I spent last weekend touring around Boston and happened to catch a Red Sox/Yankees game (Go Sox!). With playoff baseball about to begin, I couldn’t help but think about the pressure management is under to push their ball club to the playoffs and ultimately win the World Series.
Attention Executives and Talent professionals: I’m going to give you an inside view of how search firms look at your business, manage your searches and ways to improve the results you’re getting from recruiters.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
The performance based (contingent) search world is a numbers game. We recruiters have to manage a large pipeline of searches to generate the revenue needed. We do this knowing, for various reasons, we won’t necessarily fill all the job searches we take.
According to Chicago-based employment research firm, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Fantasy Football will cost US employers $17 Billion in lost productivity. So naturally, I started the first ever Hobson Fantasy Football league this year!…
…Last week 8 of us sat in the 'War Room' (our recently renovated Conference Room) agonizing over each pick we’d all spent hours (after 5PM of course) studying trends, and relying on ESPN Senior Fantasy Analyst Matthew Berry’s hot takes and advice!
Think back to when you first got into sales. Now compare that to when you started achieving a respectable amount of success, the kind you could write home about. See a difference? ... Now that you’re a sales manager or executive in charge of hiring and coaching new sales people, the ability to recognize what makes a great sales talent is CRITICAL to your success.
If you’ve ever talked with me or read any of my blog posts, you’ve probably surmised that I’m a positive individual… It is in fact, a truth: I always try to “kill ‘em with kindness” and believe that having the “it” factor involves becoming the best version of yourself, personally and professionally.
Most of my professional life has been spent in the ever-challenging and dynamic world of Executive Recruiting ... Most of my personal life has been spent in the topsy-turvy, often crazy, and always rewarding, world being of a professional gigging musician….
The “Dog Days of Summer” is a phrase we’re all used to hearing during the month of August. They are the hottest, most uncomfortable part of the Northern summer, causing many people to be lazy, hazy and unfocused, leading to unproductivity.
There is a relatable analogy here with grinding out sales. Everyone has their days that they aren’t 100% percent laser focused. It just seems like during the months of July and August we can fall victim to that more often.
Recently, I started dividing my time living and working in two states. I thought the transition would be relatively simple, but then found out … not so much. It has been a challenge to get things set up remotely, find the right contractors, know who to call and who I can trust, and most of all being organized and self-disciplined to work productively
I’ve been recruiting in the perm world for 15 years now… And I must say that it’s been a heck of a ride and I feel extremely blessed. I feel like I’ve got this business down pretty well and have a beat on what challenges I expect to hit every day. I specialize in placing technology sales executives, many of whom make $300K+. It’s the only reality I know in recruiting.
An assumption that is often made about people who forge careers working in the sciences or drug development field is that they are highly educated,
conservative and dedicated to the cause of curing cancer and hundreds of other diseases. However, one would think that they would be the last people to break out of their commitment to “XYZ” Research” and move on to the competition…