On Thursday, December 11th at 11:00 a.m. EST, Thad Greer, Managing Partner with South Florida Management Search, will be conducting a teleseminar for BlueSteps, the career services division of the Association of Executive Search Consultants entitled, "Job Search Pitfalls: How to Avoid the Most Common Mistakes."

In this hour long presentation, Thad will explain why most people have a false sense of accomplishment when it comes to their job search efforts: investing inordinate amounts of time yet seeing very little in return when it comes to legitimate opportunities. By blending web technology with traditional relationship building, Thad will then detail very specific job search strategies that you can use immediately to help you land a great job in as short a time as possible.

Topics to be covered include:

• Why your resume may be holding back your job search
• The truth about search firms and headhunters
• How to blog your way to a new job
• Why the most widely used job search strategy is the least effective

The cost of the seminar is $75. You do not have to be a member of the AESC or BlueSteps to participate. You can register online through the BlueSteps website or for more information, contact Joseph Tait at jtait@aesc.org or 212-398-9556, x244.

When calling to register, if you reference South Florida Management Search we will send you a FREE copy of Thad's new book, The Executive Rules! A Complete Guide to Landing an Executive Job (YA Publications, 2008).

I played a lot of basketball growing up and I’ve been an avid follower of both the college and pro level since I was a kid, and for the first time, I’ve found myself trying to approach the game from a coach’s point of view, more specifically, that of a first year coach.

I would think the biggest challenges of stepping into a new coaching role would be your unfamiliarity with the existing team coupled with the fact that you only have six weeks or so to get ready for the season; no different than what a new manager faces when they transition into a new business leadership role. I’m sure the high school’s athletic director would like to see my brother’s team come out of the gate strong this season, thereby reaffirming his decision to offer him the job. Most companies want and expect their new managers do the same.

I remember when I accepted my first corporate sales management job, I felt the overwhelming to need to come in and immediately begin making radical changes to the existing team and structure. I wanted to believe that the future success of our department relied solely on my incredible leadership abilities and management skills.

At that particular time, I subscribed to a very specific sales philosophy and I was bound and determined to get everyone in sync with the philosophy. Anyone that wasn’t willing or capable of falling in line or drinking the Kool Aid found themselves riding the elevator down to the first floor with the contents of their desk in a cardboard box. Looking back, I now realize that I attempted to be, as Jim Collins (bestselling author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't) terms it, a “genius with a thousand helpers.” As I said, I wanted the success of our team to be a direct result of MY system and philosophy, which ultimately, would be a reflection of me as a manager.

But does this approach work?  What IS the genesis of a great team? Is it the result of a brilliantly implemented coaching strategy that forces the players to get on the same page and operate as interchangeable parts? Or is greatness achieved by allowing your players to take control and call the shots, thereby taking full advantage of their individual skill sets.

Over the next couples weeks, I’m going to take a look at some of the most successful teams in basketball history in an attempt to determine the impact of the coach verses the players themselves.

I'll see your comment and raise you one, Harry.

Having spent a couple years working for the second largest job board on the Internet back in the late '90s, I can say this with complete confidence: LinkedIn is not exactly the innocent professional networking tool it claims to be. It did not inadvertently become this rich prospecting tool for recruiters, LinkedIn was DESIGNED to be a job board/recruiting database from the beginning!

LinkedIn allows professionals to post a profile that is virtually identical to their resume (but better, because it contains their picture) without having to worry about their company's Human Resources department finding out about it. Grown adults expand their networks with the same enthusiasm and desire for popularity as teenagers do by adding friends to their MySpace page. But this is no mere MySpace for adults, despite what they would like you to believe. MySpace makes their money the same way Google does: selling advertisements. LinkedIn, however, makes money by selling InMail's, which are direct emails to their members and the only way to get in contact with someone who is not a part of your network.

As far as I'm concerned having a LinkedIn profile is no different than putting your resume on Monster or CareerBuilder, so don't feign shock when a recruiter like myself reaches out to you to discuss a job opportunity.

