If you are a leader, you might look at this list to shore up any liabilities you might have that prevent you from helping your team put up their best results. You might also look at this list and measure whether you are doing enough to develop in some areas you need to improve.

Integrity: Integrity is something more than being honest. It’s more like possessing high moral character and a set of principles that guide your actions. In part, your integrity is what provides you with the moral authority to lead others. Leaders who lack integrity may occupy a leadership role, but they will find it impossibly difficult to lead others, especially when it comes to what is good, right, and true.

Caring: The order in which you look at these character traits matters a great deal. After integrity, caring is second on the list. A leader has to care about building the future and results, but she also has to care about the people in her charge. There are no great leaders who don’t care deeply about their people. The best leaders care enough to truly know their people, allowing them to improve personally and professionally.

Growth-Oriented: There is a difference between a manager and a leader. One of the primary differences is growth-orientation. A leader will insist that the people in his charge grow, becoming a better version of themselves, while also growing their business and pursuing their vision.

Accountability: Leaders are accountable for future results. They own the outcomes they are responsible for delivering, and they hold others accountable for their contribution to those results. The order of importance here is critical. Without caring and helping others grow, accountability becomes much more difficult.

Credible: You have to look and act like a leader to be successful, but you also have to know what you are talking about. This character trait is, in part, how you carry yourself, but it is also your knowledge and ability to help others produce results.

Without credibility, you make it less likely that your team will follow.

Optimism: If there is a more difficult role than a sales leader, I am uncertain of what it might be. The challenges of leading growth are many. A leader must be positive, optimistic, future-oriented, empowered, and empowering. In an endeavor where there are wins and losses, keeping people moving towards the future requires a strong sense of optimism. When a leader is pessimistic, they will project that bias to those in their charge.

Decisive: One of the skills required of leaders is making good decisions. While making the right decision is important to growth, making decisions quickly and effectively is equally important. Recognizing that problems don’t age well and making decisions to remove them is good leadership.

Intelligence: Leadership is difficult, in large part, because it requires thinking strategically, envisioning the future, and making decisions, often without the information or certainty of an outcome. Even though reading is out of fashion, the best and most effective leaders have always read and studied their craft, history, and other leaders to improve their leadership intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence: Who you are matters, and how you lead matters. You can possess all of the attributes, but putting them to use as a leader requires that you also possess emotional intelligence. The results that you produce as a leader are generated by others, making these “others,” your primary concern. The greater your emotional intelligence, the better your leadership. This is not to say that you must avoid difficult conversations or lower your standards, but that how you do these things matters.

Candor: Candor is one part honesty, one part integrity, and one part frankness when it comes to communication. There is a benefit to leaders who deal with things directly and refuse to allow things to slide when they need to be addressed. That benefit is providing predictability when it comes to your expectations and the speed at which you can change beliefs and behaviors, but only if you possess many of the attributes on this list.

Teacher: Great leaders are teachers, which is nowhere more true than when it comes to sales leadership. Leaders teach the individuals they are responsible for, how to think, what to do, and how to do it. By teaching, they help others grow their competence and confidence, the foundation for growth and improvement over time.

Exemplar: A leader is an example, a model for others. On a flight one day, I sat next to a senior sales leader who told me when hiring sales managers to lead his very large team, he looked for people who were “crisp,” an idea that suggested that they were buttoned up, sharp, smart, and put together. He wanted his team to serve as an example for those they lead, refusing people who weren’t already successful in other areas of their life.

Any list like this is aspirational. Being competent in all of the attributes listed here is a lifetime of work on your personal and professional development. The first way you improve as a leader is by recognizing the areas where you need to improve and eliminating beliefs and behaviors that are liabilities.

Starting a new job remotely comes with a few challenges. You won’t be able to meet your manager or colleagues in person, and those relationships will feel different with everyone separated by screens rather than offices. The onboarding process will be more hands-off and much of your work will be self guided. You’ll have to take on more responsibility to get your bearings and get settled. Even though you’re working alone, you aren’t on your own. Your coworkers and manager are still there, just not directly.

To hit the ground running with a new remote job, here’s what you need to do.

Meet your manager and coworkers.

It’s incredibly important to build a relationship with your manager and coworkers from day one when working remotely. In an office, you have the luxury of casually chatting with people and more organically building relationships. With remote work, it has to be much more intentional due to the lack of face to face contact between people. Most of your contact will be solely focused on work rather than also including casual interactions that would happen in an office.

Consider sending out a quick ‘hello’ email as an introduction to everyone on the team, and let your coworkers know you’d be happy to chat to get to know them better. You could even suggest a Zoom happy hour or other informal video get-together after work hours to meet each other.

Set up a video call with your manager.

Hopefully, a video call with your manager will be part of the onboarding process, but if it’s not, you should absolutely reach out to your manager and request it. This allows you to both meet virtually face to face and get to know each other. It’s much easier to build a relationship when both people can see each other and put a face to the name.

Ask more questions.

