How to write a rejection letter

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How to attract graduates to sales positions

Recently, I came across two interesting articles: Does generation Y hate sales jobs? and Gen Y most likely to hold low-paying jobs in retail. Both written back in 2012 and related to the US. I simplify, but this is the conclusion: On the one hand college grads run away from a B2B sales job, on the other hand they end up as order-takers at a retailer.

Sounds familiar? In recent years, stories about college grads working as cashiers made headlines across Germany, and Poland as well. Neither German nor Polish colleges train students in sales. The colleges undervalue sales and overrate marketing. Sales requires soft skills and these are harder to convey in the classroom than best practices in marketing. Business studies are B2C driven requiring brand and marketing strategies. In addition, some college profs favor trainee programs over direct sales success, e.g. Peter Winkelmann, professor at the Department of Marketing and Sales at the University of Applied Sciences Landshut, believes the key to obtaining sales experience is a trainee programs. "By participating in a trainee program, graduates should develop a connection to the market and customers". In his opinion, graduates should not be salespersons with a degree. 

A majority of students would probably agree with this. It is rare that students/graduates have the desire to master duties such as cold-calling and customer service. They very often assume that strategic planning and marketing communication are the key to a successful career. Graduates of business schools primary want to analyse, analyse, analyse and subsequently devise strategies; be Key Account Managers on long-term accounts, and of course Sales Managers and Directors; be farmers, not hunters. 

But is this really just an obstacle of Generation Y? I believe that college graduates have never been heavily oriented towards sales. Actually, irrespective of time and educational background, "the selling profession isn't most folks’ first choice for a profession, many will fall into a sales career after college and just survive rather than thrive".

Graduates are not interested in sales for many reasons:

1. They have student loans to pay off and need a steady income.

2. As accidental salespersons, they have had bad experiences in sales. One of the Fines Department Stores used to hire students as hostesses for one or two days. As students turned up for work, they were asked to convince clients to sign up for a loyalty card.

3. They have had bad experiences with sales as customers.

4. They hold on to stereotypes about sales, incl. having to sell stuff that nobody needs, manipulation, etc.

5. They do not want to have to struggle at work, swallow rejections or keep up with performance expectations.

6. They want to be paid for their work, not just their success.  

Big companies know how to sweeten the deal. According to the Compensation Consulting Firm Personalmarkt, the highest starting salaries in Germany are paid in the construction, chemical and pharmaceutical industries with an average of around EUR 47K gross salary per year. Across the industries, sales people within the first 2 years of experience earn around EUR 38K. Professionals working in sales for more than 5 years earn more then 70K on average.

In Berlin, many businesses assume a EUR 21K basic salary for their sales professionals. Before Germany's first nationwide minimum wage was introduced in January 2015, there were also companies that had sales professionals in their books earning as little as EUR 14K base. Only after nobody wanted to be hired for that, a EUR 19K was offered. Although a top salesperson is able to double it through top performance, for the majority of sales consultants, it does remain a "so so" basic salary with "bonus potential". With 3-month chunk rates at 20-30%, the time one has to prove one’s abilities is short. This causes stress – a huge amount of stress – that prevents one from focusing on priorities.

So what can companies do to attract graduates to sales positions?

A few ideas:

- increase the average starting salaries;

- do not burn talent;

- support sales talent with really good marketing and communication campaigns, try new services, eg. vendisys.com;

- give them time to succeed, one or even two years;
 - provide them with training and know-how that colleges do not teach, e.g: the further south in Germany you are, the more time you will need to spend with the customer in order to seal the deal;

- inspire people to a career in sales through initiatives similar to Geek Girls Carrots, make use of gamification approaches;

- improve image of sales (emphasize partnering with the client, solving problems as integral components of the roles etc.);

- reassure that students understand that the most promising way to get to C-Suite is via sales department;

- outline benefits of a career in sales (crisis-resistant, universal across sectors, earning potential, performance satisfaction, working with people);

- let them be a co-owner of your business. A vast majority (99%) of the job-seeking public have zero interest in jobs without a base salary or with a very little pay, unless it is in their own company.

What students can do to develop interest in sales?

- practice "show and tell" exercises;

- polish communication, presentation, story-telling skills;

- join the closeby section of Toastmaster's Club; 

- organize a garage sale/jumble sale;

- join a flea market as a seller;
- work a part-time or holiday job in retail or telesales.

