Tag: black hole

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

Published on

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.

Gone in 6.0 Seconds

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

That’s how long it takes a recruiter to go to the next resume if they spent some time on yours.

According to most articles in the last 5+ years, recruiters spend no more than 6 seconds to disqualify you. So you better make an impact quick. Ladders wrote: Recruiters spend 80% of their six-second scan looking at these 4 areas:

  • Name
  • Current Position: Title, Company, and Dates of Employment
  • Previous Position: Title, Company, and Dates of Employment
  • Education

I am curious, I created a copy of my resume in the same 1 sheet format that is circulating with Yahoo!’s Marissa Mayer. Hers is getting mixed reviews, mostly good, but from the traditional, old schoolers I am seeing they are not so excited about it. From the more progressive, creative recruiters it is getting much praise.

my-experience-2016 (b)How do you put detailed accomplishments; numbers; accolades; history; culture fit; education; philanthropy and other details into a 6 second read? I am not quite sure that can be done.

So what do you do to get the recruiter’s attention quick because they do not have time to go through your 4 page resume? Some would say call the recruiter but the recruiters will tell others how that annoys the heck out them. Others would say use your network. I recently sent an email out to 164 recruiters I know in my network asking for help for a friend. I received 4 responses back. These guys and gals are busy. Getting back to you on a hope, is not that easy. In my case it was 2.4% return.

It’s not they don’t want to speak with you. It’s more about having 30 jobs to work on, hiring managers saying where are my resumes while turning down the ones the recruiters spent hours interviewing, prepping and dissecting their skill-sets. As well as sourcing like crazy and spending 6 seconds on your resume. We cannot blame them for not getting back to everyone, although it would be nice. But the best way to get noticed is to be noticed.

How quickly do you get noticed in a crowd? If you are in an analogue world without a smart phone, I am sure you do not find your friends at a concert so easily. Same with your resume. The analogue, dot-matrix format your resume is in is quite frankly just that…out-dated.

Now I am not saying throw pictures of your family and pets on it, rather I am saying find a way to professionally get the recruiters to notice you. Once they call you, get them to know who you are and how you are perfect for that job as it is their job to sell you. Ask them what the manager is looking for that is not plainly written in the job description. Then have some backup ready to articulate that in 6 seconds so when the recruiter sells you, it pops out.

Getting the interview is the hardest part as it is like professional baseball. You have so many divisions, in our case levels of people to impress. But if you know where you are awesome and equally important, you explain in detail where you may have failed or lost an account / project, then you are ahead of the curve.

The challenge is to get noticed or you will be gone in 6.0 seconds.

~The Organic Recruiter

Understand Recruitment Cycles to Give Your Job Search an Edge

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Hiring, Interviewing, New Job, Uncategorized

What do 23, 21, 20 and 36 mean to you? Seasons come in all walks of life to include the right time to get serious about your job and when it just might be a little harder to be seen. Enjoy this read to find out more about what these numbers mean.

~The Organic Recruiter

by John Rossheim, Monster Senior Contributing Writer

When it comes to connecting with the right job opportunity, timing isn’t everything, but it’s certainly something. Tuning into industries’ and employers’ annual recruitment cycles just might give you a decisive edge.image

That’s the consensus of recruiters and employers with fingers on the pulse of seasonal variations in hiring. Here’s a quarter-by-quarter summary of how these hiring dynamics play out.

First Quarter: A New Year’s Wave of Hiring

Sometimes peaks of hiring correspond with workplace factors that are only loosely related, like when people take vacation. “Hiring seems to be done by consensus more than any other decision,” says Scott Testa, chief operating officer of Mindbridge Software in Norristown, Pennsylvania. “So most hiring decisions have to be made when people are in the office.”

Major hiring initiatives may follow close on the heels of the holidays and summer. “The big months for hiring are January and February, and late September and October,” says Testa. “Job seekers who make contact right at the start of these cycles have the best chance of being hired.”

Strong hiring periods like the first quarter, when demand for talent may outweigh the supply of qualified candidates, may be a good time to go for a job with more responsibility or higher pay. “If you’re currently employed and looking to improve your status, you’ll want to look during the peak hiring season,” says Glenn Smith, president of search firm Precise Strategies in O’Fallon, Illinois.

Second Quarter: Gearing Up for Summer

For those whose livelihood depends substantially on fair weather, spring is when hiring peaks. In the construction industry, hiring in April, May and June proceeds at double the pace of December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS).

Tourism and hospitality hiring is also very strong in the spring. And businesses looking to hire professional workers before fall often do so now, before key decision makers start rotating out for summer vacation.

