What Recruiters REALLY want from Candidates

**Special Guest Post from Professional Recruiter Carmel Napolitano

Top 5 Job Candidate Traits I look for:

1) Quiet confidence - there is a difference between brashness
and a good sense of self. While clients in other industries may
want an overbearing personality I've never had a client ask for
that;

2)Self -Disclosure - I realize that people today are terrified
that any slip of any weakness or complicated situation can
derail their search, but if you have been a stay at home Mom, or
took a year off to care for a sick relative, or even took a year
off to travel the world you need to tell me or I may think you
are in the Federal Witness Protection program or worse that you
are hiding something;

3) Consistent Experience - For me to even follow up with someone
they need to have not been a job hopper - if you have had ten
years of two year stints that is not a good thing - unless, see
#2 - you may have been a trailing spouse, etc - you need to
explain;

4) Don't worry about anyone but yourself - It is not a good
thing for candidates to constantly ask about the competition -
how many are in the search? What is may rank in the final
group? You have to be in the search because you want the job
and not to beat out the other candidates. It is really none of
your business how many people are in the search.

5)Don't hedge your bets or try to game the process - Don't play
with the idea that you may want a new job. If you find that you
are at the point where you are going to meet with the client be
in it to get the job. I've had clients go all through the
process receive an offer and then decide to through out an
important deal breaker. If you absolutely must work from home
one day a week you need to tell the recruiter in the beginning
of the search.

Carmel Napolitano, CGN Advisory. Professional Recruiter

Carmel does retained recruiting for the nonprofit and philantropic sectors.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/carmelnapolitano

Trisha Torrey Speaking at Women Ties

Trisha Torrey and Laura Allen at Women Ties, originally uploaded by laura15secondpitch.

Went to a GREAT presentation today by author Trisha Torrey. She's created an AMAZING niche for herself. She is an patient's advocate. Her presentation today was, "You Really Are The Expert! Creating Profit from Your Experience." She was funny, engaging and had some excellent tips for the standing room only group of women entrepreneurs. Women Ties is one of my favorite local (central new york) networking groups.

If You Don't Ask, You Don't Sell

If you don’t ASK, you don’t SELL.

(And why you should DEFINTELY go to the Women Ties Retreat, if you are anywhere near upstate, New York this Thurs. October 15th)

Let’s be honest here for a moment. I decided to go speak for Women Ties in Fayetteville, NY (which is near Syracuse, NY) for two main reasons. 1.) I wanted my Mom to be able to come see me speak in all of my glory since she lives in the area and

2.) I thought Tracy Higginbotham was a firecracker when I met her one year ago at a Women Ties lunch and I decided right then and there that if she ever asked me to speak, I’d say yes. So, I did.

Then I had a few colleagues in New York ask WHY I was going. Wasn’t upstate, NY really far away? Wouldn’t it take me away from my clients? And what they were REALLY thinking, “C’mon, you’re not going to get any business up there and with times being what they are, shouldn’t you be focused right here in the Good Ol’ Big Apple, where there are PLENTY of prospects? Let me answer those in order: No, Upstate, NY is not that far away, it’s 45 minutes on JetBlue, (sure it takes longer to get TO the airport from my apartment, but still a 45 minute flight IS compelling!) Yes, it would take me away from my clients, but I had planned the trip several months in advance so all of my face-to-face clients knew I was going and I arranged to do all of my client sessions with them before I left. I could work with my phone clients over the phone, like I always did. And, No, I probably would not be getting any new clients from this event.

But I remembered what I always tell *MY* clients when I am coaching them to sell more effectively. I tell them, “If you don’t ASK, you don’t SELL.” So I stayed up late the night before my Women Ties presentation watching my Mom painstakingly print out 60 full color flyers that advertised my most popular sales coaching program. (She said she’d be happy to do this so that I could spend my time worrying about what was really important—whether I was wearing the pant suit or skirt suit the next day. I choose the pant suit, because it was kind of chilly!)

The next day I was delighted as Tracy Higginbotham announced it was a SOLD OUT event! Now, the heat was on for me to DELIVER a lot of value to this most excellent group of women. I crammed as much of my 90 minute “Create the Perfect 15SecondPitch” presentation into that 30 minutes as I possibly could!! I was truly amazed at how willing the women were to jump right up and try out their newly crafted pitches. It was an amazing day and I’m so glad that my Mom was there to see me in action. (She also got to pitch her venture, which I’m going to devote a future blog post to talking about, because it’s a BRILLIANT idea and people love it.)

