When your job involves helping other people find a job, it's important to be aware of and ahead of economic changes and their impact on hiring practices. And after a rough year, for everyone, I'm happy to report that things are looking up.

Employment Rates Slowly Bouncing Back

Since the 2000 technology boom, employment has fallen 19.1%. But AdAge.com recently reported that last October saw a gain of 2,200 jobs in advertising and marketing, the first positive month in a year. And media jobs rose, albeit slightly, in September and October, the first back-to-back monthly gains since 2006.

While advertising and marketing hiring increased in October, it dipped again in November. However, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel-- employment is down nearly 10% from its all-time high in 2007.

USA Today Predicts Upswing in Early 2010

Staffing and hiring needs--along with the economy--may not be what we would call "stable" just yet, but they are on the upswing. And Ad Age has some predictions for the coming months that paint a better picture than many are used to.

Job Seekers Need to Be Ready to Be Hired

What's that mean for job seekers? Keep at it! You want to be ahead of the curve when hiring really picks up. Don't give up now; keep your resume fresh update your LinkedIn profile and get networking now. And if you have a job but have been considering looking for greener pastures, this should ease up on the pressure to stay where you are, just because it's safe.

If you're in recruiting, now is also a good time to step up your marketing efforts and start reaching new prospects. And with more jobs on the horizon, everyone, whether happily employed, looking for a job, or helping others find jobs, can benefit from reconnecting with old contacts.

Attitude. One word, with a big punch, and some make or break connotations for your career. How many times have you heard people extol an employee for their great attitude, no matter what, or condemn them for having a bad attitude when, by all accounts, the rest of their work performance was fine? Attitude, and other people’s perception of yours, plays a big role in the workplace.

Research suggests that 85% of job success can be “determined by ‘attitude’ and the ‘ability to deal with people,’” according to the Carnegie Foundation. Combine that with our own anecdotal evidence of people’s perceptions, and you can see how important a positive attitude is for any career—but especially in sales, where your “ability to deal with people” is critical.

Attitude in Job Interviews

Attitude is also a major factor when interviewing for a job, in any industry. Knowing all this, it seems logical that anyone pursuing a career in sales would invest in some sort of “attitude adjustment,” but that’s where it becomes tricky. What qualifies as a legitimately “bad” attitude, and what can be chalked up to personality differences? Can you be realistic, or even pessimistic, and maintain a good attitude?

We’ve all heard horror stories of customer service representatives who put their company to shame and inspire nothing but laughs at what they call “service.” But everyone has bad days, head colds, breakups and personal problems. The difference between a great salesperson and an average one really does come down to attitude: who is able to rise above a bump in the road, and who cannot.

Fake It ‘Til You Make It

You don’t have to be an Oscar winning actor to succeed at work, even when you’re having a bad day. You just need to put things in their place and focus. Bringing your personal life to work can be beneficial when it allows you to connect with customers, but on a bad day, you may need to focus just on the 9 to 5. Prioritize, organize and by all means, slap a fake smile on your face—it really can help. Then take a deep breath, and focus.

The ability to segment two parts of your life in order to regroup and refocus on one will help tremendously on bad days, but it can also have residual effects on everyday performance, giving you the edge you need. When you’re able to put yourself aside and focus on the person you’re talking to, you can’t help but do a better job. Whether you’re in sales, customer service or hospitality, people like to feel that they are the center of attention. And when you give them that sense, you’ve automatically done your job a little bit better.

Try it out: give yourself a mini attitude adjustment, and see your performance improve.

People have a lot of varied opinions on the state of the economy, but the one constant is that everyone has seen its impact on their business in some way. Now, this leads many to “batten down the hatches,” so to speak, and ride out this downturn. But that is not always the best course of action, and when you’re in the sales industry, it could mean disaster. I’m serious when I say that a strong salesforce should always be your top priority. Always.

