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Why you should care about a potential employer’s Corporate Culture
Have you ever glanced at a job description and thought it matched your skill set so perfectly that the hiring manager surely had you in mind when creating it? Only to realize at the interview that you would never, ever fit in at such a place? There is no denying that possessing the right skills and background are imperative to the position you want. But as too many people learn, allowing yourself to be seduced by great pay or benefits while ignoring warning signs about the culture can be disastrous.
Why should job-seekers care about a potential employer’s corporate culture? Aren’t there more important factors to consider, such as the job itself, salary and bonuses, and fringe benefits? These factors are important, but increasingly career experts are talking about the employee-employer “fit.” How well the employee fits the culture can make the difference between job-search success and failure. According to Leadership Coach Ron Rael, today’s applicants will base their decision to accept a position on two criteria: 1) the person that he will work for, and 2) the feel he has for the corporate culture.
Just what is corporate culture? Simply put, it’s the personality of an organization. It guides how employees think, act, and feel, and includes a company’s core values and beliefs, ethics, and rules of behavior. Culture reveals itself in many ways, both obvious and subtle. The décor of its offices, how its employees dress, and how they interact with each other are all observable clues.
Before you dismiss the corporate culture factor as insignificant, here are some tangible ways it affects you: the amount of hours you are expected to work; whether it’s a fun or hostile environment – or something in between; the dress code; the type of office space you’ll occupy (and rules regarding display of personal items); the training and development you’ll receive; the availability of onsite perks such as fitness and daycare facilities; and the interaction you’ll have with other employees, especially top management.
How do you uncover the corporate culture of a potential employer? The truth is that you will never really know the corporate culture until you have worked at the company for a number of months, but you can get close to it through research and observation. Understanding culture is a two-step process, starting with research before the interview and ending with observation at the interview.
Experts suggest arriving early to the interview — unannounced if possible — and spend the time observing how current employees interact with each other, how they are dressed, and their level of courtesy and professionalism. While it is great that firms are now using their cultures as a tool to attract and retain talent, companies must be able to substantiate their claims of a work/life balance, team atmosphere, or any other such promise.
The bottom line is that you are going to spend a lot of time in the work environment — and to be happy, successful, and productive, you’ll want to be in a place where you fit the culture. A place where you can have a voice, are respected, and have opportunities for growth.
Portions of this article have been excerpted from Dr. Randall Hansen’s website, quintessentialcareers.com. anding
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Job Searching in the Summertime
Is there a more precious time in New England? For the adventurers among us, there is a plethora of outdoor pursuits to enjoy – hiking, biking, boating – the list is endless. No doubt, all of these enticing activities will be vying for your attention this season including your job. Though you’ll continue working hard this summer, it is critical to carve out quality time to spend with family and friends. Here are some tactics you can use to ensure that you meet your commitments and make the most of this special but fleeting time of year.
- Commit to leaving the office at 5:00 pm, at least a couple of days a week. Make up the time by arriving earlier in the morning, working through lunch, or setting aside a “late day” or two. Getting home early enough to enjoy a leisurely walk or an ice cream with the kids works wonders after being inside an office or on the road all day.
- Schedule your vacation days NOW. You may not have given much thought to what you’ll be doing this summer, but before you know it, the season will be over and your plans for a lakeside getaway will have slipped through your fingertips. Planning ahead will ensure that you secure the time-off you want.
- Take advantage of any flex-time benefits your company may offer. If you’re able, take that extra half-day off or work those extra hours to get an additional Friday or Monday off. For those of you who are job hunting, that extra day may be the ideal time to schedule interviews.
Contrary to popular belief, summer job hunting does have its advantages. If you’ve set a goal to secure a better position by the end of the year, don’t put it off. A summer job hunt has its pros and can yield positive results. After, all, companies still have positions to fill. Here are some guidelines for conducting a summer job search:
- Yes, it’s true: decision makers take vacations, too. Qualify your prospects. Make contact with them early in the season to find out their vacation schedules. Work around them. As we’ve mentioned, an extra flex-day during the week might be the ideal time to set up a meeting.
- Use the lack of competition out there to your benefit. Many job hunters do suspend their searches during the summer. Capitalize on this by continuing your networking and interviewing efforts in July and August.
- Summer is a more lighthearted time of year. People are generally happier and in better spirits. Seize the day! Use your energy and attitude to secure that new job.
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10 Questions to Ask in an Interview
One of the most over looked but important parts of any interview is asking questions of the interviewer. I cannot count how many times I have received unfavorable feedback from a client that the candidate didn’t ask any questions. By asking questions you are indicating your interest in the position and that you are taking the search seriously.
