Monthly Archives: July 2020

People love stories. Stories sell! So, if you’re a candidate trying to sell yourself or an employer trying to sell your company and your job you really need to have stories about your successes. People always remember stories.

But if stories sell, numbers tell! This seems to be one of the hardest but most simple ideas to communicate to people, especially jobseekers. People love to see and hear numbers. Job seekers who know how to use numbers to their advantage in their cover letters, on their résumés and especially in their interviews, always have a phenomenal advantage.

People always sound more authoritative and sure of themselves when they use numbers to demonstrate their successes. This is especially true when it comes to any individual impact on increase in revenue and/or profits or decrease in overhead.

Getting in the habit of “proving” your success with the stories you tell in the interviewing process with numbers really sets you apart from others. It’s one thing to say in the interview that “I am/was a really good performer.” It’s another thing to state, “I am/was a really great performer because:

• “I decreased bad debt 35%.
• “I was 130% of sales quota this year, 125% last year, and 150% the year before that.
• “I decreased shrinkage 28%.
• “I was able to decrease payroll costs by 10% while increasing production 7%.
• “I saved the company $123,000 in inventory costs.”

I’m sure you get the idea by now. You can even combine stories and numbers by explaining in the story how the numbers were reached. People will remember your story better when it’s reinforced by numbers. When you have the numbers on your résumé they often lead to great stories.

I get between 75 and 100 resumes a day. The gobbledygook and fluff that I see in 98% of these resumes is astounding. Every time I read, “good written and oral communication skills,” I just want to throw up. It doesn’t get any dumber than that. The numbers also need to be significant. “Increasing sales by 2%” is useless. I would also recommend bolding your numbers so that they stand out. 

Remember that your resume doesn’t really get read. It gets scanned. The people scanning the resume are simply looking for three or four things: Who did you work for? (Do I know what they do?) What did you do? (Do I understand exactly the job this person did?) How long were they there? (Simply the dates.) And, How well did they do… What was their performance? (And there is no better way to communicate your performance than by stating numbers.

Say what? Yeah…say LISTEN! I know this is going to sound so mundane and simple that many readers are going to think, “Why would he remind me about this?” Well, it’s because this is probably one of the biggest mistakes both candidates and interviewing authorities make in the hiring process….THE BIGGEST!

This mistake is mostly made by candidates. At least twice this week, two of my candidates failed in their interview almost in the very beginning of it because they didn’t really listen to the question they were being asked. They were so anxious to answer the question, they weren’t really clear what the question was. Unfortunately, in both of these cases this question came in the beginning of the interview when the hiring authority caught on that the candidates didn’t really understand the question. And this was such a shame.

One of these interviews was a zoom interview and the other one was a telephone interview. This kind of thing is especially disastrous with a telephone interview, because the hiring authority can’t see body language, there is a tendency to really misunderstand. What happened was really simple. The employer asked the candidate a question. The candidate really didn’t understand the question but started answering it anyhow. Instead of asking for a clarification or saying something like, “I’m not sure I quite understand what you mean, could you ask me again?” the candidate was afraid of appearing ignorant, so he just started answering the wrong question with (who even knows) the wrong answer.

This was about three or four minutes into the interview. The interview only lasted about 30 minutes. The hiring authority was so hung up on the candidate’s misunderstanding about the question and his poor answer that the employer wrote the guy off in the first three or four minutes.

The second situation of not listening well took place on the part of a hiring authority in a face-to-face interview. The hiring authority got hung up on the candidate’s last two years of experience. The candidate’s previous job had lasted seven years and was the candidate’s major experience that applied to the hiring authority’s interest. The hiring authority, according to the candidate, really didn’t understand what the candidate had been doing for the last two years and started explaining to the candidate that what he’d been doing most recently didn’t have anything to do with what they did.

The candidate tried to bring the subject back around to what he had done for the previous seven years but it really didn’t seem to matter. He claimed that the employer quit listening when he couldn’t get a grasp of what the candidate had been doing for the last two years.