To Be the Best, You Need to Hire the Best

It may sound trite, but your company is really only as strong as your weakest link. If you consistently hire the best, brightest and highest performing sales people, your weakest link will still be far stronger than that of your competitors. Now, in order to get and keep these superstars, you need to distinguish yourself from the pack. Think about what you would want someone to say sets you apart, or why they like working there. Then make sure that is a reality for every employee, especially when times are tough. Everyone is nervous; show your employees how much you value them.

Keeping the best all for yourself is a great strategy, but it requires finding them—and that’s where a professional sales recruitment firm can make all the difference. Sales recruiters have an extensive knowledge of candidates, the job market, and the sales industry. You may know your business inside and out, but it’s tough to keep up with everyone else out there; this is where a seasoned sales recruiter can really prove their worth.

Ongoing Recruiting Requires Ongoing Marketing

Somewhat of a chicken-and-egg situation, attracting the best and brightest is much easier if you already have a reputation for hiring the best; everyone will naturally want to work for or with you. But, if you’re still building a reputation, you can fake it with some marketing savvy—and a qualified recruiter can go a long way to helping you in this arena. Developing a strong marketing campaign will lead to a pipeline of qualified candidates, allowing you to pick and choose who will help you become the company you envision in the future. Honestly explain your goals to both recruiters and candidates, and commit to building that future with your employees.

Blindly hiring candidates just to beef up your numbers is a short-term fix that will backfire; you need to recruit, not just hire. Make sure each prospect is the right fit, and will improve your company or help you reach your goals. Be picky, and insist that candidates be candid with you. What does each party want out of the arrangement, and how can you help each other?

We hear over and over again that job seekers feel that employers have the upper hand right now, and that puts you at a great advantage—but perhaps not the one you think. The best will obviously rise to the top, but you need to be in a position to hire them. Again, it’s tempting to stop hiring, low ball candidates or hire whatever you can get, but this will set you up for failure in the not-so-distant future. Work with a recruiter—as well as existing employees—to make sure that you are making smart decisions for the long-term.

Sales recruiting is obviously about sales, but in many ways, it’s also about marketing--as a job seeker, a recruiting agent or company. Selling yourself, even if your job is in sales, takes a certain finesse, particularly when times are tight. And this hold true whether you want to market yourself as a potential hire, your candidate as a recruiting agency, or your brand as a company.

It’s no surprise that job seekers need to market themselves, both to a recruiter and to hiring managers or other people along the interview process. By extension, recruiters often need to help sales candidates by selling them in a slightly different way. But recruiters can and should sell themselves, and therefore their candidates, by focusing on the right kind of marketing for their recruitment process and track record. Companies aren’t exempt either; they need to work with a recruiter to create a triple-win situation.

Here’s some advice for all parties that will lead to better candidates, more accurate placement and higher job satisfaction all around.

Be Professional

You’d be surprised at how often professionalism flies out the window when dealing with hiring, even among those looking for a new job. Everyone involved in the hiring process should use polite conversation, and job seekers especially should be sure to dress the part; casual attire may fly for those who work there, but you need to impress at an interview. And please, refrain from slamming companies on social networking sites; it will come back and bite you. Same goes for interviewers and recruiters; never trash other candidates.

Be Honest

Honesty may seem counter-intuitive to traditional marketing advice, but it plays right into the need to be professional at any and all levels of a job search, no matter what side you’re on.  Job seekers, be upfront and honest about your resume and experience; never lie to fill in the gaps. Likewise, HR people need to provide accurate job descriptions and requirements. As for recruitment agents, we often have an insider perspective into companies where we’ve placed people, and that feedback is valuable to both applicants and hiring managers.

Be Promotional

If you’re in sales, this goes without saying, but it holds true in any interview situation, and on both sides of the table. And while it may be your job to sell for the company you want to work for, or to sell your candidate to the HR manager, you often need to sell yourself first. The trick is to demonstrate your skills and abilities without bragging or inflating them; see the above two pieces of advice if this is unclear. Examples and track records work great here to prove your point. If you’re just starting out, doing your homework can go along way to tailoring your pitch to exactly what they need.

The bottom line? To be in sales, you need to be able to market. At least yourself. And whether that means building a reputation as a recruiter with great placements, earning the esteem of recruiters with the badge of a “great place to work” or showcasing yourself as a necessity for your next employer, sales and marketing skills go hand in hand.

