What Headhunters Want – 6 Quick Tips

Although our sales and marketing recruiting company deals with job seekers of all sizes and backgrounds, there are still some things that the individuals can do better to heighten their odds of success when working with a recruiter:

 

1. Have Your Resume and Cover Letter Complete – you would be amazed by the number of applicants who submit questions rather than resumes. This is highly ineffective and many headhunters really don’t end up responding to these inquiries.

 

2. Know the Executive Search Firm’s Specialty – if you are looking for an accounting job that is in the executive level, don’t waste your time applying to sales management recruiting firms hoping that something will stick. Time can better be used elsewhere.

 

Ken Sundheim gives a lecture to graduates of New York University on Entrepreneurship as a Career Choice.

 

3. Be Selective Regarding the Recruiters You Work With – it’s simply not logical to trust your career to anyone and that includes headhunting agencies.

 

4. Think Positively – if you work with headhunters in a manner that displays you are a positive, upbeat person, recruiters and employers are much more likely to respond positively to working with and eventually hiring you.

 

5. Headhunters Want to Fill Their Jobs – when working with any staffing agency know that a recruiter will always prioritize (or in most instances) resumes that are relevant to today’s searches. Now, this is not a 100% rule because the best headhunters anticipate and contact, but it’s best that the job seeker contact them with a specific job or two in mind.

 

6. Know How Recruiters Work – if you are not a recruiter, that still does not mean that you don’t have to know the business. The most successful job applicants can decipher how each headhunter works and adjust their submission and strategy accordingly.

 

 

Do Sales Representatives Need a Base Salary

taken from corporate website on kasplacement.com geared towards the employers who come to our site baffled as to why sales representatives do not want to work on commission only including us poor recruiters working for free, thus taking a percentage of this guy’s percentage and creating an almost genius of free labor….even if they can make “$1,000,000 per year.”

 

This is often a question posed by some business owners and the answer is, if you want to recruit competitive sales professionals, you must pay them a base salary and commission.

 

The way we phrase the answer to this question is that if you don’t pay your sales representatives, someone else will gladly do so.

 

Will Sales Reps Work Hard Enough If I Do?

 

Yes. Sales representatives do not get motivated or demotivated because of a paycheck.

 

Instead sales professionals get motivated or demotivated by the management of a company, the products or services that company offers and the corporate culture within that organization.

Article continued Do Sales Representatives Need a Base Salary 

It’s Not Always the Industry…Picking a Sales and Marketing Career That Fits You

It’s Not Always the Industry…Picking a Sales or Marketing Career That Fits You 

Running an executive search firm, I see job candidates consistently choose the wrong career via focusing on an industry rather than pinpointing the right company for them.

 

Here are a few ways to choose the right sales or marketing job, thus ensuring that you not only consistently increase your value as a job seeker, but also that you grow as a person:

 

While reading this, keep in mind that some of my favorite recruitment clients work in industries that may not seem “sexy.”  First glances can be deceiving, as there is usually an inverse relationship between what is assumed to be sexy by some employees and what is proven to be lucrative.

 

1) What is the corporate atmosphere and will you be happy in it?

 

You should strive to be in a company that is full of like-minded individuals whom you can relate to and are within a similar age group as you.

 

Not everyone loves work, but having a friendly atmosphere full of people whom you can relate to is a paramount to your success with the firm.

 

Therefore, ask yourself these two questions (among others), which should shed some light as to whether you will like the firm:

 

a) What are the people like?

 

There are many things to consider when making an educated guess as to what the people are like within a company, but things like dress and personal interaction with one another should give you a start.

 

As a recruiter, would recommend staying away from overly arrogant companies.  Chances are these individuals are masking unhappiness and insecurity behind that a tough exterior…

 

Article Continued: It’s Not Always the Industry…Picking a Sales and Marketing Career That Fits You 

 

 

 

 

Baltimore Marketing Recruiters Baltimore Headhunters

 

Chicago Executive Recruiters Chicago Headhunters

 

Philadelphia Headhunters Philadelphia Executive Recruiters

 

 

Questions to Ask on a 1st Interview

Questions to Ask on a 1st Interview

1. Let’s Say I Execute All the Set Duties of My Position For A Long Time….?

You should always find out where the job is taking you in the next few years, however you must phrase this question properly. If you come out and say that you want to know exactly where you’ll be in 3 years, the interviewer is going to perceive that you are not into this job and feel as if you are above it. Once this happens, all hopes of obtaining an offer letter are over.

On the other hand, you can ask the interviewer that if you plan to do exceptionally well in the position, after you really prove yourself (the “really prove” must be stressed), what potential is there for you to grow both personally and professionally? Again, you have to make the interviewer aware that you are 110% dedicated to the position that is currently being discussed and not put too much emphasis on this point, but finding out is important.