When in doubt, ask questions. Rather than trying to figure things out on your own, ask someone for help. Remote work is new for most of the workforce, so chances are that someone else also had the same questions as you when they started. Save yourself some trouble and just ask – there’s no harm in asking questions, and it won’t make you look like you don’t know what you’re doing. In fact, asking questions to get yourself situated might actually make you look better in your manager’s eyes. It shows that you’re engaging in your new role and taking responsibility for your development.

Identify your go-to person for questions.

In an office, your go-to person for questions would typically be someone who works nearby. When your job is fully remote, your go-to person should be someone you’ll be working closely with who’s in the same time zone as you. Find someone on your team who you can quickly build a virtual connection with, and ask them if you can reach out when you have questions, especially in your first few weeks.

Establish the best way to get in touch with each other to ensure that there aren’t any big delays in communication. That can be by email, messenger, text, or even phone calls. Be flexible with how you communicate – if the other person has a strong preference for one method, it’s easiest to use that. Remember that they’re helping you, so it’s best to be accommodating.

Learn how your team communicates.

The best way to ensure your first few weeks of remote work will go smoothly is to ensure that you understand how people will be communicating. It’s important to know how important information will be sent out, what the expectations are for conference calls, and if email, Slack, text, or phone calls are the norm for simple communication. The only way to find out which methods of communication are used is to ask, so be sure that this is something that’s covered during your first few days.

Pay attention to how your team communicates. What’s the tone of the emails from your manager and between coworkers? When people are chatting on Slack or on Zoom, how formal are they keeping the conversation? Do people tend to email or Slack more often? What’s the policy on texting? Most of the questions can be answered simply by observing the way people communicate. If you’re still unclear, ask! It’s also worth asking your new colleagues what methods of communication they use and how things work, as the official ways aren’t always followed.

Set up your workspace.

If this is your first time working remotely, get your workspace set up so that you’re ready to go on day one. It can be tempting to work from the couch, but that isn’t going to help your productivity nor put you in the right frame of mind for working.

Ensure that you have a desk with a comfortable chair as well as any tech that you need. If your company will be providing you with a laptop or work accessories, get those set up the night before you start. This way you can focus solely on the onboarding process on your first day. The same goes for installing any necessary software on your existing computer, you’ll want to get it up and running before your first day so you don’t have to worry about it.

4 reasons you feel alone:

#1. You feel alone because you are alone.

Zoom meetings can’t replace skin. You’re going to die much sooner if you aren’t nourished with human contact.

I’m not encouraging you to touch everyone. I am encouraging you to respect the power of in-person contact, handshakes, and physical pats on the back.

#2. You feel alone because people don’t understand you.

No one thinks about your organization like leaders.

Perhaps it’s time to practice selective vulnerability and let yourself be seen.

#3. You isolate yourself.

When you’re a leader, getting away from people feels like a hog finding slop.

Quiet reflection produces vitality. Seclusion – as a habit of life – perverts thinking. “When people are isolated from human contact, their mind can do some truly bizarre things.” Michael Bond.

#4. You’re a control freak.

You don’t accept people for who they are. Eventually people avoid unnecessary contact with you.

5 ways to deal with leadership loneliness:

You are wired to connect.

Connected leaders feel stronger, more fulfilled, and make better decisions.

#1. Go for a walk.

Movement makes connecting more comfortable. Have walking one-on-ones.

#2. Turn smartphones off during face-to-face interaction.

#3. Be your true self and help others be their true selves.

#4. Don’t allow technology to replace in-person interactions.

#5. Chat with cashiers and other strangers.

#6. Find energizing ways to contribute.

The formula for unhappiness is simple. Expect people to serve you.

#7. Monitor inner chatter.

The most dangerous thoughts are the ones you repeatedly have but don’t notice. Habits of thought impact quality of life.

Speak to yourself as if you were speaking to a friend.

Although the words “diversity” and “inclusion” have become nearly inseparable in our collective jargon, when it comes to measuring impact or creating initiatives, the vast majority of our attention falls upon diversity.

The main reason for this, as I have argued in an earlier blog, is that diversity is very easy to measure and quantify, whereas inclusion is difficult to define, let alone measure. My colleagues and I have developed a way of defining inclusion that makes it measurable, and we have argued that focusing on inclusion overcomes some of the negative aspects of focusing on diversity.

What I want to emphasize in this blog is that, although diversity is clearly linked to company performance, inclusion in some ways is more fundamental, as it can increase both the level diversity and the performance of a company.

Intuitively, it makes sense that inclusion would influence diversity. We can make a stronger statement, namely, that inclusion is a requirement to establish or grow diversity: if a company fails to be inclusive toward employees, especially those whose characteristics differ from the characteristics of majority employees, the company will find it hard both to recruit and to retain a diverse workforce. On the other hand, if a company has a strong reputation of being inclusive, it’s more likely that someone from a different background will be willing to start working there, even if the company is fairly homogeneous.

Of course, regardless of how inclusive a company may be, increasing its level of diversity is unlikely to happen if the company is completely homogeneous and if it does not actively recruit candidates from outside of its own network. Also, if a company is completely homogeneous, it is less likely that its leaders and employees will be truly inclusive to everyone.