Third Quarter: Recruiters Relax a Bit, and Vacation Plays a Role

Hiring slows down in July before picking up at the end of August. For those with nontraditional but impressive employment backgrounds, there’s an advantage to looking in relatively slow hiring months like July and December, says Smith.

For example, recruiters, less pressed for time than in peak months, may be willing to take a longer look at an experienced professional woman seeking to return to work after taking years off to care for children.

Fourth Quarter: A Rush, Then a Lull

The fourth quarter presents the most complex hiring dynamics of the year, with its mix of fall activity, holiday retail hiring, Thanksgiving-to-New Year’s slowdown, and end-of-year financial and budget maneuvering.

“Hiring managers and bank CEOs will typically try to reduce their operating profits by incurring search fees towards the end of each year, to avoid paying taxes,” says Josiah Whitman, an executive recruiter with Financial Placements of Lake Oswego, Oregon. His firm’s job orders are distributed this way: first quarter, 23 percent; second quarter, 21 percent; third quarter, 20 percent; fourth quarter, 36 percent.

Although December hiring is at low levels in many industries, recruiters are determined to fill the year’s remaining openings by December 31, and the supply of applicants dwindles as Christmas and the new year approach.

Major industries classified as information, financial services, and professional and business services, having hired heavily in the second quarter, see their lowest level of hiring in December, says JOLTS.

But December isn’t as slow as it used to be, say some observers. And applications tend to slow down during the holiday season more than openings do — tipping the balance in favor of those who do apply.

“It seems that business just keeps going through the holidays,” says John Challenger, CEO of outplacement and search firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas in Chicago. “There doesn’t seem to be the kind of letup that there used to be.”

So playing the recruitment peaks doesn’t mean waiting out the rest of the year. “You need to be out there looking for opportunities, not finding excuses to avoid looking,” says Tom Johnston, CEO of SearchPath International in Cleveland.

Original Article

Managing the Black Hole in the Job Application Process

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Interviewing, New Job
Margot Carmichael Lester, Monster Contributing Writer
As a job seeker, you have to act like a salesperson. As a salesperson myself, I am here to tell you it is extremely hard to get to a yes or a no. Usually it’s a “hold tight”, “no word yet”, radio silence, or “we’ll let you know when we need you”.
What’s it going to take to get to a yes or a no? First off, read the article below as it gives great advice to the job seeker. I would add to it that you need to know the company, the competition and you better than any other candidate. Do not pretend to be anyone else and be the best you you can be.
Recruiters, please share this article with friends, family, and anyone you know are looking for their next job. ~The Organic Recruiter
Managing the Black Hole in the Job Application Process

You’ve invested the time in completing the job application, polishing your resume and writing a compelling cover letter. Once you’ve submitted your materials, though, you enter the black hole — the space between applying for jobs and hearing back from potential employers. Managing this period of the job search process effectively is harder than ever in a tight economy.

“We’ve all been on the opposite side of the desk,” says Armen Arisian, HR manager at Nytef Group, a plastics manufacturing company in West Palm Beach, Florida. “Twisting in the wind is no fun.”

But don’t stress. Employ these strategies to survive the uncertainty without losing your sanity.

Be Real

It’s important to remember there are people on the other side of the black hole who are doing their best to fill the job in a timely manner, says Will Pallis, a lead recruiter for VistaPrint, an online supplier of graphics and printing based in Lexington, Massachusetts. Chances are good the hiring companies have been inundated with applications.

“While there are a lot of variables here, the most important factor is how much time the corporate recruiter or hiring manager has to sift through the resumes submitted for each job,” he explains. “Skilled corporate recruiters have the ability to review large quantities of resumes to determine if the applicant has the required skill sets and education required for a particular role. But if that recruiter has a large volume of active resumes, the amount of time to review them is obviously decreased.”

Be Reasonable

There’s nothing wrong with checking in on the status of your application, as long as your job-seeking behavior does not become desperate. Unfortunately, there’s no industry standard for how often to inquire. “Do not be a pest” says Jay Meschke, president of EFL Associates, a Leawood, Kansas, search firm. “It is fine to seek acknowledgement of application material after a week, but diplomacy is the watchword. A potential employer becomes wary of applicants who become ‘stalkers.’”

If you’ve got a real person to contact on the inside, ask about the ground rules or protocol up front. “Inquire about when you should expect to hear back, if you should proactively contact the gatekeeper and at what intervals, plus what forms of contact would be most appropriate, such as telephone calls, emails, etc.,” he says.

And if you don’t hear back at all? “After more than a couple [follow-ups], move on same as you would in any other potential relationship,” Arisian counsels. “They’re just not that into you.”