Pull this off correctly, and you’ll get the person on the other end of the table or on the other phone line to show his or her cards and tell you whether there is truly a future within the company.

Name of Video: Ken Sundheim- Salary Negotiation Nuances That Are Often Overlooked, Salary Negotiation Help

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2. What Is The Average Turnover Rate of the Corporation?

This may make the interviewer a tad uneasy, but it is a valid question and can be phrased as such:

“I want a career and not just a job, do you mind me asking how happy the people at the company are and, in a rough estimate, is the turnover rate towards the higher or lower end?”

Prior to interviewing with the company, you should have done your best to do the proper research to determine a rough estimate for yourself, but you should always hear this directly from the interviewer. This way, they can either confirm what you have deciphered from your research or whether they have a rational, different spin.

3. What Is An Average Day Like? When Does It Begin?

Two seconds after asking this question, make sure the interview knows that you understand that this is not a 9 – 5 job. Tell him or her in a direct manner that a “9 – 5 job” is not what you are after. However, what time the day begins will, if you’re commuting to the job from out of town, help you determine whether you can take the position in the first place.

When it comes to obtaining an answer to the first question, “What is the average day like?” listen contently to the interviewer’s answer/description and see if these tasks are going to challenge you and interest you on a daily basis. You don’t want to start a job expecting to do “x” all day only to find out that you will be doing “y” and you don’t particularly care for doing “y.” You might as well ask; there’s no harm.

4. What Is The Travel Like? Where Would I Be Traveling?

Remember, just like any other “eggshell” question (meaning a question that can be taken wrong way and ruin an entire interview), tread lightly and make sure that the interviewer knows that you are inquiring to make an informed decision and that you have an open mind when it comes to the topic of travel. If the interviewer shoots right back at you asking if travel is a problem, simply state:

“For the right position, not one bit.”

After saying this, the person on the other end of the table will most likely give you an idea of the amount of travel. Always remember, many companies tend to inflate travel as a way to test if the potential employee can handle the max workload. Therefore, as a rule, I would deduct around 15% from the travel number you are given.

Full article: Questions to ask on a 1st interview

Pittsburgh sales recruiters, Pittsburgh executive recruiters

Seattle Headhunters, Seattle Sales Recruiters, Seattle Recruiters, Media Recruiters Seattle

Denver sales recruiters, Marketing Recruiters Denver, Executive Headhunters Denver

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How to Get Rich From a Career In Sales

How To Get Rich From a Career In Sales

There are a few variables that mostly determine how much money a sales professional can realistically make at a particular job.

Though, these factors do not live in a vacuum and, most if not all must be present to truly monetize a business development job to its fullest extent:

Base Salary: every sales job comes with what is called a ramp-up period where the sales employee is busy prospecting for new business, but is starting from “0”, thus having no commission from sales coming in. For this, and a few other reasons, when factoring in how much a sales job can be worth to the employee, base salary is always critical. This is something that we preach both to candidates, clients and internal recruiters at KAS Placement.

Product or Service: without a viable product or service, the sales professional is not only bound to not make money, but they are likely to go into an insanity that many sales employees have experienced upon selling a product or service that is not industry competitive.

I will never forget when I was still in college selling SEC / NASD financial compliance solutions that would capture email correspondence of brokerage firms and, right before making my first big sale, the system froze during the client’s demonstration, thus solidifying us as a “B” player and solidifying me as someone who would have to wait for their first big sale.

Marketing: marketing needs to be strong on a few levels for the sales employee to reap the full monetary benefits of working at a particular business development position.

First, there usually is a direct relationship between the number of incoming leads a sales representative gets (as opposed to outbound cold-calling) and the conversion rate of each prospect that the sales rep. comes into contact with. Most sales professionals who hold the more lucrative jobs tend to have incoming leads from marketing initiatives that be in the form of SEO or PPC Google marketing.

Second, there is public perception of the product or service being sold. Trying to turn around negative sentiment is nearly impossible and is definitely a waste of time and effort if the marketing department can’t do its part.

Read the rest of How to Get Rich as a Sales Professional at Ken Sundheim’s Recruiting and Staffing Blog

KAS is a recruiting firm San Jose Recruitment Agencies, San Jose Sales Recruiters staffing all levels of job seekers Financial Sales Recruitment, Marketing Recruitment Finance, Hedge Fund Sales Recruiter ranging from sales recruiting and sales job Sales Resume and Sales Interviewing Articles, Ken Sundheim to the executive recruitment of Minneapolis Recruitment, Minneapolis Marketing Staffing Agencies, Minneapolis Employment Agencies

How to Keep Your Value Up as a Job Seeker

As a job seeker, be aware that an inverse relationship exists between the number of jobs you have had in the past few years and the likely amount of your next job offer. Bouncing from job to job is a serious red flag to employers. This is regardless of whether the job hopping is a true representation of your professional reliability. Although it looks better if you left the jobs rather than if you got fired, either is still a clear negative on your CV.