The situation with diversity is different. As the previous sentence would suggest, having some diversity seems like an important ingredient to foster an inclusive culture. However, simply increasing diversity by recruiting candidates from a range of backgrounds will not, by itself, guarantee an increase in the level of inclusion. This is especially true when organizations “hire for diversity” primarily at entry level, because in almost every organization, the overall attitude toward inclusion is set from the top. In fact, what many companies have found out is that trying to increase diversity by hiring for diversity at the entry level often backfires, leading to internal strife and high churn rates, as the new employees face incidents that cause them to leave.

Hiring for diversity is much more likely to have impact if it is done at senior levels, and if it’s done systematically and on a broad scale: it needs to be done at senior levels because leaders who themselves understand what it’s like to feel excluded in a company will be able to guide their peers toward creating a more inclusive culture that will benefit all employees; and it needs to be done on a broad scale, because hiring only one or two non-majority individuals into a predominantly white and male leadership will unavoidably place enormous stress on these people, and is less likely to generate the level of consensus that will drive real change. It is for this reason, for example, that the D&I company Diversity Lab established the Mansfield Rule, which suggests that law firms consider at least 30 percent women, attorneys of color, LGBTQ+ and lawyers with disabilities for senior positions.

Hence we see the asymmetry between diversity and inclusion: hiring for diversity without first creating an inclusive environment is much less likely to succeed than fostering a culture of inclusion before hiring for diversity.

There is also an asymmetry in the way that diversity and inclusion impact the performance of a company. Before explaining this, I need to make a clarification. There is ample data that, on a statistical level, companies with greater diversity outperform companies with less diversity. For instance, Lorenzo and Reeves found that companies with above-average diversity also have higher innovation revenues, while McKinsey found that executive gender and ethnic diversity correlate with profitability. However, a statistical correlation does not imply causality. Put in plain language, the fact that two variables – in this case, the level of diversity and the financial performance of the company – are correlated, does not mean that one caused the other. The correlation could go in the other direction (i.e., it could be argued that having greater revenues or greater profitability encourages companies to hire more diverse teams), or there could be a third variable that is causing an increase in both variables. In this case, I believe that inclusion is that third variable.

America has a hiring problem. National unemployment has ascended to levels not seen since the Great Depression and anti-Black racism has once again forced itself to the forefront of national conversation. Businesses are struggling to perform corporate social responsibility in the age of social media, and tough questions are being asked of executive teams. Chief among them? “How can our company show support to the Black community?”

Donations and public confirmations of allyship seem like simple solutions to complex problems. They can also fall flat, calling more attention to discriminatory hiring practices. An independent study by The Plug showed that of over 50 companies that released statements of support for the Black community in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, those same companies averaged a 6% Black workforce. 

How can your company show support? You can start to actually hire Black people (and other people of color). Here’s how:

1. Stop relying on referrals 

While employee referrals can be a quick and collaborative way to bring talent into an organization, they’ll also ensure a homogeneous team. Despite well-meaning legislation borne of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, the majority of US neighborhoods and school systems remain racially segregated. This naturally extends to the average American’s social network; men are more likely to refer men, and whites are more likely to refer whites.

2. Focus on competency-based interviewing 

As a recruiter, I’m used to soliciting, aggregating, and analyzing interview feedback. An efficient interview process frames each stage as an opportunity to drill into specific competencies (like the ones found on Lominger’s list), rather than on soft skills or nebulous ideas of “culture fit.” It’s important to remove the personal aspect from an interview, which is meant to be about skill, experience, and motivation. Just say no to feedback that comes in the form of statements like “I wouldn’t want to get a drink with this person.” What does that actually mean?

3. Un-cliché your job descriptions 

Are you still looking for rockstars, ninjas, gurus, and purple squirrels? You shouldn’t be. In 2020, the language we use to talk about work has evolved. We’re asking candidates their pronouns, not whether or not they’re ready to “work hard, play hard.” Studies have shown the effects of biased language in job descriptions — they deter marginalized groups from clicking “Submit Application.”

4. Expand your horizons 

Does your ideal candidate have a degree from an Ivy League institution? Why is that? Even though companies like Google and Apple have eliminated degree requirements from their job descriptions, others still cling to increasingly antiquated ideas of “qualification.” My college degree says very little about my ability to recruit talent and more about the level of access to higher education I was granted as a result of privilege. Let’s stop prioritizing privilege as a determinant of job readiness.

5. Walk the walk 

Unfortunately, not every company has a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) team fully staffed and empowered to drive organizational change. However, there are other ways to publicize a commitment to diversity and inclusivity. Blog posts, diversity statements, and published internal employee demographic information can go a long way in attracting the candidates who have historically been made to feel they didn’t belong.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution that solves hiring discrimination, or an organizational role model to look to for the most effective best practices. On the ground, DEI practitioners are crafting initiatives to serve populations left heretofore unserved, working to answer questions that have never been asked. I cannot guarantee the steps outlined above will magically make your organization equitable, but at a time where over 40 million Americans are unemployed and Black unemployment hovers above 50%, action speaks louder than PR. Companies who fail to address these cultural deficits will lose the war for talent that’s only becoming more competitive.

