Tag: EVP

The Truth About Older (50+) Salespeople

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Diversity, Employment Retention, Employment Value Proposition, Generational Gap, Hiring, Interviewing, Latest News and Articles, Millennials, Workforce Cuture

Wisdom is the knowledge base that will assist our future leaders.

Imagine if you will a time when you are getting a little bit older, a touch grayer and you start reflecting on what are you going to do when you get too mature for the industry you are in.

I have always had this question, but never bold enough to write about it. I’ve had a lot of opinions on this as the market is getting younger by the minute. People want to put millennials on pedestals and assume they are the next coming of…well whatever. I do not. But what I do say is they are dang smart. We Xers can learn tons from them.

The problem, however, is they lack the experience of hitting a curve ball. This can be taught of course, but won’t happen until they have failed a number of times. Knowledge and wisdom come from experience, not case studies.

I don’t fear getting older. I love it. I don’t fear millennials, I encourage them. 1+1 = power. Let’s embrace learning from one another. By the way, I am not 50+!!!

~The Organic Recruiter

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The Truth About Older (50+) Salespeople

 | Technology Sales Author, Sales Researcher, Founder Heavy Hitter Sales Training, USC Faculty

It is still hard times for salespeople (and sales managers) over 50 today. When companies downsize, they find themselves five times more likely to be let go when compared to their younger counterparts. They also have a more difficult time finding new jobs because younger sales managers have five basic fears about hiring someone older than themselves:

They are Un-coachable. Younger sales managers fear older salespeople are set in their ways and won’t take their directions.

They aren’t Technically Savvy. Younger sales managers fear they haven’t ingrained technology (smartphones, e-mail, and web-based sales force automation) into their daily working routine (nor are they up-to-date on the internet, social media, etc.).

They are “Washed Up.” Younger sales managers fear older reps are burned out from too many years “carrying the bag.”

They Have a Poor Work Ethic.  For a variety of family, personal, or health reasons, younger sales managers question how hard they will work.

They Really Want My Job! Perhaps the biggest fear of a younger manager is that he is hiring someone who may upstage him or her in the eyes of senior management in order to fulfill an ulterior motive of taking over their job.

Given these fears, I would like to offer five factors sales managers should consider when choosing between younger and more senior salespeople.

  1. Do you have to Sell to the C-Level? The C-level Executive sell is based upon establishing credibility and trust. Who do think has an easier time establishing rapport with senior executives; a 26 or 56 year old salesperson?
  2. It’s about relationships (not Rolodexes). Never hire any salesperson solely based on their Rolodex (if you’re under 30 you might have to look this word up) of customer contacts they claim to possess. Hire the salesperson who has a successful track record at penetrating new accounts and proven their ability of turning aloof prospects into close friends.
  3. Wit. Most companies make previous experience in the same industry their main criterion for hiring. Since these salespeople command the industry nomenclature, they are assumed to be qualified candidates. A more important hiring criterion is how candidates respond to pressure. In other words, how quick-witted or fast on their feet are they? What is their ability to learn quickly? Are they able to solve complex problems in real time? In this regard, don’t judge a book by its cover and assume a little gray hair means a lot less grey matter.
  4. Sales is a Mentor-based Profession. Sales organizations are mentor-based environments. Inexperienced salespeople don’t know what they haven’t seen for themselves. Usually, it’s through the “school of hard knocks” that they gain their experience. Unfortunately, this takes time. The entire sales team can benefit from emulating salespeople who have accumulated a reservoir of experience working with customers.
  5. Who Do You Trust!?! Peek into the cockpit as you board your next commercial flight. Chances are you are putting your life in the hands of one of the 70,000 airline pilots that are over 50 years old.

About the Author:  Steve W. Martin is the author of the “Heavy Hitter” series of books for senior salespeople on the human nature of complex sales. The Heavy Hitter corporate sales training program has helped over 100,000 salespeople become top revenue producers. Steve is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review and he teaches at the University of Southern California Marshall Business School MBA program. Visit www.stevewmartin.com to learn more.