Be Positive

The biggest challenge may be managing your own emotions. “Learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable,” says Scott Silverman, executive director and founder of Second Chance, a nonprofit agency helping the homeless and chronically unemployed in San Diego. “The only thing you can control is your own attitude.”

To do that, Eric Frankel, a personal branding and job search expert in Westwood, New Jersey, suggests, “Transition yournegative, stressful feelings to positive, optimistic emotions by supplementing your job search tactics with positive activities — time with friends, family, exercise and casual strolls on the beach. A limited number of ‘vacation’ days are OK when unemployed.”

You also can busy yourself by continuing your job search.

Be Optimistic

Dealing with uncertainty is never easy, but it’s a fact of life. Use this time as an opportunity to focus on what can happen, not what isn’t happening.

“As with the universe, realize that thousands of black holes are present,” Meschke notes. “Each one is worth exploring. You never know when the black hole evolves into a worm hole that leads to the next job.”

For Job Seekers, the Black Hole Persists

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Interviewing, New Job
By LAUREN WEBER

Why am I not getting calls back for my application? What’s the deal…am I not good enough? These are the thoughts of job applicants these days. They are being treated like a piece of paper and not an actual person.
People invest time in their career. Isn’t it fair to treat them like humans, not paper? Referring back to my Optimization page (Gail and Richie) depicts the life of a recruiter and how hiring managers think of applicants, “where’s my resumes?”. 
People, we need to open our eyes as this article shows, recruiters are acting as if these real people are merely a piece of paper and it is okay if we don’t call them back. I’m here to tell you, it is not. These people want to work for you and they should not have to put their lives on hold until (if ever) they hear from you. 
Thank you, Lauren, for this great article below. ~The Organic Recruiter
Most of today’s online job applications still enter a black hole.

Frank N. Stein had a stellar resume—he was an Ivy League graduate, with stints as a corporate recruiter at Johnson & Johnson and Russell Reynolds, and his CV was loaded with the keywords needed to float to the top of today’s automated job-applicant software.

He was also not a real person, a fact noted at the bottom of his one-page resume.

Even so, recruiters at only two of the 100 companies where he applied for jobs read far enough to discover that Stein was a fiction designed to “mystery shop” the job-seeker experience. The ruse was created by recruiting consulting firm CareerXroads, according to a report released Monday.

What does that tell Mark Mehler, a founder of CareerXroads?

“Recruiters read the first three paragraphs of a resume,” he said. “That’s all the job seeker is going to get.” And that only counts those whose resumes pass through the automated keyword screening that winnows a set of applications from hundreds to a few dozen.

Every year, Kendall Park, N.J.-based CareerXroads submits a fake resume through the career websites of the companies on Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work Forlist, to assess the recruiting practices of some of the most well-respected employers in the country, including Google Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Deloitte LLP.

The results are generally dismal, as they were again this year. Job seekers’ main complaint—that they shoot their applications into a black hole—was confirmed.

Out of the 100 companies, 64 never sent Stein any notification that he was not being considered for the job for which he had applied. Months after submitting his resume, he “was left hanging in the breeze,” said Mehler. Overwhelmingly in job seeker surveys, candidates tell CareerXroads “they just want to know, ‘am I in or out?’ They don’t want to keep chasing and wondering.”

Six of the employers followed up with Stein wanting to schedule interviews, two uncovered the ruse, and 28 eventually notified him that the position had been filled, or at least that he wasn’t in the running.

Worst of all, 28 is the highest number of companies extending that courtesy in the twelve years CareerXroads has conducted the Mystery Job Seeker survey.

There’s no excuse for those oversights, Mehler said, given that those communications can be automated easily in today’s applicant tracking systems, the software that stores job applications.

Most systems have the capacity to do this, but major corporations don’t use those features because they’re scared that opening the lines of communication will lead to lawsuits, too many phone calls to recruiters, and too many questions they can’t answer, he said.

There were bits of good news from Frank N. Stein’s experience. Nearly all employers now send an email acknowledging receipt of a job application. In addition, career websites are easier to navigate than in previous years, and employers have gotten better at streamlining the application so that it takes less time to complete – in most cases, 10 minutes or less.

Another pleasant surprise, according to Mehler: Stein had been unemployed by choice for a year (he had rejected six job offers as poor fits for him, then took a 6-month sabbatical to bicycle across the country), and still received interest from six of the 98 employers who thought he was a real person. “That’s huge,” said Mehler. “It shows that if you write a good resume and have great experience behind you, you can still find a job.”

Lauren Weber

Reporter, The Wall Street Journal.
Lauren Weber writes about workplace issues and careers for the Wall Street Journal.