Times are tight right now, but that doesn’t mean that an intrepid sales recruiting consultant can’t thrive. Now is the best time for recruiting sales people, and an even better time for new recruiters to get creative and prove themselves. If you can recruit effectively now and survive until the upswing, you’ll be at the top of the game when the flood for new hires comes in.

Sales recruiting in an economic downturn can go one of two ways: a slam dunk, or right in the garbage. On one hand, a lot of talented, qualified people may be out of jobs, making the applicant pool full of excellent candidates eagerly looking for a new position. This gives recruiters a lot of applicants and résumés to go through, creating more work, but it also ups their chances of finding the perfect fit for a position.

However, the other side of the coin is that people might not be hiring, or if they are they may not want to spend money on a recruiter and prefer to spend time looking for themselves.

Now is the best time to be recruiting sales people: when you need them most

Let’s look at the second scenario first: companies aren’t hiring, or don’t want to work with a recruiter. When times are bad, sales people are often the only employees bringing in revenue, so this is the one area employers should be looking to hire. Once they see that, your job is to convince them that a recruiter will do the job better than they can—faster, more efficiently and with more promising results. How do you do this? Think outside the box.

With more people looking for jobs, you can be more selective in sales recruiting

Now we’re back to the first situation, that companies are hiring, albeit selectively, and from a larger applicant pool. This makes the sales recruiting process a little more time consuming, but easier in the end. You have better people to pull from, and the best will naturally rise to the top. But how do you narrow it down? Here’s where you need to put your thinking cap on and get creative.

Social networks can make recruiting sales people a self-selection process

Now more than ever people are using social networks and the internet to pre-screen potential candidates; if you haven’t been doing this, get familiar with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter—fast. Recruiting sales people can involve a lot of talking and social sites are all about conversation, so they’re a good way to see (or hear) the candidates out there and weed out the ones who don’t fit the position you’re looking to fill.

Once you have a list of people you’d like to talk to on the phone or meet with, figure out what you can offer them. A lot of companies may not be in a position to provide the salaries they used to, but some of these candidates may be willing to work for less if they are not currently employed. What can you give them if not a raise? Perks.

Get more creative than commission: offer time and flexibility

When recruiting sales people, one of the first things to think about is commission. People work hard when they get a tangible reward, and commissions are a great way to increase salary without draining the employer. But don’t stop there, what else can you offer? Non-monetary incentives can be just as valuable as more take home pay.

One thing every employer can offer is time. More vacation time, flexible hours, telecommuting options. These things mean a lot to people and can cut down on their spending (commuting costs, childcare), resulting in a win-win situation for the new hire and his or her employer.

There are tons of other sales recruiting ideas you can think of to entice candidates; use these suggestions as a jumping off point to discuss what kinds of perks and benefits you can offer when recruiting sales people. Remember, sales recruiting is all about selling, and the best way to do that is to offer something no one else has. 

 

 

 

 

One of the most important skills for a sales recruitment consultant, and one of the very first things every recruitment consultant learns, is good time management. Time is money in every business, but none exemplifies it quite as well as sales recruitment.

Think about it: every second spent on a potential hire that’s not a good fit, or lost to any of the day’s many distractions, is time that could have been better allocated to a more promising candidate. And time a recruitment consultant spends with that qualified candidate is time invested in a placement that will pay off, for both the employer and the sales recruitment firm.

The importance of good time management and responsible scheduling may not break down so clearly in other industries, but it is not unique to sales recruitment. Whether you are an up-and-coming recruitment consultant, a college student, part-time sales clerk, self-employed entrepreneur, stay-at-home mom or big wig executive, you can always benefit from structuring your day to be more efficient and productive. Take a few tips from a successful sales recruitment consultant and make them fit to your end goals:

Make a plan every day. Write it down.

Sounds silly, and like a kind of “duh” tip, but I’ve seen more than one recruitment consultant miss something because they gave themselves too much credit and assumed they could “keep it all up here.” Nope. The exercise of writing down what you need to accomplish will help you remember in itself, and seeing it there will give you a map of what to do next.

