employees strongly agree that “senior leadership demonstrate through action that employees are important to the success of this organization.
• 91% of employees agree or strongly agree that “senior leadership both support and act in accordance with high ethical standards.”
• Average tenure in role of vice-presidents and above is 3.1 years.
• 89% of the executive committee has received awards of excellence by national professional associations governing their respective expertise.
• Over the course of the last three years, the senior leadership of this organization has met or exceeded 96% of the performance targets established by the board of directors.
• 100% of the executive committee sits on the board of directors for non-profit organizations in their respective communities.

Peer Quality

• Employee engagement on factors relating to peer quality in this department score 4.17/5.0. This score ranks in the top twenty-fifth percentile within the organization and in the top tenth percentile within the industry, according to the Boston Consulting Group.
• 86% of the employees in this department agree or strongly agree that their peers are committed to and capable of completing quality work.
• Average tenure in role of employees in this department is 1.6 years.
• 78% of employees hired into this department receive a promotion or lateral transfer within 36 months of service.

Development Opportunity

• 93% of employees within this department are supported by a personal development plan that includes formal training, on-the-job development through project and role rotation, and interpersonal development activities such as mentoring or coaching.
• Average number of training hours made available to employees in this department is 112 hours/year. (Average number of training hours actually utilized in this department is 87/year.
• 79% of the employees in this department agree or strongly agree that stretch assignments are consistently made available.
• 96% of the employees in this department agree or strongly agree that individual managers are invested in developing their employees.

Performance-Based Compensation

• Target cash compensation for this role is set at 110% of market. This includes base compensation ranging between 65% and 80% of market based on experience and performance based compensation of 30% to 45% based on achievement of individual, team, and departmental objectives.
• The pay differential between top and average performers within this department over the course of the last three years has averaged 49.7%, ranging between 41% and 56%.
• 74% of employees on average have met or achieved their performance targets within the past three years.

Work-Life Balance

• 83% of employees in this department agree or strongly agree that the company’s policies and managers make it easy for employees to balance their personal and professional lives.
• 63% of employees in this department are utilizing an “alternate work arrangement” that allows for telecommuting or job sharing.
• 71% of employees in this department utilize company benefits that support their personal interests outside the organization including affinity groups, corporate discount programs, educational opportunities, etc.

Standard Benefits

• Not defined in this example.

Conclusion

While building out employment product profiles may seem time-consuming and difficult, they are becoming essential in attracting top talent. To ensure that your employment products are perceived as viable, you need to counter and support perceptions in the labor market using facts that differentiate your opportunities and position them ahead of those afforded by the talent competition.

We can already hear conservative HR types screaming that providing such information will create a liability. It’s time to stop whining and start acting. Communicating facts help establish realistic expectations and eliminate the impact of numerous uncontrollable opinions being offered by influencers outside your span of control.

If the information communicated is factual, and you indicate that it is historical, you have nothing to worry about. You have been collecting data for years; it’s time to start using it.

Secrets of Winning Traffic through Search Engines ó Top Search Engines; How They Work; Page Rankings Explained; Keywords; AdWords; Optimization; Submitting your site; Pay-Per-Clicks; Link Popularity; and more.