The best advice I can give to those who have had a few jobs in the past few years is to be upfront about the issue on either your resume (in the objective section) or within your cover letter. Remember to be candid, clearly state that you want a job within an organization that you can grow with for the years to come and do not make excessive excuses for your failure to be at each company for longer time periods.

Ken Sundheim – how to have a better career

2. Continue to hit quotas or receiving professional awards

This is much easier said than done as there are many uncontrollable variables for the job seeker when it comes to this arena. To maintain hitting your quotas as a sales professional, come to an agreement with your current employers as to what fair numbers are…though, do it after being at the company for a little bit. You’d be surprised as to how firms are willing to negotiate this aspect of your sales job and how lucrative meeting those numbers will prove to be at future jobs.

3. Do not have gaps in your resume

Although logic would say that someone unemployed for an extended period of time is much more eager to get back to work than somebody who has had 10 jobs in the past 12 years, ’tis is not the case. We all want what others have and prolonged unemployment on one’s resume turns employers off.

As a job seeker who has been unemployed for a period of time, what do you do to fill any gap of unemployment?

I recommend doing some sort of charity work if you can’t find the job right for you. Not only will this show the employer that you have been active, but the charity may hit home in the HR rep’s heart and you can slide in for an easy interview.

You can read the rest of the recruiting and job search article Keeping your value when not working or simply on the open job market at Ken Sundheim.com

 Ken Sundheim is the CEO of KAS Placement sales recruiters, marketing recruitment and media staffing Seattle headhunters recruiters

 

4 Musts for the Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur must have a hybrid of skills to succeed and to successfully grow a business as well as sustain that growth. Businesses are living, breathing creatures and must be fed more and more revenue to survive.

The minute that the “Beast” witnesses prolonged famine, it shrinks then, within time, the entrepreneur gets tired and the company dies. To combat this potential failure, the business owner must become multifaceted – a chameleon of sorts.

Ken Sundheim WSJ 2011.

With the aforementioned thoughts in mind, what traits must the entrepreneur gain to become successful and to properly lead a group?

The following is a good place to begin and where it ends, nobody has a clue:

1. The Successful Entrepreneur Must Have Thick Skin

Entrepreneurs need to have thick skin. From what I have noticed and lived through, some people will do and say very hate filled things out of spite, jealously or personal dislike.

It’s a sad fact and will happen. The entrepreneur must adapt, to be able to anticipate and combat rejection. To give you a good example, I was told by a reporter at CBS that she didn’t want to interview us because she didn’t engage in negative thought.

This was because I warned her that I wanted honest reporting. Needless to say, she was the pot calling the kettle black.

I have gotten hate mail from competing firms claiming that they know our secrets and other personal things.

While many would be intimidated or hurt by such correspondence, to the entrepreneur, the hate mail is complimentary while the rejection from the CBS woman is frustrating: not hurtful, but annoying.

Regarding the hate mail, this correspondence tells the entrepreneur that people are angry and frustrated with his or her existence on planet earth. The entrepreneur smiles.

2. He or She Must Have The Ability To Recruit Talented Individuals

When I began a recruiting firm, I did it because I thought it was something that I could do. I got the idea from a book when I was just a kid.

As an entrepreneur, I randomly hit the business building lottery. For any business, recruiting and knowing how to obtain talent is immensely hard and the inability to do so, or having consistent turnovers, kills a company.

Therefore, this is an advantage that I hold dear. The entrepreneur must bring the right talent onto his team. Otherwise, the business won’t stand out.

It’s the entrepreneur who starts the business. However, it’s the first few employees who determine the entity’s success.

3. Marketing Skills

Marketing is a skill that each entrepreneur needs to have. I really don’t see much of a way around it. Whether it is marketing themselves to the public, writing a website or marketing their company to potential employees, entrepreneurs need to learn marketing.

You could only imagine how hard it was for my wife and me to recruit our own employees while still based from our apartment early on.

The two employees who took the leap of faith with us while we were still in that early stage, we hold dear. However, it could not have been done if it were not for our website, which was the only allure we had as a frontline defense.

4. Basic Psychology and Persuasion

Entrepreneurs need to know how people think, what their drivers are, what their turnoffs are. If he or she is to gain the ability to motivate others, this is a necessity.

As someone who is under 30 who had really no other work experience, I learned this through reading, the help of my wife and trial and error. Do I have it down pat? The answer is “No.”

Leaders are not born with a special leadership trait that some don’t or will never have. Instead, entrepreneurs mold themselves into leaders as they grow up. Knowing basic psychology and persuasion allows the entrepreneur to do just this.