My first tour of duty as a VP of sales coincided with the onset of the 2001 recession. Often referred to as the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the recession worsened after the 9/11 attacks, and while the economy technically recovered in the fourth quarter of that year, unemployment continued to climb. My firm had recently been acquired by a holding company with high expectations for growth — growth that at that time seemed impossible. I was scared. Scared about the future. Scared of failing. Scared about losing my job.

The Covid-19 situation is creating an economic crisis, and many executives feel the same sense of fear and dread I experienced in 2001. Powerful emotions often lead to poor decisions and practices when it comes to leadership of the sales organization. What works in times of economic expansion isn’t what is needed in a challenging economic environment. And since somewhere between one-fourth and one-half of sales professionals in American companies have never had to sell during an economic downturn, few companies can lean on their sales team’s experience to get them through. It’s not about doing more — it’s about doing things differently.

Fortunately, the firm I worked for was founded by sales effectiveness guru Neil Rackham, who was still involved with the business. He shared a few principles from his research on economic downturns in the 1980s that helped our management team lead effectively through the 2001 crisis. Since then, I’ve applied these principles with my clients as they faced the challenge of driving growth in difficult circumstances:

Resist the urge to increase sales call activity.

When leaders are scared, they frequently turn up the volume on sales activity. The logic is that more calls with customers will equal more sales. In some cases, when you have an inexpensive product and sales cycles are quick, this can be true. But if you have a more sophisticated offering that needs to be sold as a solution or using a consultative approach, increasing calls may backfire. During the 2008 recession, I worked with a reseller of IT products and services that had implemented a major push to increase activity. The number of orders placed increased by over 11%, but their total revenue declined by 6%. As their sellers chased any business they could close, the average account potential shrunk, and order size declined.

Instead of pushing increased sales activity, rigorously drive your strategy through the sales organization. Make sure your sales team is going after your optimal target client, in terms of scope, budget, the value of your offerings, and other factors that define a successful client for your company. Channel all your efforts into a limited number of exceptional opportunities in the pipeline. A bad prospect never makes for a good client, and under pressure, sales professionals can be loath to let go of any opportunity that reflects even a little interest. Rather than chasing low-hanging fruit with minimal prospects, focus your sales team on filtering and actively pursuing only qualified opportunities at a scale that reflects high value solutions. Eliminate activity for the sake of busy-ness.

Eliminate low-value reporting requirements.

Fear also manifests itself in additional and sometimes excessive reporting requirements. When leaders constantly ask for more information about what is happening, what they really want is control often over a situation that feels frighteningly chaotic. When it comes to the sales organization, that control is illusory and often counterproductive. Instituting a new set of metrics to keep tabs on what’s happening or increasing the reporting cadence of the forecasting process often has the unintended side effect of grinding revenue-generating activity to a halt. Between gathering the data, plus multiple levels of review and revision, companies massively increase internally-focused time, leaving less time and energy for the work of selling and effective sales management. The focus shifts from improving sales effectiveness to inspecting sales effectiveness, which has low value for your bottom line.

Instead, maintain a strong dashboard of leading indicators that provide predictive measures of success at each stage of the sales process. A few leading indicators will go a long way, such as: new opportunities at each stage, the value of opportunities at each stage, and the volume of opportunities progressing from each stage to the next. Be honest with yourself about how often you need progress reports and don’t slow the journey down by stopping to check the fluid levels on the car every 20 miles. During my first stint as a sales VP, the new parent company insisted on copious sales reporting. We did grow during that time, but I know that unproductive reporting limited our effectiveness as we focused on moving numbers around on spreadsheets instead of executing on sales efforts that could have increased profits.

Focus on the early stages of the pipeline rather than obsessing over late-stage negotiations.

Leaders who are anxious about revenue naturally focus on late stages of the pipeline, or what many smaller firms call “close to cash.” After all, when you’re struggling to survive, it makes sense to do everything possible to get business in the door. Unfortunately, focusing on the late stages of the sales cycle, where a decision is already imminent, can have a double-whammy effect. First, it rarely has a significant impact on your bottom line since the deliverables, terms, and pricing are already on the table. An exception here or there may help get a deal finalized, but it’s often too late to make changes of real value. Leaders simply will not get a great return on time spent here. Further, your customer’s typically negative responses to extra pressure are heightened during challenging times.

What is sales performance? It’s the measurement of sales activity and corresponding results compared to the sales expectations and quota. Good sales performance is highly valued but it can also be elusive to achieve for many salespeople and organizations.

The key to good sales performance is consistency. Anyone can have a good sales month, but a high-performing salesperson and sales team can meet or exceed expectations for an extended period of time through different sets of economic circumstances and competitive situations.

First, let’s discuss ways sales reps can improve their individual performance.