There’s a lesson here that you can learn and apply without ever having to take the course: people look for stuff like online courses on the Internet using keywords ó they even look for jobs! It seems so obvious now, but few recruiters take full advantage of this common technique. A company called Universal Class knows that people are looking for marketing classes online, and made sure that a class taught by Phil Autelitano, Jr. was available every day for them to take. More important, it showed up in the top five listings on Google. Now consider this: How many candidates looking for your jobs can find them in the top five listings? Are you aware that your candidates might use Google to look for your jobs? Or, they might be reading CNN.com, nytimes.com, USAToday.com, Yahoo.com or a host of other sites unrelated to job hunting, and decide to click on the “Find Jobs” link, which is now more and more predominantly displayed on these major non-job board sites? And these are not active candidates! That’s right. The people who use these non-job board sites that are linked to job boards to find jobs are not active candidates; they’re semi-active candidates. A few years ago I wrote an article called The Sourcing Sweet Spot. It described the demographics and the motivating reasons why top-performing people look for jobs. Here’s the quick take: Semi-active candidates are those currently employed people who want another job, but don’t have too much time to look. This group is filled with people who tend to look for jobs every now and then in the hope that something better will come along. These people are currently employed, but feel unappreciated, overworked, or underpaid. They actively search for something different whenever job demands become overwhelming or whenever they get somewhat frustrated. For a few hours, they then become active candidates, but using a different approach than the active candidates. There are many great people in this group, but as a rule they won’t spend too much time applying for a job unless it’s immediately obvious that the new job opportunity is significantly better than the one they now have. This group is huge! It probably represents 30% to 40% of the labor pool, although at any one time only a small percent may be looking. This is the sourcing “sweet spot.” If you design your sourcing processes correctly, this is where you can find the best candidates at the lowest cost in the shortest period of time. The key to finding more semi-active candidates is a basic understanding of marketing. Semi-active candidates are people on the margin. They don’t always look, but they do look now and then. Sourcing programs need to be designed to meet the needs of these casual lookers. It’s important to cater to this group, since on a percentage basis strong performers are over-represented. Everyone gets frustrated on the job now and then, even recruiters. And a good portion of these people will look for new jobs if it’s easy enough to do. So make it easy for them. Here are six things you can do now to find more top people by making some simple changes to your web-based sourcing programs. As you read these marketing ideas, benchmark your own company’s current sourcing processes against them, rating yours on a 1-5 scale. (A 3-5 means you’re good at it and doing it to some degree with some consistently, and a 1-2 means you’re not doing it, or not doing it too regularly.) If you don’t score at least a 15, you’re letting good people get away without a fight.

1. Reverse engineer your search process. Determine what keywords top people (ask them!) use to find your jobs. With these words in hand, go to all of the major boards and search for jobs using them. Which jobs and companies show up? If yours don’t, read the ads that do and figure out what they’ve done differently. Then do what they do until your jobs come up. Then go to all of the sites the best people might use every day and see if they have any direct links to job boards. Then put your ads on these job boards.
2. Make the job titles compelling. Most job titles are boring. When I put the keywords “Flash developer” into one job search engine at a major news site, mostly uninspiring jobs showed up. Then I came to this group of five jobs. Which ad would you most likely read if you were a Flash developer?
   • HTML/DHTM/XML/Flash Interface Developer
   • A Mac-Daddy eMarketing Guru!
   • Web Developer
   • Flash Programmer
   • Senior Flash Develop. Actionscript.

   Rank yourself high if your ads are in the “Mac-Daddy” groove, and low if they’re more traditional.

3. Use compelling copy. Describe opportunities, don’t list requirements. Once people click on your ad to read the job description, make sure they read it. Most ad copy is boring. The ads are written to exclude unqualified people, not attract the best semi-active candidates, who only spend 10 to 15 seconds reading the first few sentences of your ad to determine if they’ll apply. Here’s the copy for the “Mac-Daddy” ad above. It has staying power. Do your ads?
   

   Are you an Internet marketing hotshot? Have you bridged the gap between web developer techie and ad agency whiz kid? Do you enjoy the challenge of designing an Internet-based marketing program, creating the technical structure and graphics, and developing the content as well? Then bring your “bad self” to the party and let’s get started!”

