CareerPlug » Hiring Practices

Engage Me With Your Soft Skills

Hillary — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:44:07 +0000

Whether a recruiter or a job-seeker, it may be helpful to be reminded every now and then that soft skills are an important component to a well-rounded candidate. A recent article in SI Review reported that strong work ethic is the most sought-after soft skill, according to the respondents of an Express Employment Professionals survey.

Here’s a recap of the soft skills cited in the survey and how respondents ranked them by importance:

Strong work ethic – 23%
Positive attitude – 17%
Communication – 11%
Being a team-player -10%
Flexibility – 9%
Being a problem solver -7%
Being self-directed – 5%
Working well under pressure – 5%
Being a quick learner – 4%
Organizational skills – 3%
Creativity – 1%

Soft skills are also known as transferable skills and employers are always looking out for valuable examples of those that transfer most directly to their open position. A resume should pinpoint a few (1-3) specific soft skills and how they have been applied in a current position. Substantiating them with strong examples will add more credibility and engage a hiring manager. A resume with a laundry list of soft-skills can have the opposite effect. Hiring managers will learn more about your soft skills during the interview, so on a resume be sure to highlight only those most relevant to the open position, don’t build a generic list. For more examples of how you can infuse valuable soft skills in to your resume, check out these tips from Executive Resume Writer, Laura Smith-Proulx.

Hiring Sales Pros: Tips for Selecting the Right Candidate

Hillary — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:53:13 +0000

Is there a formula to success when hiring the top sales talent for your organization? That’s a question I wanted an answer to, and in my quest to find the answer I ran across several incredibly helpful tips from hiring managers, sales recruiters, business development professionals, and sales management experts.

The short answer is, as you may have guessed, that there is no fix-all formula for a guaranteed successful hire, but there were several points made across the board I found insightful and worth mention. Sales professionals are programmed to sell and if you want to be able to differentiate the sales pitch from the candidates true value, read on…

Is Your Employee Referral Program Really a Success?

Hillary — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:32:04 +0000

Take another look…

Employee referral programs (ERP’s) are consistently used by many major corporations and it’s not uncommon to hear that upwards of 70% of new hires can be attributed to a company’s referral program. However, successes like these are all derived from an extremely well designed ERP, and a very small percentage of companies actually have it down.

The proclaimed success of ERP’s are based on the simple and statistically accurate conclusion that the new hires are normally quality, often a strong cultural match and tend to represent a low margin of early departure. What’s wrong with that, right? If a referral has the required skill set and fits well with the company culture, then where’s the pitfall?

Well, there is a potentially unforeseen factor to take into consideration the next time you resort to your ERP for a new hire. It’s an effect in the HR world know as “employee inbreeding” and