10 TIPS TO MANAGING INTERVIEW CANCELLATIONS AND NO SHOWS

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Interviewing, Latest News and Articles, New Job

by Katie Calhoun | February 16th 2016

Ever wonder why your candidates are cancelling or gosh darn it, no showing?  Don’t just blame them, let’s take some accountability and in return take action.  Below are some causes.  What kind of effects are you willing to create?  ~The Organic Recruiter

As the war for talent has once again heated up, candidates are no longer willing to wait long for interviews. Before you pull your hair out, take a moment to consider the candidate’s point of view. On the other hand, young candidates may be fearful and intimidated.

Why would you care if they don’t show up? You’ll just move on to the next person on your list, right? Whether experienced professionals or college grads, job candidates today are focused on one thing: finding the company that gives them the best feeling and makes getting hired easy.

It’s important to note that the best way to prevent cancellations and no shows is to truly invest time in building rapport with a candidate, selling the job opportunity to the candidate, and gaining a firm buy-in from them regarding their interest in working at the company.

By building rapport with a candidate, you can earn their trust, learn about their career goals and how those goals align with the current opportunity.

It’s equally as important to be able to articulate what the career path is in the company, so you can provide candidates with a bigger picture of where this current position might lead them.

Another thing that makes a difference is to truly understand what the candidate’s salary requirements are and how that relates to the position being offered.

If the candidate’s request is too far out of range, do they still want to interview for a job that offers less money? If so, it needs to be vetted with the candidate, otherwise you risk having them decide at the last minute that the pay cut won’t work.

Are they truly willing to relocate? How committed are they to that decision? Learn as much as you can about what are deal-breakers for candidates to ensure that only candidates who are truly willing to work the job, where it’s located, for the salary offered, are the ones who interview.In addition to that, here are 10 practical tips to help reduce candidate cancellations and no shows:

    1. Reduce interview lag time – Work with hiring managers to schedule interviews as soon as possible. Try not to go beyond two weeks. Don’t let someone else be faster than you.
    2. Coach hiring managers on the importance of not rescheduling interviews – Rescheduling gives candidates the impression that their time is not valued. They will interview where they are clearly wanted.
    3. Set expectations up front with candidates – Find out if they are interviewing elsewhere. Open a dialogue to gauge their true interest level in your company and what factors they weigh as priorities when considering and accepting offers. Ask them to notify you if they need to cancel or withdraw from consideration and provide contact information to do so.
    4. Provide flexible, upcoming interviewing schedules – The best candidates receive many interview offers and often have tight schedules to work around. How can you make the process easier? Can you interview over Skype? Phone? Offer after-hours or weekends? Offer flexible, pre-determined interview options to get on their calendar right away.
    5. Keep communicating with candidates – Schedule an email or text message campaign so that candidates hear from your company with interesting information every few days before the interview. Also, provide candidates with answers to questions, interview prep, what to expect at the interview, etc. And reinforce why your culture is a great place to spend their careers.
    6. Confirm interviews more than once – Email and phone candidates to confirm their intention to attend the interview. But don’t just confirm. Welcome them as you would a guest. Let them know how much you appreciate their time and interest.
    7. Text candidates – Millennials especially communicate by text message. This is an effective way to confirm and also to solicit feedback if they do not show.
    8. Build a stronger bench – If you normally present three candidates and find that you are experiencing a high rate of cancellations or no-shows, consider presenting five candidates to make up for it.
    9. Find out why candidates are dropping out – It may be hard to do, but if you can survey those who cancelled or failed to show, you’ll gain valuable insight into what factors are playing into this phenomenon. Was a recruiter rude? Did the timing just not work? Were they treated better somewhere else? Did they feel unprepared? Ask questions and report on it on a regular basis.
  • See the silver lining – Ultimately, candidates who fail to show or call may not be the most considerate or dependable employees. Be thankful that their behavior showed up early and prevented you from a potential bad hire.

THE 10 BEST INTERVIEW QUESTIONS TO ASK

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Interviewing, Latest News and Articles, New Job

by Dona DeZube, President at DeZube Publications Corp.

No one wants to be told they sound like a broken record, so I won’t say that to you. I will however share with you why these questions will streamline your interview process and allow the best to be identified faster.  Remember, your candidates have been to this rodeo before.