Some examples of questions to ask:
- Why is this position open?
- How long have you been in your position?
- How long have you been with the company?
- What do you like/dislike about this company?
- What are the characteristics of your top performers?
- What mistakes do new hires typically make?
- What do you know now about this role that you wish you had known?
- What is the typical growth path from this role?
- What is an average sale for this role?
- What is the quota for this role?
Remember, the key to asking questions is to make sure that you write them down and bring them with you to each interview. Write down the answers that you are given to help you with any decision making. One last important point is to make sure that you ask each person that you meet the same questions. As a candidate you are looking for consistency in answers and each person you meet with wants to feel like you have prepared for their time by asking questions.
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Polite Persistance
Have you ever been to Las Vegas? If you have my guess is that you may have gone to a casino? When you went, how long did you play for? How many tables did you sit at?
Five minutes or so? You played one hand and then you were out of there?
I didn’t think so.
If you decided to gamble, than I’m pretty confident you made an evening of it at the least. You probably played several different hands at several different tables – trying your luck at a variety of different games. You did that because you wanted to win – and you understood that the probability of winning playing just one hand was slim to none.
This makes sense right? Than why do 80% of the Sales Professionals in the world quit after the first call? Another 5% quit after the second!
With the volumes of candidates looking for work, a job search in today’s market is more similar than we would like to believe to gambling in Vegas. We are all Sales People, and were trained that it is activity, numbers, and persistence that ultimately secures one’s success. So, then why aren’t we consistent? Why is ONE unreturned call suddenly a personal attack or sign of complete disregard of professionalism? Why do 80% give up?
The more you can continually think of the job search as a sales process the more successful you will be. If you are looking for a job you are ultimately, working….You are selling yourself. Last year I read an article that stated an average job search takes 6-9 months. That 6-9 months, is probably a bit longer in this market….that time is your sales cycle. Send your resume not once, but as many times as it takes to get noticed. Be creative. Make an Impact….. Persist Politely.
Remember, it is business, not personal. If companies are not getting back to you, keep trying. Hiring managers are receiving an unprecedented amount of resumes daily. Sending your resume once and expecting a call back is no different than flying to Vegas on the Red Eye, sitting down at the Craps Table, rolling the die once and expecting to leave a millionaire.
This job search may be the most important deal of your life. Don’t forget the basics. Persist politely…. 80% of your competition is flying home…
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212 Degrees: The Difference Between the Rainmaker and the Average Sales Professional
 http://www.212movie.com/
As a sales manager, one of your greatest responsibilities is to motivate your team. It is your job to build an enthusiastic and energetic environment that breeds an attitude of endurance, persistence and winning. Every sales manager has their own motivational tactics that they’ve used, but every once in a while it’s nice to have some type of collateral that speaks for itself.
A few months ago I showed a short movie to our team that got the blood flowing again. The movie is called 212 degrees and it is about the 1 degree that makes water boil. That one degree makes all the difference and for a community of sales professionals that one degree defines the difference between the rainmaker and the average sales professional. Please click this link to watch the video and share your thoughts.
Posted in Sales Advice, Treeline Videos, Comments Off
Positive Mental Attitude
I found that it is not uncommon for a candidate, a client or a vendor of Treeline to ask how is it that our team is so positive and upbeat. For many they find it refreshing to speak and work with our team and typically wonder how we all share the same consistent positive mental attitude, also known as PMA.
If you were to ask what our secret is, I would say there is no secret; just a word: “belief.” There is a common agreement in our office that we all believe in what we are doing. We have belief in each other and we all believe in making our company a great place to work.
We choose our attitude when we walk through the front door of our office everyday. We can either choose to have a great day or an awful day, but we all recognize that it is our choice. Choose to have a great day and you will. Choose to fall into a bad mood and you will have an awful day. We all have good days and bad days; but we all have the choice as to how we react to situations. It comes down to what you believe for yourself and what you deserve. You can either be a pessimist or an optimist and if you are in sales, you have only one choice if you want to be successful: optimism. Without it you will fail.
So, everyday you wake up, you should say to yourself, “today is going to be the best day of my life.” Positive affirmations may seem cliché but it works. If you believe that today will be the best day of your life, you will have the best day of your life. The same goes for negative belief – if you believe that it is going to be a bad day, you will have a bad day. What will you choose to believe in?