 Do you have any other ideas?

Screening interviews done by interns and candidate experience

For some time now, companies recruiting interns has promised those students meaningful projects and the opportunity to assume responsibility. Ever since, brewing coffee has been labeled as the most ungrateful intern’s task ever and many companies, MNC and start-up alike, will address brewing coffee or actually lack thereof in their job adverts. See e.g. the one below by McKinsey.

Indeed, short of staff start-ups tend to entrust interns with quite a bit. One such task is interviewing candidates. The learning curve is steep and the responsibility huge. Then, interns can influence candidate experience greatly.

To ensure a positive candidate experience, HR department should not only train the interns in interviewing skills but also design the interview sequences right and manage candidate expectations appropriately. In particular, some techniques include:

* Plan the interview as a three stage process, interview questions asked by employer, questions asked by candidate and outline of the recruitment process.

* Prepare the list of frequently asked questions by candidates and answers and train the interns in answering them

* Encourage interns to inform you of new questions asked by candidates and consult with you on the best answers

* Continuously help interns improve their interviewing skills

* Select the right interns to do the job

Last but not least, leaders should keep in mind, that no matter how smart and well trained the interns are, they will be hardly able to engage in a discussion with the candidate. As a result, most intern screening interviews are one way questionings. Experienced staff may perceive them as unprofessional and may not feel appreciated accordingly as one recent candidate at Fab shared on kununu.

Recruiting 2.0 – Jobseekers’ ads, social media profiles and personal websites?

In the German employment market there are two kinds of advertisements. On one hand there are job vacancies posted by companies (Stellenangebote) und seeking job announcements posted by jobseekers (Stellengesuche).

Traditionally, jobseekers announced their readiness to work in newspapers. Today, this option is mostly used by handcraft workers, often looking for private arrangements. While white-collar jobseeker set-up a social media profile (notably with a status option “seeking employment”) or register with a large job boards and post their CV.

Companies actively looking for staff buy CV contingents on these job boards, allowing them to review certain number of jobseekers within a given time frame.

In career advice literature, some consultants suggest setting up a professional website outlining the jobseeker’s experience, sample projects, etc. in order to land a dream job.

Do private websites help jobseekers get on HR’s radar?

How effective are such private websites, considering the surplus of social media platforms?

How often do HR departments just google the talent in Internet in order to find private website profiles and thereby possibly a dream candidate?

Hiring People is not a Formula 1

Hiring decisions are made slowly. Only a few companies will use speed to their advantage. Ability to make the call allows those companies to spot talent and get it, when the opportunity arises.

With an average time to hire of 60 days, majority of companies really take their time with the recruitment process. There are many reasons why hiring cycle is long:

1.      Candidates must observe their notice period with their current employer.

2.      The candidate requirements evolve as the interview process starts, so that search criteria change and the process extends.

3.      A long-term vacancy causes hiring manager to reorganize the work so that s/he is no longer so committed to fill the vacancy and more picky about the new hire.

4.      HR and hiring manager hope that tomorrow will bring even a more perfect match between the vacancy and the candidate.

5.      Companies do not have a clear picture about vacancy costs. Not only in Dollars, but also in terms of team morale, job stretch and amount of overtime (and corresponding burn-out risk).

6.      Companies cannot set the right recruitment strategy for particular type of vacancy. They usually try least expensive recruitment channels, employee referrals and job ads. Only with rising desperation, companies engage with recruitment agencies, but even then they are concerned about the recruitment costs and tend to be not very committed to the candidates presented by external recruiters, often in connection with point 3.

7.      Companies stick rigidly to the budgets. They make a big issue over the difference between the budget and the salary expectations of the candidate. Sometimes, the deals are broken over 5K on an annual basis in the salary range of 60K. As the result, the vacancy remains vacant for another 4-8 weeks, hiring managers frustrated, HR busy with a rising frustration levels as well and finally applicants suspicious why they see the same job ad for weeks.

8.      The drive to save recruitment costs at the expense of productivity and ability to execute the business strategy is an overwhelming and recurring issue. Finance does not see through, HR cannot make a business case, time passes.

9.      The decision makers are unable to make the call. They have no stamina or no confidence, call it what you want, they’re simply indecisive and that’s bad for recruitment.

For SMEs speed can be a recruiting advantage. However, even so it is good for HR not to act on the decisions made immediately. Two lessons, I learned a few years ago.

