Nick "Ask The Headhunter" Corcodilos will be writing in this space about how chief marketers can tackle the daunting obstacles that job hunters and managers face when trying to work together. This column will feature his radical approach to winning jobs and to hiring great workers. Other topics to be explored here include managing agencies, managing career, data-driven marketing, business priorities, business challenges, jobs, compensation, hiring, recruiting, employee relations, teams, retention, human resources, interviewing, headhunters, and resumes. Be sure to check out other CMO.com sections for information about blog marketing, digital marketing resources, and digital marketing news.
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CMO.comA company makes you a job offer to run its marketing operation and includes a tasty “incentive bonus” so you’ll do a really good job. What’s not to like? The problem is that a company shouldn’t pay twice for outstanding performance. And CMOs—or any other executives—shouldn’t expect a bonus for doing a great job. The reward for doing a great job is your reputation for excellence. Why do companies even offer incentive pay? I think we can thank HR for that.
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CMO.comThe right way to get a job is to deliver value to an employer right during the job interview—value he or she can quickly recognize, taste, desire, and be willing to pay you money to deliver full time. It’s so simple that technicians in blood labs show they can do it as easily as top executives can. But what’s not often discussed is the flip side of the job interview: What happens when an employer offers you a job and you decide you don’t want it?
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CMO.comBrand Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media Marketing, Strategy, Branding and Communications, Strategic PlanningDoes your company’s content stand out as educational, or is it just more "wink-wink" ad copy? Are you really ready to make this kind of investment? Do you have any idea what good content really is, or what it costs to produce? I think CMOs have an awful lot to learn about the differences between ad copy and content. I'm not sure many have the stomach for the investment and the patience required to implement a long-term content strategy.
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CMO.comIt’s the most offensive spam in my mailbox: "I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn." I get tons of junk mail advertising one thing or another. But something distinguishes all that junk from what I receive daily from Reid Hoffman’s army of LinkedIn network-niks. Spam tells me why I should click. Sometimes I get jokes that make me laugh. Even a mercenary in the Congo offers me money. The slob who wants me to join her LinkedIn network offers nothing.
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CMO.comIf you’re hiring, the value of the nth resume you receive approaches zero because resumes are a commodity. Job boards and employers buy, sell, rent, and trade them in bulk for literally pennies apiece, if that. Nonetheless, employers encourage job hunters to submit their resumes in bulk because it seems human resources departments are judged by how many resumes (or applicants) are in their pipelines. So, why the emphasis on resumes? Here's a hint about why we get sidetracked during the hiring process.
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CMO.comWhen I do workshops for Harvard Business School, or for Cornell’s Johnson School of Management, one of my favorite parts of the presentation is talking about books that pay. That’s right: Books that make you money. I distinguish between self-help books, which I won’t read, and advice that I can put to use immediately to boost my bottom line. And my main criterion for identifying these books is simple: Does the book tell me something that I can use now to change my behavior profitably?
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CMO.comYou can “bump” phones with someone you meet to share contact information, so who needs business cards? The L.A. Times says twenty- and thirty-somethings think business cards are passe and lame—a sign that you’re not with the digital culture. But when I polled readers, all disagreed. Do you have to pry paper cards out of their cold, dead fingers? Nope—but these folks would rather just hand over a card with pride and respect. The benefits of business cards trump any notions that cards aren’t cool.
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CMO.comAnalysis and Measurement, Statistics, Brand Marketing, Web Analytics, Social Media Marketing, Emerging Media, Strategy, Online Media, Market ResearchThe hot business news item this week is about employers who demand that job applicants disclose their Facebook logons and passwords—so the employer can review their online persona. But what’s this got to do with you? You run a marketing department, and you don’t ask for anyone’s Facebook bona fides when you interview them. The social media bucks you spend help prop up Facebook’s unbridled rush to tell everything about everyone. There’s a cost, and at some point you will pay it.
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CMO.comThe most popular topic on my Ask The Headhunter blog and website is salary history. Should you disclose it to an employer? Most employers demand it, and you should decide in advance how you’re going to handle the question. My advice is don’t ever, ever divulge your past salary. It will limit any offer an employer makes to you, making salary history disclosure a chump’s game. But, after you say, “No, thanks, my salary history is private,” what do you do next to save the interview?
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CMO.comLast week I chided that, if you’re job hunting, “There’s Nothing Extreme About Your Resume.” Whether you’re sending your resume to a reader who cares more about pretty than about what you can do, or to a machine that can’t read some sections of the document, you’ve already lost the competition. You cannot tell in advance whether your resume will be read by a machine or a human. Stop here. Do you get why relying on a resume at all is a losing proposition?
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