A Boston Technical Recruiters Blog

So you think you are a sales executive? Let’s qualify you as a candidate:

1. Do you love to cold call?
2. Do you understand how to develop relationships with your recruiters?
3. Do you understand how to develop relationships inside large companies once you have them as a client?
4. Are you familiar with all the procedural processes and paper work of your clients?
5. Do you regularly attend trade fares?
6. Are you an active networked?
7. Do you reside on LinkedIn and Google?
8. Do you love to research new prospects?
9. What time do you make your first phone call in the morning?
10. What time do you go home at night?

These are all leading questions that could help determine if a sales executive is up to par or is just blowing smoke. There is a split within sales known as the hunter/ farmer split.
The farmer logically grows the account once the seed is sown, waters the crops, and brings in a large new harvest. He also makes sure that wolves do not prey on his sheep by knowing every sheep in the flock.

A hunter is a wolf who goes out and hunts. A wolf does not wait for the sheep to come to him, he goes out and finds it, stalks it, and takes it down. The wolf is never content, nor does it get fat. A hunter is always hunting or he is no longer a hunter.

Are you a hunter or a farmer? Perhaps you are both, or neither. If you are neither, you and those people who depend on you have a serious problem.

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In the sales/recruiter split model there is this small misconception in the departments of many recruiting companies that the recruiters are meant to get sales leads for the sales people. This misconception stems directly and irrefutably from the mind numbing incompetence of the sales departments and the complicit indifference of the recruiting management.

Popular Model:
• Recruiter: Generate Leads, Prospect, Cold Call, Source, Qualify, Submit, Sell, Skill Market, Close and do all the paperwork
• Sales: Warm Call into recruiter lead, take req, forward candidate, get paid, complain that recruiter is not generating leads, come in late and leave early.

Is there a disparity here? You bet.
So, I spoke about this to a Sales Manager at Philips Medical Systems who sells about $15 million worth of medical devices per year. I asked what do you think of the sales guy who won’t prospect? He said ”He doesn’t want to do his job.” Amen.

Let’s break it down:
• Recruiter: Research, Source, Qualify, Sell candidate on job, Submit, Skill Market, Close the CANDIDATE
• Sales: Research, Generate Leads, Qualify, Cold Call Client, Skill Market, Sell candidate on job, Sell Candidate to client, Close The CLIENT

Solution:
Make your sales people do their job. It is their job to prospect, research, and cold call. If they don’t do these three things every day, you ought to fire them.

If your recruiters don’t generate leads, don’t coerce them into it. Find a way to motivate them.

Suggestions for motivating recruiters:
• Give them a referral bonus for new clients (don’t be cheap, $100 for a client that brings you $1 million in revenue is cheap).
• Create a contest where the recruiter with the most leads in a week get’s a house hit.
• Recognize your people for their efforts, even somethign as small as a card or taking them out to lunch will work wonders.

Conclusion:
If you have enabled the work ethic degradation of your sales force by requiring your recruiters to do the sales jobs you need to do something before your recruiters find greener pastures.

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I model my resume on the resumes of consultants I work with. But in general a resume should be clear and should give a manager glancing over it a good idea of your technical capabilities. I’ve seen managers raving about 1 page resumes, but I don’t agree that a 1 pager does justice to someone’s experience.

Furthermore, there is always a mixed review on cover letters, I don’t really pay attention to them since they don’t say anything to me. Your resume should spell out what, where, and how. Chances are that if you do not have something in your resume a cover letter will not save you from the trash pile.  I have also received quite a few resumes with the cover letter addressed to the wrong company. What do you think happens to that resume?

  Font’s should be conservative, Arial  10-12pt, single spaced, regular round bullets, no underlines, bold only the job title, company name and date, and the heading can be a little bigger.  Make sure your education is clearly marked on your resume. I noticed many Indian consultants do not put the school name; one consultant did not put that she went to IIT, a school comparable to MIT in the US and a huge advantage at certain firms. Place your most current education first, even it is not yet completed, unless you did not complete the degree at all. 

Use action words such as develop, lead, recruited, gathered, analyzed, managed.  Do not write prose “I was responsible for blab la bla… “ boring and slow. You want your resume to be crisp and sharp.

  Include your numbers! Especially if you do sales where numbers are important. 

Feel free to email me for any questions! Comments are welcome. You can take a look at my resume for an example.

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