Find an end goal. Work towards that by working backwards.

Figure out what your ultimate goal for the day or week is, and then work your way backwards and determine what you need to do to get there. A sales recruitment consultant may see placing a hire as the final goal, so the steps before are to make contacts, call candidates, set up meetings, etc. Apply this somewhat backwards thinking in order to effectively work your way forward.

Stick to your list. Set up a mini-reward system if you need to.

Use the list to stay on task. Break it into manageable chunks with mini-goals and corresponding mini-rewards. Tell yourself you need to return all your phone calls before lunch; this gives you something to work towards beside the ultimate end goal, with the added enticement of a break for lunch at the end. There’s also the motivating sense of accomplishment every time you get to cross something off.

These simple tips can really help structure your day and increase your productivity, no matter what your final goal is. What other time management strategies work for you? As a sales recruitment consultant firm, we’re always looking for ways to improve performance and we’d love to hear your input.

I’ve talked about using Facebook as a screening tool for interviews, but what about as a marketing tool? And why stop at Facebook? There is a wealth of new media available online, social media sites and communities designed specifically to bring people together. If you can master just a few of these you’ll have a significant advantage over your competition.

Whether you’re a big name recruiting firm, a small start-up or a single sales recruiter, you can always benefit from being more visible than your competitors. Even if you’re at the top and not feeling a direct threat, it would be nice to solidify that position and be seen as the coolest, most technologically savvy of the recruitment consultants.

Sites like Facebook and MySpace started as fun, fluffy personal networking sites, but they can be used for more serious purposes, especially Facebook. Set up sales recruiter profiles for all your recruitment consultants. Make sure there is enough information for someone to feel like they know them and have a good understanding of their qualifications, and make it clear how they can be reached. The main goal here is to seem approachable and likable.

LinkedIn is similar in nature to Facebook, but with a more professional focus. While a Facebook profile can, and should, highlight educational background and professional accomplishments, LinkedIn is the place to really make career information and credentials shine. Think of Facebook as more of a cover letter, LinkedIn as a résumé.

Twitter is a little more unique; as a microblogging site, there’s no real profile and not a lot of setup, so you can just jump in and “join the conversation” at any point. Search for people in your industry or field and just start talking. This can be a great way to network with other recruitment consultants, get your name out there and hear about who’s hiring and who’s looking to be hired.

You don’t have to be a sales recruiter or consultant to make this advice work for you. These social media sites are almost always free, so they’re great for marketing yourself as an individual as well. If you’re looking to impress a sales recruiter or potential employer, try out these and other social media sites to make sure good, quality, relevant information comes up when someone googles your name.

Human Resource departments, or anyone involved in the hiring process, put a great deal of emphasis on work experience, and for good reason. However, a single sheet of paper often forces candidates and recruiters or hiring managers to condense experience and skills into just one number for the purposes of a résumé. Screening candidates on the basis of years is a dangerous practice, especially in sales staffing.

Of course, there are exceptions, such as higher-level positions where some of the experience and talent required can only be gained with time. However, for most positions a young hire can be the smart choice, for a number of reasons. Major companies have only begun to see the value in hiring recent grads and self-starters, and now the media is taking notice as well. It’s time sales staffing firms take a cue from some of the smaller businesses and give “the young” the respect—and jobs—they deserve.

What makes this younger generation so valuable? Here are just a few of their very desirable qualities:

Adaptable
Younger hires are very willing to learn, and usually quick to catch on. They also don’t need to be broken of bad habits or another company’s differing methods.

Driven
The expectation of being underestimated fuels younger employees with the desire to prove themselves, creating a strong work ethic and a willingness to tackle challenges.

Cheap
Fewer years does often mean lower pay demands, as higher salaries are seen as something to aspire to. 20-somethings also have fewer responsibilities (read: bills), so they can afford to start at a lower rate.

Loyal
A younger employee has more time to stay with a company since they have more years ahead of them. They are also more likely to feel a connection or commitment to their first job.