4. Make it easy to apply. Don’t put people through hoops to apply. Change your definition of an applicant if you have to. Allow candidates to upload their resumes directly into a self-generating application form. This is called resume parsing. (Check out Hireability.com, burning-glass.com, and resumemirror.com if you don’t already have this capability. Most candidate tracking systems use one of these or something similar.) How long does it take for your candidates to apply for your jobs? If it takes more than five to ten minutes, you’re losing good people unnecessarily. Give yourself a 4 or 5 if you’re within this standard and a 1 or 2 if you make people take too many tests and pass too many unnecessary obstacles just to get into the game.
5. Call the best people the next day. Make sure your resume search engine in your tracking system can separate the good resumes from the bad. If the best people are not accurately put at the top of the list, you either don’t know how to use your search engine properly or it’s not a good enough search engine. Regardless, you need to call these people the next day. These people are only on the market for a very short time. For one reason, they’re very good, and someone else will find them more quickly then you. For another, they’re semi-active and only look when job circumstances are a little rough. So they often take themselves out of the market as quickly as they got into it. You need good technology and good recruiters to handle the speed issue.
6. Use metrics to track opt-in/opt-out ratios. Marketing is all about testing and tracking. Running ads on the Internet is inexpensive. So try out lots of these ideas and see which works best. You’ll need to track page views, click rates, and opt-in/opt-out rates to see what works and where you’re losing candidates. Your Internet marketing department can help you here. I’ve used a product called Webtrends with great results. Here’s what the company has to say to about this important topic: “Complete web analytics isn’t about more reports. It’s about increasing conversion rates, optimizing marketing campaigns and improving web site ROI.” Your company uses something similar to track web page results. The recruiting department should too. Rank yourself a 4 or 5 if you’ve got web-based marketing analytics down pat, a 2 or 3 if you’re looking at these numbers sometimes, and a 0 or 1 if you haven’t taken this important step yet.

Everyone complains that they’re not seeing enough top candidates. To start solving the problem, consider the problem first from a purely marketing perspective ó “How can we drive more top talent traffic to our job ads?” Don’t worry about legal or compliance issues or even bad taste. Be creative. Consider everything. The six topics above are a good place to start, but don’t end there. Map every step of your hiring process and see where the marketing begins to fall apart. Consider hiring managers, receptionists, scheduling interviews, and anything that might be a detriment to top people finding your open jobs, getting into the system, and getting hired. Then prioritize these things with the big stuff on the top of the list. Now start implementing these changes and fight the corporate police and legal battles to make it happen. Take a marketing 101 course if you need to. Do whatever it takes to bring in more top talent. Just don’t make any more excuses.

1. Few corporate recruiters are actually cold calling passive candidates. The survey shows that less than 30% of corporate recruiters do it, and few of them are any good at it. This is a big issue if you want to compete effectively with external search firms. It’s one way to hire more top people without paying agency fees.
2. Most of the respondents felt that they had a strategic hiring plan in place, but these same people indicated that didn’t have an actual workforce plan. I don’t know how you can be strategic without a workforce plan. This is how you convert business strategy into actual tactics. To be strategic, you have to know at least three to six months out who you’ll be hiring in pretty good detail. A workforce plan allows you to develop a multi-channel sourcing plan to make sure the people start on the day you need them. So if you’re now working on future hiring requirements, you’re probably strategic. If you’re just filling current hiring needs, you’re probably not.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be summarizing some of the other trends coming out of the survey. This week I’ll provide some tips on how to be better at the cold calling part and how to overcome some common candidate concerns. Topics on the table include the following:

1. How to handle the “I’m not looking,” “I’m happy where I am,” or “the job’s not big enough” responses. The easy answer: Don’t tell the person anything about the job.
2. How to handle the “I don’t want to relocate” issue. The easy answer: Don’t talk about it. The hard answer follows later in this article.
3. How to handle any “no” to any question. The easy answer: Only ask questions that can be answered by a “yes.”