When it comes to hiring (or anything else for that matter), I'm big on empirical evidence--I don't argue with the facts. Over the last several years, I have used Jim Collins' NY Times #1 best selling book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap..and Others Don't, (particularly the chapter on "Level 5 Leadership"), as a guide for our candidate selection process.

If you're not familiar with Good to Great, here's the 10,000 foot overview: Start with 1,435 good companies. Examine their performance over 40 years. Find the 11 companies that became great. Collins and his team examine not only the strategic decisions and actions these companies took but also the leaders who were at the helm during their pivotal transition years.

In regards to Level 5 Leadership, here are some of the Key Points (taken directly from page 39 of the book):

• Every good-to-great company had Level 5 leadership during the pivotal transition years.
• Level 5 leaders display a compelling modesty, are self-effacing and understated. In contrast, two thirds of the comparison companies had leaders with gargantuan personal egos that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company.
• Level 5 leaders display a workmanlike diligence - more plow horse than show horse.
• One of the most damaging trends in recent history is the tendency (especially by board of directors) to select dazzling, celebrity leaders and de-select potential Level 5 leaders.

In "Unexpected Findings", Collins states, "Larger-than-life, celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside are negatively correlated with going from good to great. Ten of eleven good-to-great CEOs came from inside the company, where the comparison companies tried outside CEOs six times more often."

In summarizing his article The Curse of the Superstar CEO published by, of all places, The Harvard Business Review, Rakesh Khurana writes, "When companies look for new leaders, the one quality they seek above all others is charisma. The result, more often than not, is disappointment—or even disaster."

Let's start at the pressure point: the real estate agents.

Real estate agents are salespeople. Real estate agents don't care what you buy as long as you buy something (especially after carting you around to 25 different houses paying $4 a gallon for gas). Whether they represent the buyer or the seller, they do not make a dime unless a property is sold. "Sure you can afford this. Come on, it's the home of your dreams, right? So you brown-bag lunch it during the week instead of Applebees and Starbucks." We can handle that, right honey?

Mortgage brokers are salespeople. Stated income mortgage loans? How was that concept sold to any self-respecting bean-counter? "How about I just TELL you what I make and you believe me?" The mortgage broker is under as much pressure as the real estate agent. Again, no loan = no moolah. Let's ASSUME a scenario where there is no impropriety whatsoever on the part of the broker and the conversation might go something like this: "Mr. Lender, this couple is good for the money. It's the home of their dreams. They're going to raise a family and retire here. Under no circumstances would they let this home go into foreclosure." I personally know individuals that were making $50k per year who were convinced they could afford a $500k house with no money down. Throw in the hyper-competitive nature of a good salespeople (times a million) with a little exaggeration and you can see how a mushroom cloud of bad loans can suddenly appear out of no where.

Lenders got caught up in the hype generated by their front-line soldiers, the salespeople. It's a good time to be a real estate investor.

What made us think that passive job seekers were more desirable than their active counterparts, and that this was somehow common knowledge among those in the hiring know? The story/theory/sales pitch goes like this: the most capable people are not unemployed, they're out there working and producing. They're too buy kicking ass and taking names to be thinking about finding a new job and besides, why would they? They're so incredibly successful and appreciated at their current job that they wouldn't dream of going anywhere else. That's the guy (or girl) you want on your team!

We all want employees that are loyal, focused and most of all, productive, so who in their right mind is going to argue with that reasoning? "So if that's the profile of the person we should be looking for," Mr. and Mrs. Prospect would often ask, "Then why would this person be on a job board in the first place?" Our comeback was supposed to be this long, drawn-out answer having to do with how the candidates actually found our site; that our partner sites drove most of our traffic, therefore our job seekers were of a higher caliber than those who visited the site directly (they're passively looking for a job, get it?). It was total BS.