Of course, you can’t base a hiring decision exclusively on age any more than you can on years of work; my whole argument is not to define a candidate by one narrow number. Think long term and look at all candidates with an open mind. Over and over again we are seeing college-age “kids” do amazing work because of their go-getter mindset. And as anyone in sales staffing knows, that is the key to success.

Oh, what a joy work would be if only hiring sales representatives was as easy as firing them. No, before you ask, I don’t take some sick pleasure in sacking hard working employees, but I am a perfectionist and I find it increasingly difficult and time-consuming to find good, quality hires. To help you out, I’ve compiled a list of some of the do’s and don’ts I’ve learned along the way.

DO have a clear understanding of the job and the candidate before you begin interviewing.
Being unprepared for an interview reflects poorly on you and on your client. Not knowing the position’s specifics or ignoring the candidate’s resume and background could lose you the best potential hire for the job—and your reputation.

DON’T ask personal questions that are unrelated to the job.
Massachusetts, as well as many other states, have strict laws governing what topics are considered discriminatory and are off limits in an interview. Add in the recent identity theft scandals from Monster.com and others, and you can see why discretion is key.

DO remember that the candidate is the reason you have a job.

Treat every candidate with the utmost respect; they may not be the person who pays your salary or serves as your direct report, but they are a direct connection to your success or failure. The hiring pool is not as deep as you may think, and potential hires talk—make this work to your benefit by being upfront, honest and prepared.

DON’T try to intimidate a candidate into talking about the competition.
This may be the biggest “don’t” I’ve encountered. Do not, under any circumstances, try to make a potential hire discuss other job offers, interviews or recruiting firms. Focus on your client and the job you are interviewing them for—because that’s the only one that matters.

These are just a few of my suggestions for successfully hiring sales representatives. For more tips on what to do, and not do, when interviewing and hiring potential candidates, check out these informative articles, including one that specifically adresses hiring upper level employees:

Recruiting Do’s and Don’ts
Interviewing Do’s and Don’ts
Do’s and Don’ts for Hiring Managers
Hiring Do’s and Don’ts

As I’ve mentioned before, job offers and their accompanying employment perks and benefit packages need to be tailored to the candidate you really want to hire if you want to build a successful sales force. Ute Gass makes this point in her Recruiter Training Blog:

“Every individual has unique needs and wants and recruiters should gain insights into every candidates "sweet spot" to make the offer appealing to the prospective candidate.”

An effective sales recruiter needs to know the candidate, and the sales job opportunity being offered, inside and out. Too often, recruiters and employers try to fit an available candidate to a job, instead of a job to a qualified and desirable candidate. A much wiser strategy is to make the position available match the skills and personality of the candidate you want to work for you.

To do this, a sales recruiter needs to gain a clear understanding of the people they interview and what they are looking for. Two questions immediately get at their career motivations:

          Why are you looking to leave your current company? 

          What would you do if your company made you a counteroffer?

Your interviewees' answers to these questions will tell you what they are looking to get out of the sales job opportunity you are offering, and what it will take to make an offer they will accept. Learn to ask questions like these, then really listen and interpret the answers—your success rate is sure to rise.

 

 

No one can deny the internet’s impact on professional sales recruitment, and social networks such as MySpace, LinkedIn and Facebook, to name a few, have added another dimension to this powerful communication medium. These networks are only beginning to be recognized for the valuable recruiting resource that they are, arguably more so than traditional online resume postings and job boards.

Robert Scoble calls Facebook “the modern day Rolodex,” and I’d have to agree. Like any recruiting method, setting up an account and adapting to the Facebook format takes time, but the payoff is tremendous, once you know what you’re doing. In professional sales recruitment, mastery of Facebook (or similar sites) will soon be a required skill.

 

The beauty of Facebook is in the wealth of information freely supplied by its users and wide variety of search functions. An active “Facebooker” will include enough information about their work experience and personality to make it seem like you know them, before you’ve even spoken.  