First, it is good for the hiring manager and HR to sleep over a hiring decision. This happened to me twice and it should not happen the third time. When the hiring managers say “Please issue an offer”, it is good to wait one day to do it. On those two particular occasions, the hiring manager came to me the next day with a question, whether the offer has been made, because he no longer wants to hire the candidate. Since the offer was send, I could either withdraw the offer right away or maneuver the offer negotiation process in a way that the candidate did not accept it.

Second, it is also good that the candidate sleeps over the job interview held. Since good candidates do have more then only one option, it is good to give them time to reflect on the job role, the company and the interview itself. Making an offer to the candidate shortly after the interview was for many overwhelming. They later reveled that they would expect it on the third day or so.

Call for more research on usage of employer rating sites

A few days ago I started a LinkedIn Poll on usage of review and ratings site, which basically looks like this:

In order to find out more about a prospective employer, when do you visit an employer review and ratings site?

*  Before sending off my application

*  After I've got invited for an interview

* After I've attended the job interview

* As soon as I receive the job offer

* Never

As long as the poll is active, you can see it in the right column of this blog. I look forward to the results. Thanks.

Out of interest I recently also checked German employer review site kununu.de to compare two companies, two established Internet Start-Ups, one in B2B, one in B2C field.

Results? The B2B company received nearly 60 ratings, while the B2C company only some 15. While the profile of the B2B company was viewed nearly 20,000 times, the profile von the B2C company has been opened nearly 5,000 times. The average rating of the B2B company was worst by around 0.3 percent point.

Is it possible, that

* the brand image of B2C company influences the perception of their employer brand and blocks job seekers to seek out more information about them .

* employer rating of B2B company are viewed more often because job seekers may not have any associations with the company

* The better brand image of the company, the less likely the employer brand will be explored via employer review site.

Or is the varying activity level of ex-/employees and job seekers on these two employer profile sites just a result of the time lag in their profile existence, information that cannot be obtained on the kununu-site. Nota bene, both companies have been heavily recruiting based on the number of job advertisements on their career sites and job boards in May 2012.

Job Agent is out - Career Agent is in

Job agent is a common service of job boards to keep candidates in the loop of new job openings in the “visible job market”. Job agent significantly decreases the amount of search activities performed by job seekers. However, candidates must still evaluate job ads, prepare their CV and cover letter and send them off.

To really ease the job hunt process, candidates in Poland (I did not find this service in other countries) may use career agent, a service rendered by professional career consulting companies. Essentially, a candidate commissions a career professional to actively promote his/her job application to the prospective employers for the period of 2-6 months while he/she can jump into the process when employer demonstrates interest in interviewing. The service include: preparation of CV and cover letter, social media profiling, job offer research and liaison with the prospective employers, job interview and salary negotiation coaching, as well as an individual marketing campaign in the “hidden job market”. Candidates can spend their time on other activities then applying for jobs and substantially lessen their frustration with the job hunt processes.

So how is all this relevant to HR? Should HR care that candidates’ applications are sent by third parties? Accordingly to some recent articles, HR does not appreciate to receive applications sent by helicopter parents. So, are they happy to receive them from career agents?

Given the war for talent, HR should be happy about quality candidates no matter how they get informed of openings and whether or not they contact the employer by themselves. After all, career agent is similar to head hunter who introduces talent to the company. There are important differences though. Whilst head hunters are paid by the company career agents are paid by the candidate. Notably, the remuneration include a basic flat fee plus a success bonus, around 60-80% of candidates first gross salary at his/her new employer. Second, while head hunter act in the company’s interests, career agents and parents always have the candidate in mind first. But unlike parents, career agents may help candidates to define career goals, help them find opportunities that balance their passions and market opportunities, and aid with candidates self-exploration.

What are the odd for career agents to boom? Can career agents get the foot through the door of e.g. German HR departments? Can in-house recruiters get used to dealing with candidate’s career agent just like it is normal for the casting director to deal with the actors’ agent? Would career agents be easier accepted when they represent senior candidates? What impression make candidates (senior or entry-level) who let themselves represent by a career agent? Why it can be beneficial for a company that candidates work with a career agent? And finally, are HR departments prepared to deal with career agents?

Capturing Attention and Definition of Passive Candidates

Companies searching for staff via job ads try to capture candidates’ attention with inducements in the summary teaser or first paragraph, luring position titles or addressing them informally to create familiarity and closeness.