If you are new to recruiter or a recruitment Jedi, I am here to tell you there is no perfect way to interview, but asking the wrong questions make your Time-to-Fill longer and you frustrate the hiring managers with not-so-good candidates.  My hope is you can pepper in a few, if not all, of these questions in your game. ~The Organic Recruiter

The best interview questions tell you about the person behind the resume, revealing the job candidate’s personality, strengths, weaknesses, knowledge, skills and abilities. The best interview questions also benefit job seekers by giving them an opportunity to speak to details that don’t fit on a resume.

While a savvy interviewer always includes questions tailored to the position, our list of the 10 best questions works across a variety of industries and job descriptions:

  1. From everything you’ve learned about this role, me and our company, tell me how you feel you’d make a contribution.

This interview question sorts people into two categories: contenders and also-rans.

  1. Why should we hire you?

This sets them apart from the intense competition in today’s job market.

Faced with a big stack of resumes telling a similar story, this question helps you determine the best candidate.

An interviewee who does a great job explaining how her unique experience, education, industry credentials, and personal interests will power your business will do the same thing for your company once hired. 

If you could start your career over again, what would you do differently?

Asking a candidate to explain the major decisions he has made, highlighting the positive and negative, reveals the person’s ability to make calculated decisions based on past professional and personal experiences.

It also lets candidates share their vision for the future and their ambitions.

  1. When I contact your last supervisor and ask which area of your work needs the most improvement, what will I learn?

“No amount of finesse will influence this answer because when the supervisor is brought into the conversation, the candidate knows the truth will come out anyway. Essentially, it’s the same question as ‘what is your biggest weakness,’ phrased in an unexpected way.”

  1. Describe the best boss you ever reported to.

This is a great interview question because it tells you about past relationships.

 Tell me about what motivates you. 

If what drives the interviewee matches the position and your corporate culture, you have a winner.

  1. What frustrates you?

When the candidate then talks about past frustrations, he reveals details about his personality, diplomacy skills and ability to work on teams.

  1. Tell me about the toughest negotiation you’ve ever been in.

The best negotiators answer this question by laying out both sides of the problem and then explaining how they aligned the issues or followed a process to a mutually-agreeable solution.

  1. How do you involve your staff when an important company strategy decision needed to be made? 

The candidate’s answer tells you whether a manager is secure enough to involve others in strategic decision-making, says Jayne Mattson, senior vice president, Keystone Associates, Boston, a career management firm.

  1. Where do you see yourself in five years?

With this question, it’s not what the candidate says but how she says it that’s important, says Joey V. Price, CEO of Jumpstart HR, a managed HR services firm in Washington, D.C.

“If you see someone’s eyes light up at the thought of the future, then you can tell this is a very ambitious person who knows where they want to go and will do everything in their power to help ensure your organization gets them there.”

For the complete article – http://bit.ly/10bestInterviewquestions

A BIG MISTAKE MANY HIRING MANAGERS MAKE IN INTERVIEWS

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Interviewing, Latest News and Articles, New Job

By by Christian Schappel | March 30th, 2016

From my days in IT staffing to being your TA consultant today, I have always been both conflicted and even a bit annoyed with this topic.  Recruiters fight tooth and nail to get the “perfect” candidate in front of the hiring manager, only to get shot down immediately for punctuation, pepper in their teeth or whatever nonsensical reason.  “He didn’t work at ABC company” or “she doesn’t know our exact systems”. Of course she doesn’t…she’s never worked for you. Let’s interview better because the recruiters sure are helping you Find Better!  ~The Organic Recruiter

Research shows many of those involved in the hiring process are making a critical mistake when they meet with job candidates for the first time. What is it? Relying too heavily on first impressions. Chances are, some people in your organization are big believers in the sentiment: “There’s nothing like a good first impression.”

The problem is, a University of Toledo study found that first impressions may do more harm than good.

The study revealed that judgments of an applicant within the first 10 seconds of an interview can predict its outcome — and judgments that quick don’t lead to balanced assessments.