Handling these types of concerns is what being a recruiter is all about. Quite frankly, if you’re not afraid to pick up the phone and start talking to complete strangers who are not looking, everything else about being a recruiter is pretty simple. All it takes is the ability to smoothly handle these three concerns, since they’re representative of every other concern. The “I’m Not Looking” Objection The key here is to recognize that everybody is looking for something better; it just might not be the job you have available. So don’t ask the person you’re calling if they would be interested in your job. Instead, ask if the person would be interested in exploring an opportunity if it were clearly better than the one he or she has now. Just about everybody will say yes when the question is phrased this way. When they do say yes, don’t then tell them about your job at first. Instead, ask them what they would consider to be a superior job. If yours falls within this category, recruit the person. If not, get referrals. Recruiters need to lead the cold call conversation by asking appropriate questions. The best ones are those that can be answered by a yes. Equally important is the fact that no one will give you any referrals unless you’ve had a reasonable dialogue and an exchange of career and job information. This takes at least 10 minutes. So if you can’t keep the person on the phone getting details about their background first, you won’t get any referrals later on. If you realize the person isn’t a good fit for your job, don’t ask if they know anyone looking. Ask the person who was the best person they worked with at their prior company, or someone who might know someone else. Mention that you got their name through networking this way. Then cold call with these people and ask if they’d be open to discussing a career opportunity if it was far superior to what they’re doing now. The “I Don’t Want to Relocate” Objection No one does, so stop asking this question too early in the conversation. For one thing, people will only relocate if the job opportunity is too compelling to resist. For another, they’ll only relocate if they can convince their family that it’s also too compelling to resist. You need to move very slowly to pull this off. Here’s how: Avoid the relocation discussion early in the conversation. Instead, ask if the person would consider just discussing a career opportunity if it was extremely compelling. Most people will say yes to this. Then get the candidate’s profile and give them a quick overview of the job. It had better be compelling, or forget about the relocation. Then ask the person to just consider the idea of relocation if it could be demonstrated that the job offered very unusual and significant upside potential ó including a very attractive compensation package. In a few days, casually call up the person to see if he or she would be open to an exploratory phone call with the hiring manager. About a third of the people you initially pursue this way will take the call from the hiring manager. This is much better than the 5% who would have said yes to a relocation at the beginning. While this is going on, the candidate is offhandedly mentioning your call to his or her family and stating it’s nothing serious, “just talk.” At the end of the call with the hiring manager, have the manager ask the candidate if he or she would be interested in coming down to visit the facility, again with no strings attached. If the candidate says yes, you’re done. Not everyone will come down or take an offer if made, but more will when you move slowly like this. The key is to offer a compelling strategic career opportunity and give the candidate plenty of time to shift from a short-term to a long-term decision-making posture. This allows enough time for the candidate and the family to get used to idea that a move is possible. Don’t Take No For an Answer When a candidate says no to anything, especially early in the recruiting process, it’s usually because he or she doesn’t have enough information to say yes, and the opportunity doesn’t seem worth spending the time to consider it. There are two things you can do to address the problem: 1) avoid it and only ask questions that can be answered by yes, or 2) confront it head on. First, don’t take a no personally. Assume the person is saying no because he or she doesn’t have enough information yet to say yes. So just acknowledge the no, and then get the person’s attention by asking something like, “I can understand why this might not be the perfect time to talk, but are you aware that you have just made a long-term career decision based on short-term information?” During this pause ask, “If I could demonstrate to you that the opportunity I’m involved with represents a major career move, would it be worth spending just 10 minutes to evaluate it?” This is how you convert a no to yes. Of course, the opportunity must be compelling or the candidate will opt out. But if you handle the call properly, you’ll still be able to get some great referrals, and possibly a candidate you would have normally lost. Closing upon an objection is the actual name of the technique described above. It starts by asking the candidate if he or she would do something (consider, evaluate, have a phone call, go on an interview) for the promise of more information. You can use this “close upon an objection” technique throughout the recruiting and hiring process. Evaluating a bigger job is one of these “if/then” situations. Getting a person to come back in for another round of interviews if the hiring manager would discuss some of the big projects is another example. Getting the person to agree to accept an offer if the compensation met a specific target is still another. This is what recruiting is all about ó not taking no for an answer, only asking questions that can be answered by a yes, and using the “if/then” close upon an objection to move the process slowly forward. Slow is important when dealing with top people, even if a relocation is not involved. This gives the candidate the time needed to shift from a short-term tactical point of view to a long-term career opportunity perspective. This is what it takes to hire the best, and why good recruiters are essential. It also helps if you have a workforce plan in place to give you enough time to do it right. So if you’re not an employer of choice with plenty of candidates to consider, you’d better get off the PC and on the phone.