How to Improve Your Sales Performance

1. Start with the right mindset.

Your mindset as you approach a deal can greatly impact the final outcome. If you don’t think you will be successful, you will be right. It usually takes several years to become a high achiever with consistent sales performance. If you aren’t there yet, try creating an annual vision board.

A vision board is where you assemble pictures and phrases of what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it. It helps you remember the why of your sales career when you run into the inevitable pothole, and is a powerful exercise for visualizing success.

2. Improve your business acumen with an emphasis on your vertical market.

Business acumen, or the level of understanding you have in regards to how a business runs, gives you credibility and trust when you are positioning your product or services. When you’re looking to improve your sales performance, strengthening your business acumen (specifically in the vertical market you are selling in) is critical.

HubSpot Sales Manager Mintis Hankerson says:

"You need to understand your customer's business before you even reach out to them or draft the first email. As a sales rep the key to success is to understand how your prospect is approaching their buying process, what their intentions are, and how you can accommodate and fit into that."

You can take small steps to improve your business acumen each day. Try reading credible business publications, or digging into relevant financial reports for deeper understanding.

3. Get organized.

One of the biggest factors in sales performance is ensuring you are focused on the right task at the right time. Chances are if you don’t allocate time to complete work (such as putting it on your calendar) it’s unlikely to happen.

If organization isn’t your strong suit, get help quickly. Ask an organized team member to walk you through their workflow to give you some ideas.If you are spending mental capacity trying to juggle too many priorities, it's hard to focus on your prospects, which can hinder your overall performance.

4. Review all pertinent data for your role and position.

Most salespeople are assigned a sales quota and activity metrics that will help them achieve that quota. Some organizations publish these numbers so salespeople can compare their results with high performers.

Reading the data and incorporating it into daily activity is key. HubSpot Sales Manager Tiki Biswal offers this advice:

"Understand what your ‘sales macros’ are. Most people are familiar with macros, or macronutrients, in the context of healthy eating. In that instance, you track how many carbs, proteins, and fats you eat to better understand what you’re consuming and help you reach your goals. This same thought process applies to sales.

Think of your metrics and KPIs as your macros. If you don’t understand what metrics or KPIs you need to overachieve, then you’ll have a hard time gauging your performance. The metrics you need to hit could be vastly different than the other reps on your team.

I once had a rep on my team that was ‘doing everything right’ but still missing her quota. We pulled some data and noticed that her discount percentage was 15% higher than everyone else on the team. After some coaching on negotiation and closing, she was able to steadily increase her Average Sales Price."

Understand that your personal definition of success may be different than that of your peers. This is why knowing where you stand according to metrics that are most relevant for you is important information for improving your performance as a sales professional.

5. Set concrete goals above and beyond basic job expectations.

Most salespeople want to overachieve their quota, so setting personal goals that exceed quota expectations provides a bit of wiggle room. If your goals are not written down they are not goals, they are dreams.

Defining what you would like to achieve, how you would like to achieve it, and then sharing this information with your managers and team members can help keep you accountable.

6. Build a personal development plan.

The great part about a sales career is that there is a lot to learn at every stage. The best way to accelerate your development is to create a personal development plan that defines what skills you want to improve within a specific amount of time.

I suggest picking one or two specific skills to focus on each month and documenting the steps you take to show improvement over time.

7. Find a sales coach or mentor.

Having a sales coach or confidant outside of your organization can provide valuable perspective. An experienced sales coach with relevant experience will likely have more bandwidth and valuable perspective that can support your development in ways your immediate manager might miss.

8. Track your progress in quantitative and qualitative ways.

Document your success. Track your sales performance on a weekly and monthly basis so you can have evidence of your progress. Additionally, tracking your own progress can provide a high-level understanding of your performance and how it relates to your sales organization’s success.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, an estimated 16 million U.S. knowledge workers shifted to working remotely, according to Slack. COVID-19 effectively ushered in a change that many predicted years ago: a world where remote work is prevalent. This was unprecedented and likely would not have been possible on such a massive scale as few as 10 years ago.

A Remote Work Future

Although most companies that made the shift to remote work assumed it would be temporary, many are seeing business continue and their employees remaining productive, with some organizations reporting productivity increases of up to 30%. Many employers have realized that when their teams are equipped with the right tools, they can remain productive regardless of where they work. Benefits of a remote workforce include real estate cost savings, reduced commute times, fewer office distractions, and flexibility for employees.

It seems the remote workforces that were predicted years ago are clearly here to stay. Many large technology companies are offering employees the option to work remotely indefinitely, and 98% of respondents to a recent Buffer survey indicated a desire to continue working remotely, at least a portion of the time, for the remainder of their career.

While we’re fortunate that technology advances enabled this incredible transition, with change comes new challenges, not the least of which is hiring remotely.

Navigating Remote Hiring

Embracing remote workforces leads us to reconsider hiring processes. A certain level of trust and connection is established when you interact with someone face-to-face. When in-person meetings are not part of the hiring process, we no longer have the luxury of reading subtle cues, such as body language and voice inflection. Video interviews can mitigate this to a degree, but we’ve all been in situations in which we felt differently about a person during a video call compared with when we interacted with him or her face-to-face.