Common wisdom suggests that messages sent to passive candidates in case of direct approach must have even greater power to capture people’s attention.

Then who are passive candidates? Ad definitionem, passive candidates are people, who are not actively looking to move, i.e. are not applying for jobs. If they do not search for a new job, they’re most likely happy in their current one and thus, unlikely to embark on a new one. Hence, a more accurate definition would describe passive candidates as those who do not actively look for jobs, but are keen to move. Consequently, people who do not consider any career move, are not candidates period.

And what about those who indicate that they look for new opportunity irrespectively of their status - employee or jobseeker in their LinkedIn or Xing profile. By being approached by the employer they too qualify as passive candidates.

The full definition of passive candidates could then be: people who are keen to move and are approached by a company instead of applying for jobs by themselves.

From the perspective of this belief, I doubt whether one can motivate a person not intending to leave his current employer to join the recruitment process of a next-employer-wannabe in hopes to land a new job. Neither a particular message will do nor the medium.

Take for example, an electronic greeting card. Cartoony or not, with animation, with music and what not, if the person is not ready for the next career move, s/he passes on the opportunity.

What about a visualization of a prospective title like the example below. A mixture of personalized job ad and a direct approach method.



How LinkedIn and Google figured out that I might be interested in B2C Marketing position, is still a mystery to me.

What will then help one to reach out to people initially uninterested in a job change possible?
I believe repetition makes poaching them possible. Sending multiple messages by various persons from the company instills the idea of moving and makes one more sensible for and critical of the conditions and career prospects at their current employer.

HR routine, German culture and catchy subject lines

Ever since, I also blog on career-related topics, I visit portals and read other blogs related to career, cv and cover letter writing, job hunt, etc as well. Karrierebibel is one of the premium addresses for that matter. Often ahead of the times as the recent blog shows.

The author pledges use of marketing or "catchy" phrases in the subject line of an application email sent by candidates. He suggests that subject lines are the opportunity to make the first impression on HR or hiring manager and hence should be written in a way that it attracts their attention and makes them interested in a candidate. He calls for abandonment of uniform subject lines (e.g. key account manager application) in favor of "catchy" phrases meant to emanate self-confidence and interest (e.g. your next key account manager).

Agreed. But yet disagreed.

Indeed, writing „application” in the subject line is boring. Especially, as application by e-mail are usually sent to an e-mail-address exclusively established for this purpose. On another hand, lucky those HR departments that receive applications with subject lines that include the position name. Those getting a reference to the job ad as well should consider themselves twice as lucky.

Disagreed because the advice misses the reality check with the HR routine. A few beliefs:
* HR folk like any other people like to have it simple, informative and to the point.
* HR appreciates candidates who make their life easy. One of the recruiters job is to keep track of applications received and there is nothing more annoying than not instantly knowing what position a candidate is applying for.
*“Catchy” lines make recruiters job cumbersome and get the job seeker the wrong kind of attention. Super out-of-the-box applications also in terms of subject line are usually a turn-off.
* Efforts put in phrasing subject lines go unnoticed as long as e-mail-applications are printed which I believe is still a common practice in German SMEs.

The advice is also disconnected with the German culture. German job seekers still struggle to make good advertisement for themselves in cover letters or show their motivation to do the job for the employer in question. They are culturally not programmed to show self-confidence. Americans are. Yet, a quick review of career advice sites in English shows that the majority recommends to refrain from marketing-like subject lines. Instead, they promote simplicity: Name, Position, Job Ad ID.
Notably, candidate’s name in the subject line is particularly of benefit, when HR forwards the short-listed applications to the hiring managers electronically.
Next, some folk suggests trying to stand out in the crowd of applicants by adding one of the following besides Name, Position, Job Ad ID:
* Putting the addressee’s name at the beginning of the subject line.
* Adding credentials behind once name
* Adding total number of years of experience
* Adding very unique and specialized skill

Lastly, whether marketing-like phrases can add to the success of a job application probably depends on the industry, which the author did not give any consideration to. For application in ad agencies, some creativity is beneficial for sure. For more conservative industries, keeping it simple should remain the rule.

***
My research shows that out of 2000 recent applications received at my current employer, only one candidate utilized the wording “gesucht? gefunden!!!” in the subject line. Needless to say: She did not get the job.

This blog refers greatly to the comments left by LinkedIn members.