Professional Services Blog

Home Sales at Highest Level Since 2007

2009-11-23T19:54:53Z

The National Association of Realtors reported that existing home sales rose 10.1% in October to an annual rate of 6.1 million units. That is the highest rate of sales since February 2007, when it was at 6.55million.

The spike in sales coincides with the original expiration date that was set on the $8,000 federal tax credit that was available to first time home buyers. The deadline on that tax credit has been extended to April 30.

“We will certainly see some pickup into the first part of next year,” Adam York, economist at Wells Fargo, said. “The expansion of the tax credit could bring in a whole new segment of people to the market.”

The market is still full of top talent in the Real Estate industry. At CareerBuilder.com, we are seeing companies attracting and hiring Real Estate Agents every day. In fact, there has been an increase in both jobs posted as well as results based recruitment spend by Real Estate companies in the small business sector over the course of the past 7 months.

There will not be a better time to bring on more Real Estate Agents in the foreseeable future. Don’t miss this opportunity to have a sales force trained and ready to reap the rewards of the market trending upwards.

Full story from CNN here:

http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/23/real_estate/existing_home_sales/index.htm

Impact of Economic Stimulus felt in Finance and Professional Services

2009-11-12T22:40:59Z

CareerBuilder has surveyed and reported on the impact of the Economic Stimulus Funding for the 3rd Quarter.

Finance and Professional Services Companies reported on receiving funds and the impact they had.

Job Creation was among the impact.

http://www.careerbuilder.com/share/aboutus/pressreleasesdetail.aspx?id=pr536&sd=11/10/2009&ed=11/10/2009

Morgan Stanley Aggressively Hiring Mortgage Brokers

2009-11-12T22:26:53Z

Morgan Stanley is increasing headcount in its brokerage unit.

There is still opportunity to attract top talent. The marketplace however is rapidly becoming more competitive to engage the best people.

Full story:

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE5AB04K20091112

Increased Job Openings in the Professional and Financial Services Sector

2009-11-11T18:24:24Z

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released new hiring data and it shows that even though unemployment continues to hover around 10%, job openings are increasing in some sectors.

The Wall Street Journal today reported that “companies in sectors that tend to move in sync with the broader economy – such as manufacturing and professional services - added to their job openings for two straight months.”

Full BLS report:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/jolts.pdf

Professional Services Sector Shows Jobs Growth

2009-11-06T16:07:24Z

Professional Services industries are seeing improvement – especially in the sales driven industries.

18,000 jobs were added in October to the Professional Services sector. This means that the massive amount of talent that is available is starting to whittle away.

Now is the time to ensure your business is staffed with the best talent and is positioned to take advantage of the opportunity that is out there.

Increasing Work Loads at Insurance Companies Amplifies the Need to Have the Best People on Board

2009-11-03T16:11:21Z

The Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America released its “2009 Best Practices Study” in October. Notable in the report was that at larger agencies (revenue of over $5 million), the number of employees increased by four people on average. At agencies with revenue under $5 million, the total number of employees remained unchanged, according to the report.

“This year’s study indicates that the Best Practices Agencies, overall, continue to perform well despite facing some challenges in soft market conditions,” Madelyn Flannagan, IIABA’s vice president of agent development, education and research, said in a statement.

Although the number of employees remained steady or slightly increased, work loads at the companies surveyed increased dramatically and top producers are working harder just to maintain accounts.

In an environment in which employees are being asked to do more, it is imperative to have the best talent on board.

Here is a link to the full report.

www.independentagent.com

Branding/Targeting/Attracting – Now is the best time to get the best Insurance Agents in the door

2009-11-02T19:17:15Z

Daniel Amos, CEO of Aflac, reports that sales volume is increasing and hiring is starting to happen again.

There are Insurance Agents and Professionals on the market who are ready to come work for you. But, just as importantly, there are successful agents out there who are still employed.

Combining your efforts to advertise your employment brand, target the best people, and get your message to them is more important than ever.

One thing I see too often is a company trying to segment those 3 things – branding, targeting, and attracting – and treat them as seperate investments and even cutting out budget for one or two. The problem is, they all work together to produce the result of your company having the best employee working for you.

Address Criticism and Create New Fans

2009-11-02T19:12:08Z

In a recent Las Vegas Sun article, casinos took the spotlight on how some of them are using social media to engage the “Long Tail” of customers instead of just focusing on the big spenders.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/oct/26/saving-face-online/

What really stood out to me was the idea of addressing customer complaints publicly.