However, this theory also goes back to the 1st trait mentioned. When you become a leader, you leave yourself open to judgment and consistent rejection.

Ken Sundheim runs KAS Placement, a sales and marketing staffing agency specializing in helping both U.S. and International mid to large size firms form sales teams from small business recruitment ken sundheim, headhunters, staffing firms the executive level sales manager to helping recent college graduates transition to a business development role. On his free time, Ken is a public speaker and likes to read non-fiction.

Ken Sundheim "Entrepreneurs B2B RainsKen Sundheim College Recruiter

What You Need to Be a 10 / 10 Sales Rep.

Not every sales professional born with the gift of gab becomes an all-star at business development, however just about every all-star at sales and business was born with a knack for carrying an engaging conversation with people from all walks of life.

This is not to say that someone who was not born with this skill cannot become an 8 or 9 / 10 with a great deal of practice, but in sales and people oriented jobs, the 10′s will make proportionally far more money than an 8 or 9.

When one analyzes the differences between two inherently gifted people oriented individuals who end up being a 10 and 7 in sales and business, there is one monumental differentiator:

An acquired, acute knowledge of business which turns one into a 10 while the 7 remains stagnant in his or her career never getting out of the sales pit to transition to the C-level jobs.

A 10 sales and business professional knows what makes companies money (on a macro and micro level) regardless of industry. This knowledge allows him or her to understand how each employee thinks and behaves within any given organization and can use his gift of gab to be a chameleon, alter his or her speech and gain enough trust within a company to land deals that 7′s could only image getting past the RFP stage.

Read the rest of What You Need to Be a 10 / 10 Sales Representative

Ken Sundheim is the CEO of KAS Placement Executive Search and Staffing Agency a recruitment firm helping job seekers throughout the U.S. including Boston Headhunters, DC Recruiting Firms.

The search agency was started in 2005.

Consultative Selling Part 2

Consultative Selling is About Hunting Marlin Not Fishing Trout

The entire basis of consultative selling revolves around solving clients’ problems so they come back to the seller. Hence, the seller becomes the client’s expert and reliable source. “We need x again, oh call Bob or Sally, they take care of it.” It’s that simple. It’s that simple if done correctly and worked on.

Through the proper questions during the initial sales contact phase, the disciplined consultative seller can decipher whether this company or individual will become a partner of sorts and form a mutually beneficial, lucrative relationship or whether will they be a one hit wonder.

The average sales professionals take the quick buck and, after 10 years of not getting to where they want to be, either remain unhappy or adapt a sales approach that is relationship based. At first, the change is somewhat scary to the sales professional, but they become used to the listening, the questions and the scaling of the temptation to close a quick deal that will truly go nowhere. This aspect of consultative selling always intercrosses with integrity.

The true consultative sales professional knows that their time is valuable and is willing to forego a company that is ready to write a check, but they know they cannot fully help and that the ROI is not worth the work. Too many sales people, mainly due to poor technique and a lack of integrity lick their lips at any potentially inked contract and, thus kill any possible long-term relationship with another client who is more important.

Video: Ken Sundheim KAS Recruitment – Videos: Considerations Prior to Accepting a Job

http://youtu.be/BM3iPfNxavk – Video: How Good Is Your Sales Manager, Do You Like Your Sales Manager

http://youtu.be/4guhH-RazOY – Video: What Recruiters Look For In Job Applicants, what headhunters look for in job applicants

The Sales Manager Who Justifies Their Worth

Because the sales management position within any organization if so vital to the company’s health, it is hard for the executive not to occasionally second-guess his or her choice in sales managers.  When it comes to hiring, the devil we know is a lot better then the sales manager whom we have to replace that individual with, so the idea of changing sales managers strikes nausea into the gut of many a sales director.
Despite this, there should be some set parameters within your company to determine the sales aptitude of the individual managing your organization’s sales force. Below, you’ll find some of these measurements of sales management competency and, in following each, you should be able to determine whether a sales manager is going to become the future of your company or hinder the future of those under them.

Do They Justify Their Worth?

With sales managers it’s all about numbers.  Sales is one of the few quantifiable positions, if not the only quantifiable, within the majority of organizations. At the end of the day, sales managers have to make quota and have to ensure that they are teaching those under them how to properly implement business development techniques in order to gain autonomy and drive revenue themselves.

Are They Constantly Upbeat?

Effective sales managers can stay positive even in the most stressful situations.  They firmly understand that their subordinates will not do well in a pressure cooker environment. For any manager, a positive, bright outlook starts with them and either resonates throughout the company or fails to create an atmosphere that breeds leaders.

staffing agency recruitment solutions marketing head hunter

Read the rest of the sales employment and sales management staffing article 

Ken Sundheim KAS job recruitment and employment agency   Ken Sundheim started the staffing solutions company in NYC in 2005.