At Treeline, we always try to do the right thing and as a result we have built a positive team environment that is constantly changing and evolving. We strive to make our industry and company better on a daily basis. Nothing is easy but we all own our culture. We have chosen to build an incredibly positive, high energy, high output, and successful environment. We work in a great company and we all play a part in building our strong culture.
Our goal is to share our energy and ideas with you. We have become one of the largest sales communities on the internet and want to have you as part of it. If you would like to share your positive attitude and ideas with everyone in our network, please feel free to submit your articles or thoughts via our blog. Together we will build one of the most positively charged sales communities on the internet today.
“The past is history,
The future is a mystery
Today is a gift
That is why we call it the present.”
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Partnerships Ring the Register
For those of you who don’t quite understand what we do, simply put – we form partnerships.
Let me tell you about one day last week when I interviewed 3 different sales professionals. They were all great and all came from different backgrounds and all at different stages of their careers;
- Educational sales with about 5 years of experience
- Sales operations with 10 + years of experience
- Pharma representative with just under 10 years of experience
All of them very good professionals and all have success in their background. Only one of them had a well organized and presentable resume, the other 2 needed some real help to polish up the resumes. I am not afraid to write this in fear of said candidates reading my criticisms. Why?…I already told them what I think. We fixed up the information and did some cosmetic changes. They increased their marketability exponentially with those simple changes to their resumes.
We talked about what they are doing for their job search, what websites they are using, the networking strategies, appealing opportunities that they were seeking, and so on. I suggested some other sites that they should use, how to spend their time being more proactive in the search, interviews that they had been on, companies they were targeting, and so on.
We talked about how they are positioning their stories and how they speak about their backgrounds. This is a huge piece of the interview process – it is not just important to have a good story, you have to practice telling it to someone. If you can’t effectively articulate your background, who will?
After speaking with all of them, I recognized that Treeline works with opportunities that they would definitely be fits for. Why? These candidates are all willing to partner with me to assist in advancing their careers.
I feel safe in saying that all of them will be very solid assets to any team. All of them finished the conversation with a sincere ‘thank you’ and two of them even had referrals for me.
I got off the phone feeling that I added significant value to their search and I believed they felt the same way. The kicker of the whole thing is that I did not pitch one job to them. As recruiters, we make money by placing candidates in our clients’ companies. But that is not essentially what we do, we build partnerships…with everyone, and why? Because, even though we did not have any jobs to tell those candidates about today, we might find the perfect fit for them tomorrow. That is what we do at Treeline, we build partnerships and if we don’t have a job to talk about, we will give you everything we got to advance your search because we want to get you back to work.
If you want to partner with us, please join our network by clicking here. We look forward to working with you.
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Willing to Relocate
In this economy, many job seekers who have found themselves in professional and personal ruts are strongly considering, and in some cases pushing, to relocate for a new opportunity. Many candidates are throwing out the option to relocate in hopes that they’ll find their dream job in some fabulous new place where they can create a whole new life. Whether or not relocation can bring professional growth and happiness, the burning question is: will companies look at candidates looking to relocate?
In my professional experience as a recruiter, I have found that many of my clients are only interested in interviewing candidates who live in the immediate area due to logistical and cost reasons. Often times, when a candidate needs to relocate for an opportunity it’s not as easy as “I’ll start on Monday”. In order for a candidate to successfully relocate, it can take weeks or even months for them to sell their current house or break their current lease and find a new place to live. In this economy, it’s a buyers market and companies are not exactly desperate for candidates, therefore they can get the candidate they want, when they want them (within a reasonable amount of time). However, all hope is not lost for those looking to move up and move on.
I involved myself in several different management forums asking the relocation question and had a myriad of responses. To my surprise, many companies stated that they are considering and hiring relocation candidates; however the majority of the companies I spoke with stated that they would hire someone outside of the immediate area with the expectation that they would move on their own accord. At this point, companies are cannot accrue additional expenses by relocating candidates. Why? Christopher DeMaina, Director at Connexion stated that companies are hesitant to hire and pay for relocation candidates because “the fear on the client end is that the candidates need curve is high due to a decrease in available opportunities, and that if hired, the candidate will simply quit the position and move to a more desired area/location when the market picks up again.”
Relocation is not impossible by any means but if you are looking to start fresh in a different location, make sure you have a plan and perhaps choose the places you’d be willing and easily able to move. Be prepared that you may have to fight harder than local candidates for an opportunity and sell yourself to the company. If you’re looking to relocate, you need to make it happen without the expectation that the company is willing to wait or pay for your move. So get your affairs in order, identify where you’re willing to move and start interviewing. Your fresh start is around the corner, go get it.