There is very little consistency in how individual companies, departments and hiring managers evaluate candidates. I have one client that wants to see people with a track record of success in multiple industries because they feel it demonstrates flexibility while another client wants candidates who have years of experience in the same industry because it shows consistency. One hiring manager spends 80% of the interview chit-chatting with the candidate, and ultimately bases their hiring decision on perceived chemistry, while another comes right out the gate firing questions about market share, gross margins and compensation strategies; the candidate's personality has little bearing on their decision. Two completely different approaches for similar sales management positions in parallel industries. Which one is right?

As an independent recruiter, it doesn't really matter. We are only making the recommendations, not the hiring decisions. It's our job to deliver candidates that are qualified and capable (based on the employer's definition of those characteristics) and possess one other intangible characteristic that is absolutely essential to every successful placement. It is the one common denominator that should be weighed into every single hiring decision: motivation.

Is the candidate motivated to get out there and do the work? More specifically, for our company (or our client's company), under our direction, using our means and methods. If the answer to that question is not a resounding "YES!" then you are setting yourself up for failure. Every other candidate qualifier is a distant second. I am not suggesting that motivation can overcome a blatant lack of experience and education (actually sometimes it can), but I would much rather have an individual with an incredible sense of enthusiasm that is a little lean on industry experience than someone with an extensive background who has to be convinced to do the job.

Start paying attention to the people you come in contact with in a professional capacity and you'll see that its not hard to gauge their level of motivation. The Starbucks employee that greets you by name when you walk inside, knows your drink by heart and tells you to come back verses the one that acts as though they've just pulled a double shift in a coal mine and all but ignores you (I love it when they shout "Next person in line!" when I'm standing 3 feet in front of them). Most people make it blatantly obviously how they feel about their jobs and their performance reflects their overall level of motivation.

As a recruiter, the easy trap to fall into is the one where you have a highly qualified candidate that has to be "sold" on a particular position. Many recruiters are sales people at heart so being persuasive comes second nature, but take extra caution when you feel yourself having to spend most of your time getting the candidate to focus on the positives of the job, as opposed to presenting a realistic, straight-forward perspective.

If you're a hiring manager that utilizes pre-employment assessments, check out Jonathan P. Niednagel and his website/blog, BrainTypes.com. The guy drives me nuts for no other reason than the fact that he updates so infrequently and I really like what he has to say. His area of expertise is in professional athletics and he's made a name for himself working as a personnel consultant to several high-profile sports teams across the NFL, NBA and MLB. Because athletes in team sports typically receive guaranteed, multi-year contracts, teams are under tremendous pressure to thoroughly screen and evaluate the players before making long-term financial commitments.

Niednagel gained national attention in 1998 with his pre-draft assessments of Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf, the #1 and 2 picks respectively, in the NFL draft that year. He stated that based on his analysis of their individual brain types, Manning would become a superstar in the NFL while Leaf would struggle. Manning is the reining Super Bowl MVP; Leaf has been out of the league since 2002 and is now an assistant college coach.

Neidnagel's "brain typing" theory is a derivative of the old Myers-Briggs personality tests that classifies individuals based on a combination of preferences such as feeling, thinking, sensing, perceiving, etc. (A good site for discovering your own brain type is Socionics -- I test out as an ESTP: extroverted, sensing, thinking and perceiving).

What I find interesting about his work is that he claims these preferences manifest themselves through motor skills such as eye contact, voice inflection, body movements (the way you walk, hand gestures), etc., so you can determine a person's brain-type or innate "wiring" without them having to take a self-assessment test. He believes, as do I, that self-assessments produce inaccurate results, particularly when it comes to pre-employment testing, due to a number of reasons:

* Multiple perceptions: most people feel they act differently in different settings. "At home I'm fun loving and gregarious, but at work I'm strictly business." I've had people ask me before taking a personality assessment, "Am I supposed to answer this how I think I am or how I think other's perceive me?" The result is usually a combination of those two perspectives.

