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?

Advertisements' potential to coin new worlds

The advertisement have the potential to influence people's judgements and decisions. Recently, it also aspires to lead language evolution by coining new worlds. The strategy is similar across several recent advertisements, a dating platform, an online platform offering private accommodation or a third biggest German insurance group. The brand name is converted to a verb.

Src: top.parship.de, www.wimdu.de, www.steptone.de (February 4, 2015)

Talanx-Group is not the only employer creating the brand promise around its name.
What comes as a very refreshing treat is the job ad of treatwell.nl in which the company invites jobseekers to submit their job application with this request "treat us with your application".

Do you know other similar strategies?

Innovation in Job Advertisements

Given the best practices of job advertisements, many job ads became pretty uniform. Hence, it is quite refreshing when some HR departments act creatively to stand out from the crowd. 

In this post, I’d like to point out seven examples, five from Poland and two from Germany.

1.      Aplikom intends to motivate jobseekers to apply with inviting them to read their employees’ reviews of work at Aplikom.

2.      Corresponding to employee satisfaction, Atena added a sentence “90% of employees are satisfied with their work at Atena”.

3.      MobileMS that looks for sales people, listed the remuneration structure candidates can expect along with the total salary to be earned after 3, 6, and 12 months. The employer also shares their annual revenues so that candidates can better understand their income potential.

4.      On the opposite, Aviva’s requirements for a complete application are scary. Intern candidates are required to submit a photo, date of birth and marital status. Notably, the employer also provides an option to apply without those details by using their contact form.

 

5.      Instead, Edelight’s idea to attract candidates was to ask for their competency level at football table. Moreover, Edelight uses the job advert to cross-promote themselves as shopping destination. They wrote “By the way, you can find the right kind of attire for the job interview here: www.edelight.de/mode”.

6.      Switalski & Synowie’s attracted my attention, because they thank their applicants for submitting their application upfront.

7.      Flare Games job ad disconnects with best practices altogether. First, job duties are incorporated into the list of requirements. Second, no capital letters are used in the text. Third, text applies mathematical formula to define the talent wanted and geographic latitude and longitude of company’s headquarters. Finally, the job ad is enriched with a QR Code.

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.

Multiple job openings on single job advert

Traditionally, one main difference between online and newspaper job adverts was that the former one did not allow for listing several job openings within one job advert.

Obviously, there have been some changes since I recently came across the following advertisements.

While Cersanit looks for intern in four different departments with a single job advert, American Express is looking for customer service officers for high-end clientele in four different teams.

About the reasons for such job adverts I could only fantasize.

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.