It struck me as pretty amazing that there is a tool that every company has at their disposal to actually publicize something that happens on a regular basis – addressing and rectifying a complaint by a valued customer.

Why can’t this apply to every industry and every company? If you help a customer out – no matter if they’re a whale who drives a ton of business or just an average purchaser – why not help them in a public forum?

There is always a threat of criticism when you open up a discussion board, or forum for public opinion, but when you can control the response to that criticism, you have a chance to turn a critic into a fan and let all the current and prospective customers who were looking at that complaint see that you are committed to satisfying everyone who buys from you.

Be Careful, Targeting = Disqualifying, not Qualifying

2009-11-02T19:12:08Z

According to Labor Department statistics, there are currently about 6.3 unemployed workers for every job opening in the United States, on average. To put that in perspective, there were 1.7 unemployed workers for every job opening as of December, 2007.

This is certainly good news for employers. The opportunity to find great talent hasn’t been better in a long time – at least since the last time unemployment was this high in 1982.

It is certainly easy, when faced with the overwhelming task of trying to find the best employee for your organization, to forget the simple but powerful truth that no one is better positioned than you to qualify the top candidates for your employment opportunity. The danger that comes with losing sight of that simple fact – that you are the best at qualifying and offering jobs to great people – is that you will settle for someone who is not the best, or settle for hiring one person when there are many great candidates out there.

Recognizing the difference between the two and the benefits of disqualifying, first to increase your productivity by investing less time and fewer resources into the hiring process, and then spending that time and using those resources to qualify those who have the best odds of being successful based on your expertise, is the most beneficial and simple way to get the greatest return to your company.

Disqualifying must not be mistaken for qualifying. Disqualifying candidates means focusing your search on only those with the greatest odds of being a stellar addition to your organization. Qualifying is finding the best of that group. Searching only among those with experience in your particular business, or within your geographic area often seems like an easy start to disqualifying, but is just as often a mistake since the best person might not come from that background (unless you work in a very specialized industry needing particular qualifications).

The fact remains that you probably don’t have the time or resources to look through hundreds of resumes for every opening – let alone calling and interviewing all of the candidates. Targeting is a simple solution to this dilemma. Targeting is the act of filtering out those who have an extremely low probability of being your ideal candidate. An easy example would be to disqualify those who don’t have a law degree if you are looking for a lawyer. On the other hand, a decision (which seems rationale on the surface) to disqualify those who do not work for a law firm could mean you miss out on a talented lawyer who is working for a large company in their legal department and is interested in making a change.

Targeting helps you start your search by disengaging those who aren’t qualified for your position. Great employees are everywhere – more so now than in the past 30 year – so you don’t want to miss out on them by confusing qualifying with disqualifying.

Local Online Advertising vs. Targeted Online Advertising – A Question of Relevancy

2009-11-02T19:12:08Z

Although global Internet advertising revenue dropped 5% in the first half of 2009, in its new report “2010 Outlook: Local Interactive Advertising”, Borell Associates estimates that local interactive revenue will hit $14.2 billion in 2009 and $14.9 billion in 2010 – 12% and 5% growth, respectively.

The logic behind this trend seems, on its surface, to be straightforward and simple – companies are choosing to shift their online spend, whether for marketing, recruiting, or advertising, into local avenues to target potential business partners, employees, and customers who, one would assume, would be the most relevant since they are close by (geographically).

Although this logic is not necessarily wrong, it is most certainly flawed. The problem with this logic is that it applies limitations that exist with billboard/print/radio advertising to online advertising, which doesn’t succumb to the same limitations. While a billboard must be seen by someone who happens to be within 500 feet of it, advertising online can be seen by anyone, anytime, anywhere and, perhaps more importantly, you can dictate who will view your advertisement!

Take for instance online recruitment advertising. If I am looking for a new accountant and I limit my search (in this case, the scope of my advertising reach) to local websites, I am assuming the candidate I am looking for is in Chicago (where I happen to work and live). That is a fine assumption, but it is flawed. What I am not taking into account is that the ideal candidate could be outside of Chicago but willing or even looking to move here. In other words, I am pre-limiting my results by choosing geography as a limit to the scope of my advertising.

One of the most powerful tools available via online advertising is targeting. Using data to determine how people search the internet to help you target the best people to advertise to (potential customers, employees, or business partners) allows you to not only get the best results, but usually it will also offer you overall cost savings because you are only advertising to relevant people who you want to target and therefore you won’t have to invest additional time and resources into screening, qualifying, or waiting for the right person to come along.