Interviewing and hiring are emotionally stressful events. Even outside of the interviewing and hiring process, we’ve all experienced people who had started to answer a question before the question is finished being asked. How many times on game shows do we hear the host tell the participants to not ring the bell to answer the question before the question is finished. Well, people do that in the interviewing process too.

The key is to relax. If a person doesn’t understand either a question or an answer, they should simply take a deep breath and ask the other person to please repeat their question or answer. Even after that, if the question or answer is not understood, ask for clarification. Except in rare instances, no one is ever going to criticize a person for not understanding…at least the first time.

Everyone would perform better and have a better understanding of each other if they just LISTEN !

 We have a client who called us. Some of their top sales producers are ex-felons. Now, they are not violent ex-felons. They are usually professional people who made a mistake along the way in their life….white collar type crimes and maybe even paid their dues in prison. Some of the best salespeople this company has hired have come from having made a mistake.

It’s so interesting that this company called us because they are looking for salespeople and mentioned in the process that some of the best salespeople they have had been felons. And now, they can’t find any of them. They basically stumbled into the ones that they have hired who have been phenomenally successful. So, they intentionally went out to try to seek the admittedly, rare felon who is capable of doing their job… and they can’t seem to find any of them.

They went online to look for organizations that might help these kinds of people. One place, they said, was in New York but only worked in New York City. The other two or three, they said, either couldn’t be reached or never returned a voicemail or ever called back. The company offers a decent base salary and a hefty commission. They are very disciplined and really don’t put up with much nonsense. It’s inside sales, over the phone, but it is a very sophisticated sell, takes a lot of intelligence and making $100,000 to $200,000 is very reasonable to do. They told us that they have run ads on line and gotten absolutely nothing.

So, they called us. Now they’ll hire other kind of folks with sales experience, obviously. It’s not a requirement that a person be an ex-felon to work at the company. But what struck us as so odd is that this organization is willing to give lots of people a second chance. Now, the parameters of what they look for are very narrow, they give in-depth psychological surveys to see if an individual has the kind of personality that is successful at what they do. They do an extensive background check and, as I say, violent people won’t be considered.

What’s amazing about this and struck us as so odd is that they’re having almost an impossible time even finding these kinds of candidates. Now, we have provided them a number of very good sales candidates for them to choose from. But they are very picky. They are even willing to pay us a fee to find any kind of candidate, even an ex-felon, to fill their sales job.

Why is it so hard to find these kinds of people to hire? Our society is supposed to be a very forgiving and understanding one. We’re supposed to give people second chances and yet this company can’t seem to find hardly anybody to give a second chance to.

The vast majority of people who are employed by this company, according to the manager we spoke with, aren’t ex-felons. But the mere fact that this organization is willing to give a person like that a second chance was phenomenally enlightening. And yet, this firm can’t seem to locate those kinds of people. Now, they will admit that their interviewing and hiring process is going to eliminate most candidates, ex-felons or not. But just the mere fact that they are willing to consider folks who have made mistakes deserves credit. I don’t know if it works out well for them all of the time. I didn’t really get that far with them. But just to find a business organization that was willing to consider people who have made mistakes under the right circumstances this tremendously gratifying.

Where are the ex-felons? If you know of any who can sell and are disciplined enough to work a very strict system, have them call me 214-515-7613.

Dealing with people is obviously one of the most fascinating business “ventures” anyone can experience. Over the last two weeks, we had two extremes that are worth sharing because of the lessons they might give us all.

The first had to do with an accounting candidate who came to see us. He was working on an open ended contract engagement with an oil and gas firm and even though he had been there for a while, he knew that it could end at any time. And after all, he knew the oil and gas business is really rough right now. He was a very qualified candidate and had really good skills. But he was incredibly afraid of interviewing. When we would go to getting an interview for him, he would think of all kinds of reasons about why he shouldn’t go or couldn’t go or did not like what he heard, etc. It was all an indication that he was really just plain more afraid of interviewing than anything else. He was scared!