Social networks encourage users to reveal personal details well beyond the standard academic major and degree information found in a resume or cover letter. Photos, lengthy likes and dislikes lists and personal commenting features provide a very telling description of a candidate as both a person and an employee.

What does this mean for a job placement firm? Free networking connections and a lot of time saved, for starters. Most of these sites are free to join, and once you're familiar with the functionality, you can save a lot of time screening potential candidates before you even call them back. Take the time to join one or two of these social networks and you're almost certain to see the quality of your candidates improve.

 

 

HBO’s hit series Entourage is entertainment for many, but it can also be an education in hiring sales representatives. Massachusetts recruiters and nationwide job placement services can learn a thing or two from Ari Gold, the wheeling and dealing talent agent to the stars played by Jeremy Piven.

Eliot Burdett at Peak Sales Recruiting loves Ari, calling him an “utter selling machine” who is a

 

“shrewd and decisive negotiator—he knows what he wants and what he will leverage to get it, so…he typically gets what he wants.”

This is true, but is it a good thing? Ari may be able to get what he wants, but often it is all about the money, and not in the best interests of his clients. Effective, long-term sales recruiting takes balancing what the client (company) wants with what the candidate is looking for, especially when working to make an executive job placement.

Ari’s aggressive tactics will get a deal made, but it is not always the deal that either party had hoped for. The stakes are high in executive recruiting, because the skills, demands and salaries of executive positions are even higher. Ari’s pushy tactics may work on the silver screen, but successful executive job placement takes more finesse.

           

He’s pushy. Ari is too intense and focused on closing a deal, any deal. Executive recruiting requires fully understanding what both the company and the candidate want, what they will bend on and what is non-negotiable.

He lies. Ari never stops negotiating, but at some point he stops offering things that are really possible. Recruiters who deal in executive job placement need to know their clients and candidates inside and out in order to make deals they can follow through on. They also need to maintain their integrity through honest dealings in order to stay in business. 

There are many merits to Ari’s work “ethic,” but his methods often take his positive characteristics to the opposite extreme, making a good quality (a need to succeed) into a character flaw (greed). Bottom line? He’s fun to watch, but don’t make him your recruiting mentor.

With the baby boomer generation quickly approaching retirement, the face of the workforce is about to change dramatically, and many employers are not prepared. A recent survey by Manpower shows that only 21% of companies have developed incentives to keep these valuable employees in the workforce.

 

Senior employees “approaching retirement are simply looking for different things than younger ones,” as Sara Birkman-Fink, President and CEO of Birkman International, an executive development firm, points out.

 

Older employees have well-established patterns and work styles, and are looking for sales job opportunities to match. Any successful Massachusetts job placement agency needs to realize that at this stage in life, these employees are not relocating to New Hampshire without incentives specifically geared for their age group.

In order to stay competitive and prevent a severe skills drop-off, sales job recruiters must develop personality assessments to determine what will keep a baby boomer in the workforce, and then create benefit packages that reflect these desires.

 

Nearly every company is forced to face a harsh reality in the business world—downsizing. As much as I wish that companies would make my job easier by constantly hiring and looking for new candidates, that’s not the way things work. Business grows in unpredictable directions, and companies need to address this. They hire for the areas that are strong and profitable, and cut back in the areas that are not.

 

I discuss how to address the issue of downsizing, both with current employees and potential candidates, in an article (free subscription required) for SellingPower Magazine. Start taking advantage of my advice with these key points:

 

• Acknowledge the fact that you are downsizing, and explain why.

Honestly really is the best policy here; being secretive will cause unnecessary worry for current employees and may deter qualified candidates from applying.

 

• Hire from within whenever possible.

Promoting or re-assigning current employees is almost always preferable to brand new hires, for obvious reasons (greater company loyalty, less time lost to training, etc.). If this isn’t feasible, make it clear why not.

 

• Apply selective hiring policies.

Save time by pre-screening applicants over the phone to get a better feel for how they would fit within the company before you schedule an in-person interview.

 

Most importantly, always be on the lookout for new players who can improve your business. Your best business insurance is a pipeline full of qualified candidates who can help your company grow.