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Summer time and the livin’s easy?
At this time of the year when the days are getting warmer and longer it is always tempting to think about taking some time off. As in, “I’m going to put the search on hold for the summer”. This always blows me away. Sure, the job market is tough but just because the weather is nice this is not the time to put things on hold. Personally, and I know I’m not alone with this, when a candidate tells me they are spending the summer at the beach I know that I am going to have a challenge taking them serious as a candidate. When football season starts and this candidate restarts their search the question that torpedoes their first couple of interviews is usually along the lines of, “So what have you been doing all summer?” When that response describes hanging out at the beach the interview for all intents and purposes is over.
While there is never a great time to be looking for a job, the summer, at least is the most palatable season. The great thing about the summer is that if you are out looking for a new job when you come to a roadblock or disappointment you can go to the beach and forget your cares for a few hours.
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The ABCs of Noncompetes in Massachusetts
By Kenneth J. Rossetti, Esq.
Whether you are a candidate for a sales position, or an employer looking to fill a sales role, you will likely become a party to a noncompetition agreement, or a “non-compete,”- particularly since such employment typically furnishes access to the employer’s intellectual property or trade secrets.
What is a “non-compete”? In basic terms, a non-compete is a written agreement whereby the employee acknowledges the employer’s intellectual property/trade secrets, and the employee agrees, in return for receiving compensation and other benefits of employment, to refrain from working for the employer’s competitors over a defined period of time, and in a defined geographic region, if the employment relationship ends for any reason.
In Massachusetts, a state rich with technology firms of all sizes and fields, non-competes are common, as companies invest significant time and money to develop products and services that differentiate themselves from their competition. Sales positions are particularly appropriate for non-competes, as sales professionals, unlike many other employees, they enjoy simultaneous access to the “two keys to the kingdom:” (1) the employer’s trade secrets and (2) the employer’s clients. While a fluid workforce is inevitable, companies nonetheless wish to minimize the potential for harm, posed by the departure of employees with access to confidential information, by requiring employees to sign non-competes, usually at the start of the parties’ relationship but sometimes after the commencement of employment (the preferred practice is to execute a non-compete at the start of employment).
Although non-competes are common in Massachusetts, non-competes will only be enforced by a Massachusetts court if they meet certain criteria. Such agreements must protect a legitimate business interest of the employer (such agreements cannot protect against ordinary competition); they must be reasonable in geographic scope; and they must be reasonable in duration (the period during which the employee must refrain from working for a competitor after the employment relationship ends). The reasonableness of geographic scope and duration are very fact-specific matters and are evaluated under numerous factors, including, but not limited to, the nature of the employee’s work and position; the employer’s products and services; the nature and location of the market in which the employer competes; the number of the employer’s competitors; and the months or years in which the departing employee is commanded to refrain from working for a competitor.
If you are a candidate for a position, be sure to disclose to your prospective employer whether you are subject to a non-compete – and if you are looking to hire someone, be sure to ask your prospective employee whether he or she is a party to a non-compete, and with whom. A candidate’s acceptance of a position with a competitor, while the candidate is bound by a non-compete with a previous employer, is problematic for both the candidate and the successor employer, who each may be subject to litigation by the candidate’s former employer.
In sum, while non-competes are realities for many sales professionals and the firms that employ them in Massachusetts, non-competes must also meet the specific parameters set forth above in order to be enforceable, and the satisfaction of those criteria turns on numerous factors, such as the market served by the employer, the nature of the employee’s position, and length of time under which the non-compete is to be enforced.
Non-competes must be carefully drafted and reviewed in order to be enforceable, and disputes regarding the enforceability of non-competes are frequently litigated, and have been the subject of contentious lawsuits in Massachusetts courts for decades. Therefore, if you are required to sign a non-compete, or if you want to ask a new hire to sign a non-compete, you should seek legal counsel, as there are significant implications for employers and employees alike.
Attorney Ken Rossetti has been a licensed attorney in Massachusetts since 1997, and his practice covers various employment-related matters, including representing employers and employees regarding the review, drafting, and litigation of non-competes. Ken welcomes your telephone calls at 781-944-4200, ext. 203, and e-mails at krossetti@BartonRossetti.com, to discuss how he may help you. Ken is not affiliated with Treeline, Inc., and this article, furnished for informational purposes only, does not constitute legal advice. Please seek legal counsel if you have questions about non-competes, or any other legal matter.
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