* Skewed perception of self: too often we see ourselves differently than the rest of world sees us. Remember the first time you heard a recording of your own voice?

* Manipulated results: Candidates recognize how much is riding on these results and make adjustments to their answers based on what they think the company wants to see. I've had clients that will not speak with a candidate unless the results from their pre-assessment comes back favorably--regardless of what their resume says.

Neidnagel claims that even when you take a self-assessment with no vested interest in the outcome, the results are only 75% accurate. Basing a hiring decision on these results is like heading off on a cross-country trip with only 75% of the directions being correct. If you (or your company) insist on using pre-assessments as part of your candidate screening process, I recommend their weight be no more than 10% of the overall hiring criteria.

"I don't want a job hopper--I want someone with a stable work history."

The phrase "job stability" is defined very differently today than it was 25 years ago.  So the question is, as we inch our way towards 2009, what is the new measure of job stability?  10 years at each position? 5 years? 18 months? As a business owner or sales manager, should you just install a revolving door and resign yourself to the fact that you are going to have to be in constant recruiting mode? How long can you realistically expect a salesperson to be productive with your organization before they voluntarily move on or you have to let them go for lack of production?

That depends.  It all comes back to how well suited the person is for the job in the first place.

I had this exact discussion today over lunch with Tom, the Vice President of Sales for one of my clients: a technology company that sells value-added products and services to webhosting providers, internet service providers, and cable companies.  He had sent me an email earlier this week expressing some concern because the last 2 sales reps he hired, one of whom he recruiting on his own and the other referred by me, did not stay with the company longer than a year.  And it turns out that these were not isolated incidents; apparently this has been a recurring theme since he took over the sales department 4 years ago.

"What's the biggest challenge you're running into with new salespeople?" I asked.

"The bottom line is they're either not ramping up the way we expect them to or they're bailing after 12-18 months as soon as a new opportunity comes along," he said. "We need our reps to hit the ground running.  We provide some basic product training when they start, but it's not like a formalized 6-week 'boot camp', by any means.  We just don't have the resources to do that--we're not a huge company. Essentially, we leave it up to the individual to determine those areas where they need training and then they're responsible for finding the educational resources.  The reps that do well with our company are the ones that take the initiative to be successful.  The ones that stand around waiting for you to send them to product seminars and complain about the lack of marketing materials and support are the ones that don't make it."

In the last 15 years or so, a lot of career salespeople have gravitated to the technology industry, not  due to their interest in technology, but because there is a lot of money to be made.  Within the telecom industry, for example, there are a ton of people in sales roles with limited technical skills that bounce around from company to company every 18-24 months.  They're the $75 - $110k per year player--what I like to call the MLS (Mid-Level Sales rep).  The job boards are littered with their resumes.  The two reps that recently left Tom's company are prime examples: one went to work in sales for Louis Vuitton luggage while the other is now managing a golf tour.

Up to this point when considering a candidate for a sales position, Tom's focus was on their sales experience first and foremost, with their technical aptitude and skill sets a distant second.  When we sat down and analyzed the profiles of his top 3 sales reps, all had one thing in common: a strong background (education and/or work experience) and keen interest in technology.  2 of the 3 had never even been in sales prior to taking the position, yet they were all top performers. 

"Most of the people you've been hiring are just not that interested in your products and services," I told him.  "They just see your job as a means to an end and as soon as an opportunity comes along that sounds better where they can make the same money, they leave."

In a perfect world, your sales reps would be totally passionate about your products and services.  But at the very least they should have a strong interest in what you sell.  This will allow them to speak naturally and confidently when carrying your message to their clients and prospects. 

Hiring is not an exact science, particularly when it comes landing great sales reps--it's trial and error.  Study the profiles of your successful salespeople or those working for other companies in your industry.  Talk to your competitor's sales reps and ask them what they like most about the job/company/product lines.  Forget about what you think the profile of a successful salesperson should be or what looks good on paper.  Duplicate what you already know is working.