Tom's Talent Blog

We're excited to announce our new partnership with Moore Essentials to help you find prospects and candidates from the 2 BILLION people on Facebook.  We have dozens of training sessions on staffing sales and recruiting, focusing mostly on sourcing through LinkedIn. Now the experts at Moore Essentials can show you how to source from Facebook!

At the end of June, the national unemployment rate was 4% and every business owner I spoke with was in a talent crunch.

There are few industries today that aren’t experiencing a significant talent shortage. Additionally, every leader I met with struggled with some lack of accountability in their organization among current employees.

It creates an interesting conundrum that is keeping many a business owner awake at night…

What do you do when you can’t find quality talent? How can you hold existing talent accountable without losing them to greener pastures?

You might think it odd that a company that sells training is telling you not to train.  Although training is extremely useful in onboarding and development, it is not always the answer to underperformance.  Unfortunately, I’ve seen managers waste time and money on training that is not going to fix the problem.  What do you do when you have an underperformer?  How do you know when training is NOT the answer?

One of the most pressing topics being discussed in current recruiting circles is the big concern around the legislation barring employers (and yes, recruiters) from asking candidates about their salary history or benefits. From industry conference presentations to Facebook group discussions, this legislation has staffing and recruiting professionals highly concerned about the impact it will have on our ability to do our jobs. Should recruiters and managers be concerned about this legislation?

Why did I write a book?  Because, sales is harder now than ever before.  Your prospects aren't answering the phone or calling you back, there is more competition than ever, and you just seem to be running up against one brick wall after another.  In this 100-page quick read, I explain why sales has become increasingly more difficult, the key mistakes that most staffing sales reps are making, and details a systematic sales process that is proven to get more appointments and land more new business in the staffing industry.

...for recruiters and clients.

Why do people get married? While there are a variety reasons, ranging from religious to legal rights to “that’s just what you do,” the main reason is commitment. Marriage is both a tradition and a legal contract that binds both parties to a higher level of obligation. It shows that everyone is vested in the relationship. Sure, you can break this commitment, as many do, but it’s not easy, and it sure is a lot harder than just breaking up with someone you are dating.

Learn another way to sell to prospective clients in the staffing industry.

Every Saturday morning, our six-year-old son comes crashing into our room with the same earnest request; “Daddy, can we play games on the TV together?” Since the time he was able to hold a controller in his hands, Brady and I have spent part of Saturday morning playing video games together. It's become a ritual that is a reward for him, and a fun way for us to spend some dedicated time together.

I just received at least the 10^th email this week from a different sales rep trying to sell me prospect leads – and its Tuesday. Now as a sales professional, trainer, and coach, I tend to probably be at the same time more critical and more sympathetic to sales reps trying to do their job. I’m critical in that I dissect their message and approach more than most. But I also feel sorry for many of them because I can tell by their email that they are either new, untrained, or misguided. And when I talk to sales reps about their sales activities, most sheepishly admit that they know what they are doing isn’t working, but just don’t know what else to do. Unfortunately many of the sales activities that we utilize cause more harm than good, labeling us as “salesy” and irritating the prospect.

There have been numerous posts on industry forums from staffing executives and owners about the new Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) salary levels.  The new overtime rule takes effect on December 1^st of this year (https://www.dol.gov/WHD/overtime/final2016/).  Many executives are still planning for this significant change to how exemption from overtime is effected by the new salary levels.  Many firms will need to either change employees’ status to non-exempt, which means paying overtime for hours over 40 in workweek; or, increase exempt employees to the $47,476 annually.  One post noted that that their firms’ recruiters make ~$40,000 annual in salary and are exempt from overtime pay. The post proposed changing the recruiters to salary, non-exempt with a 60-hour workweek. It asked if any other firm was taking this approach.