This highlights an important issue that takes on new importance with the increase in remote hiring: How do you know the people you’re interviewing are who they say they are? While most people don’t lie about their identities or falsify details on their résumés, it happens more than you think.

According to a Resume Lab survey, more than a third of respondents (36%) admitted to lying on their résumé. A recent high-profile case of this was reported in December 2019 when it was discovered that a woman lied on her résumé, used a photo of Kate Upton as her LinkedIn photo, and landed a $185,000/year government job in Australia. Her deception included lying about education and employment and even posing as a previous employer to provide a reference and review about her own performance.

Deceptions like this have been occurring even before the crisis, even in face-to-face hiring situations. In the end, do you really know people are who they say they are? Do you know whether those individuals have brought in their own, untampered identity documents on their first day of work to complete the I-9 process? Were the documents they presented the same as those that went through the background check process? Are your HR professionals trained to detect discrepancies?

For most companies, the short answer is no. These are all important questions to ask, particularly when operationalizing remote hiring practices.

Trust matters, especially when hiring someone you won’t be regularly interacting with in person. You need to trust the identities of employees joining your company, but it goes beyond that. Your new hires need to trust that you do your due diligence when vetting candidates, and the rest of your employees need to trust that you’re bringing someone into the company who has been thoroughly vetted. Safer workplaces, remote or otherwise, start with identity verification.

Expanding the HR Toolkit with Identity Verification

Identity verification helps the HR world evolve with the times and helps companies gain confidence in the identity of the people joining their teams—whether they sit hundreds of miles away or will work side by side in a physical workplace with your other employees, now or in the future.

Here’s how identity verification works: Using their smartphone, candidates snap a photo of their identity document, such as a driver’s license or passport, which is evaluated to ensure it hasn’t been tampered with or altered in any way. They then snap a selfie, and a process commonly known as a liveness test verifies that they took a photo of a live person (versus a photo). The selfie is then compared with the photo on their identity document. It’s that simple and takes only a couple of minutes, yet it’s a crucial step.

You don’t want to waste your time going through an interview process with someone who is lying about his or her identity. And you certainly don’t want to wait until after a candidate has joined your company to verify the person’s identity.

We’re only four months into the new year, and 2020 will most likely be remembered as the year of the pandemic. The coronavirus is affecting the global economy, daily life and how and where you work.

Recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines recommend limiting large events and gatherings of more than 10 people. Many employers are taking heed by both grounding employees who frequently travel and instituting work-from-home policies for employees who typically work in a centralized business office.

While there is an increase in remote working due to this national emergency, remote work isn’t new. It has been gaining traction as employees increasingly demand greater flexibility with both their hours and working conditions. Five million employees, or 3.6% of the workplace, work from at home half of the time or more, according to Global Workplace Analytics. Regular work-at-home has grown 173% since 2005.

Even with its growing popularity, a sudden shift to working remotely can leave you feeling a bit uneasy. After all, if you’re accustomed to working in an office environment full time, the change to working from home can leave you feeling both excited and discombobulated!

Below are some helpful hints for the work-from-home novice, and some gentle reminders for those road warriors who suddenly find themselves longing for business upgrades.

1) Set boundaries. Work life has a certain cadence to it. You leave the house the same time every day, stop and grab a coffee and a muffin from the same café and arrive at your desk with enough time to send a text to your bestie or partner.

But now that you’re working from home, everyone seems to think your availability is greater and you have nothing to do. Time to set things straight.

It’s important to let people know that, even if you’re working from home, you are still working. You have the same goals and your boss is expecting the same results. Set boundaries around your availability by letting your friends and family know your working hours haven’t changed.

2) Get organized. Not everyone has a dedicated office, so finding workspace can be a challenge. While working at the kitchen table may not be ideal, you can make it work for the short term.

If you expect to be working remotely longer than the next eight weeks, it may make sense to convert a spare room to an office or to find a spot in the house you can use that will be less distracting. Move your charger station close to your workspace, find a comfortable chair and set your table up like you would a desk at the office.

Creating a dedicated, work-friendly space will help you separate your personal and work life and keep you feeling organized during this time of transition.

3) Embrace technology. Working from home has its benefits, like throwing a load of laundry in the wash at lunch or taking a quick walk around the block with your four-legged friend. But remote workers also tend to feel isolated, especially in the early stages of transitioning to working from home.

To prevent that feeling of loneliness, it is important to remain connected. The good news is many businesses already have tools in place like Zoom, Go to Webinar and Skype. These tools help to create a more intimate communication experience between workers and their colleagues and clients. 

For some workers, getting comfortable with the video features can be a little intimidating, but if you focus on the purpose of your communication instead of how you look, you’ll quickly find these tools bring the outside world in and any anxiety you felt about video communication will quickly subside.

