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    • You Don’t Care Enough

    June 8, 2014

    Here at A Sales Guy we’re experiencing the oddest phenomenon. It has caught us completely by surprise and we’re really not sure what to make of it. We’ve been hiring a lot at A Sales Guy, for both our clients and ourselves.  When we hire for ourselves, we take a very different tact to find talent. In our job postings we specifically ask applicants NOT send a resume. We don’t want some boring piece of paper outlining their accomplishments. We don’t want them wasting their time on it and we don’t want go through them. We can learn everything we need to determine if we want to interview someone from their social profile and LinkedIn.

    At A Sales Guy we want to know who people are and how they operate. Getting past the paper and to the person is most important to us. To accomplish this and get to the heart of the matter we ask applicants to do something different and we put the following in our job postings;

    NO RESUMES!!! We ain’t your typical recruiting firm. Read and if this is you then follow the directions at the end of job description or just move on — just sayin’.

    This is the very first sentence in the job description. This is followed up with the job we’re hiring for, the goals and objectives we’re trying to accomplish, the skills and expectations and then this;

    If this is you, hit us up with your online presence at badass@asalesguy.com 

    NO RESUMES!!! Send us links to your entire social presence: LinkedIn, Twitter, Blog, GooglePlus, Facebook etc. with a brief description on why you’re a badass recruiter/sales person.

    I learned this approach from Fred Wilson and I love it. We learn so much about people through their social presence AND their description of why they think they would be good in the job. We give people an opportunity to sell themselves.  It’s the ultimate environment for a sales person looking for a job. We’re begging them to engage us.

    Here’s what’s funny. In our most recent search we’ve received 37 applications. Of those, only TWO (2), yes just 2 fucking people followed the directions — that’s it!  Two people out of 37 did what we asked. We’ve taken this approach for every hire we’ve made and the results are almost ALWAYS the same. A fraction of the people who apply actually follow the instructions. We get inundated with submissions where the candidate simply hits reply in LinkedIn and attach their resume completely ignoring the directions.

    Just recently, I called one of the applicants to figure this phenomenon out myself.  What was he thinking. Why didn’t he do as asked? His LinkedIn profile suggested he was a fairly savvy guy and a successful professional. I thought, there has to be a logical explanation. I asked him why he didn’t follow the directions. His answer astounded me;

    “I didn’t read the entire job posting, I just quickly scanned it and applied.”

    Are you fucking kidding me? This is how people apply for jobs today? This is the pool of applicants we get to choose from? Unbelievable!

    You can’t catch this shit from an applicant’s resume and that’s why we do it this way. We’ve hired one person who didn’t follow the directions and she lasted less than a week. It was a terrible hire and I blame myself for not sticking to my guns. We put this process in for a reason. It works. Deviating from it was a mistake.

    I’m not sure what to take from this. I know that 4 job listings and 100’s of applications isn’t statistically accurate, but it’s not irrelevant either. Less than 10 people from the 100’s of applications we’ve received actually followed the directions and applied as requested. Our data is telling us that people don’t care enough to read the directions, to understand what they are applying for and to put in the effort. Like fast food, they want all the benefits without the work and that my friend does not make for a good employee and I certainly NOT an A Sales Guy employee.

    At A Sales Guy we hire only bad asses. People that have more talent, drive, attitude, gumption, work ethic, brains and ability to have fun than anyone else. Our bet is those are the people who actually follow directions.

    It doesn’t matter how good you “think” you are. If you can’t, don’t, or won’t follow the directions in a job description. You’re not good — period!

    Care enough to follow directions.

    Keenan