Most recruiters, after two or three attempts, usually drop a candidate like this and move on to one that’s more cooperative about going on interviews. Most of us in our organization have been doing this a really long time. Our average recruiter’s been in this business for 16 years and most of us had previous corporate business experience before we got here. It’s a nice way of saying we’re older, have patience and understand how emotionally difficult it is for many people to change jobs.

We received an opportunity for a permanent controller position. The company was not in the oil and gas business but was willing to consider any kind of good experience. Among a few other people, we called our candidate and, as in the past, he started giving us reasons as to why it wouldn’t work, that he didn’t fit and even though he was scared that he was going to lose his job at any day, he really shouldn’t go on the interview. Our recruiter convinced him that he owed it to himself, no matter how uncomfortable it would be, to at least go on the interview and speak with the employer. We literally pushed him into the interview.

We explained clearly to the hiring authority that the candidate was reluctant out of just plain fear. It took repeated attempts to get him to even go on the interview and we constantly reminded him how unstable his present job was. In spite of all of our coaching, the candidate finally interviewed in as much of a meek and humble manner as possible.

However, from the beginning of the interview, the hiring authority loved the guy. He was easily the most qualified candidate and, believe it or not, the best cultural fit. The employer, amazingly enough, was just as meek. Despite the candidate’s resistance to even looking for a job, our client substantially increased his salary, gave him a promotion in title and let him give a three week notice rather than a two week one.

The candidate was profusely thankful and acknowledged that if we hadn’t really pushed him hard to go on the interview, he would’ve never gotten the job. We are so pleased for him.

The other situation that came about in the last two weeks came about regarding a candidate we were representing. She has been selling IT project consulting services for a firm that sold to a Chinese company. The buyer was not interested in the IT consulting division of the company they bought and let our candidate go.

She was a fantastic candidate. She had been selling consulting services for more than seven years, had a book of business with a little better than $4 million per year in revenue with a 23% margin and no non-compete restrictions. In other words, she was totally free to take that business with her wherever she went.

Of course, at first, this situation was just too good to be true. But it was. She had a list of the clients that she had been calling on and selling to and even the amounts that they had paid for consulting over the last three years, as well as proof that she had no non-compete agreement.

Okay, so it’s a recruiter’s dream. I will admit that this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often. This is still a tight market but you would think that anybody in their right mind would at least interview my candidate. I called a number of the clients that I’ve worked with before, but also spent some time cold calling competitors of this candidate.

One of the firms that I called, I had never called before. I spoke to a regional director who was very nice, but he explained to me that her company really avoided paying recruiter fees and that he wasn’t authorized to do so. I’ve heard that a few times in my career (probably thousands). I calmly asked him if it wouldn’t be a good idea to ask his management if it would be a good idea to at least speak to a candidate who could bring (most) of $4 million revenue stream with a 23% margin for a potential investment of a $25,000 fee? There was a long pause and he ended the conversation by saying that he might do that. I told him I would call him back in a few days, but that I was getting this candidate quite a number of interviews.

Two days later, just to see what would happen, I called the guy back. He was, again, very nice, but rather sheepishly said that he had talked to the owners and they didn’t think they would be interested at this time. (Ironically, I have had candidates come to me from this company and the company is having a very difficult time in their Dallas office. According to this candidate, they need all the help they can get here in Dallas. Any revenue increase here in Dallas would be a blessing for this firm. And yet, they’re not interested in almost immediate revenue. Go figure!)

I got the candidate four interviews and two offers within 10 days… (I wish they always worked out that way). The point is that it never ceases to amaze me how seemingly astute business people will adopt a principle regardless of the circumstances that could potentially make them a lot of money. I’m not really sure that the manager I spoke with ran the idea up the flagpole. It’s hard to imagine how any company in their right mind would not at least talk to a candidate who might have this kind of potential. It costs nothing to talk. The investment of $25,000 to get $3 or $4 million worth of revenue – who wouldn’t do that?

Both of these situations probably don’t have an impact on the greater world. They prove that people are absolutely fascinating. It’s one of the motivations of why folks like me keep doing this.