A quick word to the road warriors who have been grounded: don’t despair. You’ll be earning hotel points and frequent flyer miles soon enough. Enjoy the extra hour or so in the morning normally set aside for getting to the airport and go for a walk, practice yoga or do an activity with your kids.

This crisis will end soon enough, and you’ll be longing for the green, green grass of home once again.

For many sales organizations, it’s been a challenging few months. As Scott Barker, Sales Hacker’s Head of Partnerships, put it in our recent webinar, “Mastering the Transition to Digital Selling”:

There aren’t very many jobs where you’re put in an environment where you almost feel guilty for doing your job.

This was a common sentiment among many sales professionals when COVID-19 first struck.

Sales Solutions is the division of LinkedIn that sells our Sales Navigator product, and we spend a lot of time interacting with sales leaders. We’ve seen on a daily basis that salespeople, by embracing the tenets of virtual selling, have been able to connect with their customers in a meaningful way — even with face-to-face meetings unlikely, travel curtailed, and in-person conferences postponed.

Here are seven key lessons we’ve learned from witnessing the most effectives sales organizations get back on track in these difficult times.

7 Lessons Learned from Successful Sales Organizations

Lesson 1: Digital transformation is accelerated

Digital transformation was in motion long before COVID-19 arrived on the scene. Salespeople have been using sales technology to connect with buyers for years.

But this current scenario, where face-to-face meetings are rare, forces sales professionals to embrace virtual selling tools more than ever before. For instance, our State of Sales report found that 77% of sales professionals are holding more video meetings.

It’s unclear when face-to-face meetings will return. I’ve spoken with customers who have no plans to allow vendors and salespeople on site for at least a year — even after they reopen their offices and factory floors.

The bottom line: Becoming comfortable with building relationships in a virtual environment is going to be essential for sales professionals for the foreseeable future.

Lesson 2: The capacity to lead through change is more important than ever

In LinkedIn’s recently released State of Sales report, 70% of sales managers in the United States said the ability to lead through change is more important than it was five years ago.

Note that we asked that question before COVID-19 arrived in the U.S.

My guess is that sales managers would say leading through change is an even more important skill right now.

Lesson 3: Understanding the buyer’s point of view is central to deliver value

In this environment, sales professionals need to deeply understand their customers, so they can deliver value rather than worry about revenue and bookings.

That said, not every buyer is in dire straits.

At LinkedIn, we’ve found that while some companies remain in distress, others are beginning to explore buying again. And then there are additional businesses that are in growth mode during the current environment.

For the companies that COVID-19 has hit hard, this may not be the time to be engaging commercial conversations. We are advising our sales teams to focus on how they can help potential buyers right now, and not worry about generating revenue.

And for the companies that are thriving, we are finding it is acceptable to reach out and sell to them right now.

As always, sales professionals must do their research to make sure they are delivering the right kind of value to these growing businesses.

Lesson 4: When you are having sales conversations, make sure it’s directed at the CFO

In most companies, the appetite for conversations that aren’t valuable is very low. Return on investment, the faster the better, has always been an element of purchasing decisions, but it’s truer than ever in the current climate.

For our outreach to potential buyers, our litmus test is, “Would this presentation pass muster with the CFO?”

The value story must be front and center in the language of the presentation.

While C-level executives are scrutinizing more deals on the buyer side, they are also more active on the seller side.

In fact, our sales teams are asking me and my executive team to participate in more conversations with buyers. Businesses are requiring that their purchases be integral to strategy, and so we’re seeing many high-level conversations with our potential customers.

Lesson 5: Data is only becoming more crucial in the sales process

A commitment to using data to analyze your marketplace is going to be table stakes — if it’s not already.

Tools such as Gong and Chorus enable sales leaders to analyze recorded sales conversations in the aggregate. This kind of data can pinpoint, for instance, whether some companies are becoming more likely to spend and how your salespeople can effectively address buyer objections.

Data is also very effective in assessing what accounts, industries, and geographies are relatively healthy financially.

By identifying the buyers most likely to make purchases in the current environment, sales teams can be more efficient in focusing their time on the deals most likely to close.

Traditionally, the Fourth of July holiday weekend has always been considered the start of vacation season. People would bolt out of the office early Friday afternoon or take three-day weekends at the beach. As July turned into August, folks would take their two weeks off. The interviewing and hiring process would slowly grind to a halt. By mid-to-late August, even during the hottest job markets, it would be tough—nearly impossible—to get anything accomplished. The hiring manager would be out of the office on vacation and, when she’d return, the human resources person would be gone. Then, the job seeker would leave for his family’s annual summer trip. 

This routine was pre-Covid-19, but could quickly change. Many workers fall back upon business-as-usual and presume that interviewing over the summertime is a futile pursuit. Instead of assuming that the expected interviewing path will similarly happen this year, try to think differently. 

What are the odds that a large percentage of human resources professionals, hiring managers and others involved with the hiring process will take extended—or any—vacations this summer? With the sudden alarming spike in thousands of new Covid-19 cases, how many people will be eager to board an airplane, rent a car, stay in a strange hotel room and go to a place that may be packed with non-mask wearers? It's more likely that people will continue to stay at home. If they do travel, it will be short car trips.