What can happen is interviewers can spend the rest of the interview looking for indicators that confirm their initial judgments about the applicant, as opposed to really assessing their abilities, the study found. So essentially, interviewers may have their minds made up about a candidate before an interview has barely begun, thanks to a series of pre-formed biases.

A better approach

Thankfully, there are ways to fight back against this natural inclination to prove your first impression of someone is correct.

Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior vice president of people operations, shared how he fights back against quick judgments in the hiring process in an article he penned recently for Wired.

In the article, entitled “Here’s Google’s Secret to Hiring the Best People,” Bock said he includes people from these two groups in interviews:

  • It’s common for candidates to meet with their potential boss, but why not also get the opinions of the people who will be working beneath them? After all, they’ve got to live with whoever you hire on a daily basis. Inviting one or two subordinates into the interview will help the company get an added, valuable perspective on the applicant.
  • “Cross-functional” workers.These employees have nothing to do with the department you’re hiring for, but they’ll still be interested in hiring high-quality candidates. And the viewpoint of someone from a different department, who’ll be less focused on dissecting the candidate’s technical abilities, can be valuable.

WHAT ATTRACTS THE BEST EMPLOYEES TO A COMPANY?

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Retention, Employment Value Proposition, Latest News and Articles

by Brandon Rigoni and Bailey Nelson | February 16th 2016

With the creation of such sites as Indeed’s Forums and Glassdoor, employees have had vehicles to share the good the bad and the ugly about the companies they work for.  This has become damaging to companies as they have now lost control of their Employment Value Proposition or their Why People Want to Work Here statements.  This can cost a lot of money for employee retention, attraction and in many cases loss in revenue.  But you do not have to leave this in the hands of the forums and blog sites. We can help you here. What are you doing today to keep a good employment brand? ~The Organic Recruiter

 Highlights of this article:

  • First, companies need to study their best performers
  • A strong employee value proposition attracts talent
  • An effective EVP sets a company apart

When leaders see their best performers achieve business outcomes, they no doubt wish they could get more similarly talented people to apply to and join their company.

Apple’s brilliantly defined employment brand not only speaks to people with a strong desire to learn and grow, but also says a lot about the company’s culture and what it values.

Gallup meta-analysis results suggest that when companies select the top 20% most talented candidates for a role, they frequently realize a 10% increase in productivity, a 20% increase in sales, a 30% increase in profitability, a 10% decrease in turnover and a 25% decrease in unscheduled absences.

Best Practices From Companies With Strong EVPs The right talent selection and management practices offer a powerful approach to human capital that should be central to any leader’s business strategy.

Companies with the very best EVPs apply the following best practices:

  • They understand their best performers
  • They connect their applicant messages to their culture
  • They differentiate themselves from the competition

Companies can use an evidence-based approach to develop a definitive guide for attracting applicants with the most potential to thrive.

Just because a candidate has the talent to be a top performer in a role doesn’t mean he or she is a good fit for a company’s organizational culture.

A company’s applicant attraction message should help it stand out from its competitors and provide potential hires with compelling reasons to choose the company as a workplace.

To ensure companies are differentiating themselves, they need to analyze their employment brand’s effectiveness and authenticity and then compare their brand with competitors’ to capitalize on differentiators.

When a company’s EVP highlights the company’s unique qualities, it can set the business apart, win the attention of desirable applicants and promote the company’s brand.

The company discovered that candidates who were more likely to have successful careers after they were hired were the ones most excited during their interviews about future-oriented aspects of the job, such as opportunities to learn and grow and to advance in their careers.

Even though the company pays very well, its job ads don’t mention compensation because it would attract the wrong kind of applicant.

Companies spend a lot of time and money on marketing campaigns to attract loyal customers.

Studying top performers is a necessary first step; leaders then need to craft an EVP that accurately reflects their company’s culture and sets it apart from the competition.

With the right type of applicant knocking at a company’s door, leaders can be more selective about whom they hire, and they can fill every position with someone who is the right fit. When leaders focus on attracting a large quantity of applicants rather than on attracting high-quality applicants, however, they miss the mark significantly.

With the right type of applicant knocking at a company’s door, leaders can be more selective about whom they hire, and they can fill every position with someone who is the right fit. ~full article

For case-studies, please call or email me today