At the end of the Women Ties lunch, Tracy invited me up to give a quick pitch about my services. I let everyone know about my “Professional Pitch Package” and that there was a special offer just for them and all of the information was on the flyers. Imagine my surprise and delight as not one, not two, but THREE women came up to me after my presentation and said they wanted to work with me!! AND that they would FLY OUT TO NEW YORK CITY to work with me face to face.

I have to admit, I did dance a little jig right there in front of everyone as I spoke to these three incredible women. I thought that if I had the flyers ready and the offer was compelling enough that MAYBE one or two women would say yes to working with me over the phone. Never in my wildest dreams did I think they’d want to fly out to the city to work with me in person!! AMAZING!! So, it just goes to show you, if I would not have printed those flyers out and let the women know about my special offer, I doubt I would have made any sales that day. So, if you are on the fence about going to the Women Ties retreat on Thurs. October 15^th, please allow me to gently push you off the fence and into the game. I can’t tell you for sure that you’re going to get new business at the retreat. However, I can tell you absolutely that you’ll meet amazing, inspiring, NICE professional women that you’ll want to work with. And I can tell you for certain, that you’ll never know, if you don’t go.

P.S. I’d be going to the retreat myself, however, I have client presentation that day. I’ll definitely be going to Women Ties lunches in the future when I’m visiting my Mom though!!

3 experts talk sales strategies for ANY economy!

Sales Success Strategies for EVERY Economy: Top Tips From Three Professionals

Free Teleseminar: Wednesday, Oct 7th, 12N - 1PM (EST)

Email Adrian for dial-in information amiller@adrianmiller.com

Join Laura Allen, Sydney Barrows and Adrian Miller in a fast paced, high energy program in which they delve into the good, the bad and the ugly of sales and customer experience.

Laura, Sydney and Adrian are experienced speakers, authors and trainers with a range of hands-on experience and practical information that will help you to transform your business development, client retention AND your bottom line.

This one-hour program will include time for your questions and thoughts.

Be prepared to come away with:

--Actionable tactics to help you sell more successfully

--Learn the 4 key steps to creating a clear, concise and compelling 15SecondPitch

Having a great 15SecondPitch can help you prospect more effectively. Whether you are making new connections face to face, online or over the phone, it’s important to be able to explain, who you are and what you do. If you don’t grab their attention in the first 15 seconds, you’ll lose them for good.

--Best of class practices to build your business in a way that enables you to stand apart from the competition. Consumers are weary of generic buying experiences and more and more are seeking to have a meaningful, memorable, fun, interesting and/or exciting Experience during the selection and buying process. Prospects and customers are hoping to have an EXPERIENCE that makes them feel pleased about making the purchase AND makes them feel good about making the purchase from YOU!

--Cost-effective and time efficient touch point management so that you can always stay on the grid. Let's face it, you spend a lot of time networking and developing leads and prospects. If you don't stay on the grid through what might be a lengthy sales cycle, you cannot recognize any ROI from your selling efforts.

Use your 15SecondPitch to get a job!!

I was interviewed by reporter Asa Aarons earlier in the week about how to use your 15SecondPitch to land a great job! You can see the interview here on the NY1 website:

http://tinyurl.com/NY1Asa

Penelope Trunk

Penelope Trunk, originally uploaded by laura15secondpitch.

Was great to see Penelope Trunk speak at the 2009 Sales & Marketing Symposium. I have to admit, her talk did give me a little bit of heartburn though. Seems that Gen Y workers don't want to do crap jobs, will simply move home with their (loving) parents if they don't like what they are doing and are constantly in need of being part of a TEAM.

As a Gen X-er who couldn't wait to move out on my own, would do the crappiest jobs that I needed to do to pay the rent and used to have the motto, "I'm not here to make friends, I'm here to get the job done." This was a bit hard for me to understand. But I'm meditating right now and pondering the MASSIVE generation gap that exists between me and Gen Y.

Why I LOVE what I do! People send me cookies!!

Today I got the most LOVELY gift from one of my clients. Cookies from ONE GIRL COOKIES! They were packaged so beautifully, I didn't want to open it!! HOWEVER, there were COOKIES inside, so I had to open it! And yes, they are just as delicious as they look! Thanks, Judi!!

You can't discount your way to prosperity

This was the sign I saw in a handbag store today on trendy 57th st. in NYC. It makes me wonder what this shop will do NEXT WEEK as a way to encourage women to come in and buy. (They'd have to GIVE THEM AWAY as you can't discount any more than 90% and still make a profit. And if you can, your purses are marked up far to high to begin with!) As you can see, the shop owner was watching me take this photo--in her EMPTY store. This is while large clusters of tourists walked up and down the street and shopped all the other stores. The 90% off is clearly not bringing customers in.