With this is mind, forget all about how it used to be. Most people will blindly follow the old path and discontinue their job search out of habit. They’ll say to themselves that nothing’s going to happen, as everyone will be away until September. In light of the unrelenting series of bad news and events brought about in 2020, a majority of job seekers may pause their search and hope that things will turn around once the summer is over.

You have the unique opportunity to stand out and get noticed, as people absentmindedly pull out of their job searches. With less competition, take this opportunity to step up your interviewing game. As people take themselves out of the job market, your chances improve.

To be fair, it won't be easy. With 47 million Americans filing for unemployment since the start of the pandemic, major iconic companies (such as J.C. Penney and Hertz) filing for bankruptcy protection and massive layoffs continuing unabated, you’ll be swimming against the tide. You’ll need to be strong, resilient and persistent. Keep moving forward in the face of adversity. Dig down deep inside of yourself to find the inner grit and mental toughness to overcome all of the obstacles in your path—and there will be a lot of them.  

Don’t take it personally when there’s no feedback and calls and emails go unreturned. It's not just you; this is happening to everyone. Accept the reality that things are tough and embrace the fact that you must be strong and determined to succeed. 

There will be bouts of self-doubt, feelings of inadequacy, discouragement, embarrassment and petty humiliations. We’re all going through this together. Many people get so dejected that they lose hope. That's not a viable option, as the waves of rejection could pull you even downward.  To succeed, you have to clearly set your sites on the goal and persevere, despite the challenges. It won't be a walk on the beach, but if you don't take assertive actions, nothing will ever change.

I have received several recent reader questions about job search tips when you’re over 50:

When you are an older unemployed professional in your late 50's how do you survive and what strategies should you use to navigate through these difficult times we are currently in? – Theo

What are the best career pivot options and tactics for workers over 60? — Ken

Is there a point in pursuing/reigniting a career at my age?... Not looking to start a business but I miss being part of something, getting out of the house and feeling productive and saving money for the future. – Wendy

I write about job search tips regularly and don’t normally break out tips by age group. The mechanics of the job search are similar across industries, functions, levels and ages. I recommend a six-step job search approach:

1. Identify your targets
2. Create compelling marketing (e.g., resume, LinkedIn, networking pitch, cover letter)
3. Research companies and industries
4. Network and interview
5. Stay motivated and organized and troubleshoot regularly
6. Negotiate and close the offer

I would still recommend these steps for job seekers over 50 (or right out of school). That said, life circumstances and your career path to date influence your job search, and these will be different when you have decades of life and work experience. Here are five ways I would modify a search plan for a job seeker over 50:

1 - Start reconnecting socially ASAP

Reaching out to people generally comes later in your job search when you are clearer about what you want and have prepared how to talk about yourself. However, you never want your first approach to be about your job search, when you have not been in touch for years (or decades). Furthermore, with more experience comes more connections (hopefully) and more reconnections to be made as you likely have fallen out of touch over the years.

Therefore, while you’re gearing up for your search – identifying your targets, creating your marketing – start reconnecting with your network on a strictly social basis. Just say hello and ask about what people have been up to. Focus on having genuine interactions without talking about your job search at all. An additional practical benefit is that it cleans up your database so you can see how many people you already know and can readily contact when you are ready to kick off your search. Your network, especially with decades of contacts, will be much more critical to landing a job than unsolicited applications to job postings (one reason to stop reading job postings).

2 - Get real about how much flexibility you have for your search

When you’re over 50, you are more likely than a younger person with fewer years to have a life built around multiple relationships. You might have kids to support, elder care responsibilities, even a significant other going through their own career reinvention. You might have purchased a house at this point, making it harder to just pick up and leave. You might be in a job right now that has broad responsibilities.

When your life has multiple obligations to support and moving parts to coordinate, your job search has to accommodate these. How much time do you have to devote to the six activities I outlined? If you are between jobs, how much money do you have to support your financial commitments while you look? Run the numbers on time and money. Gauge your own emotional fortitude and energy level for a search.

3 - Prioritize your goals for this next job

Your job search will be impacted by the time, money and energy that you have, It will also be targeted based on what your immediate career goals are. Are you looking to shore up your retirement so earning potential is key? Are you looking to introduce some fulfillment into your life so passion for the work matters most? Are you finally ready to try something different from your early career, such that you’re flexible on the job, even the money, as long as it takes you in a new direction?

I have posted several real-life career changes over 50, and there is no one path. Karen Rittenhouse pivoted industries and took on more entrepreneurial risk because money was a priority, and she didn’t have time to follow the conventional retirement savings strategy. Melinda Chu leaned on her outside interests and network and ended up making a career change from legal research to affinity marketing. Mark Prygocki was looking for something different and that led to opening a donut franchise.

4 - Summarize your unique value proposition

Whatever you decide to go after, you will have to convince others. To find a job, you need to convince employers. If you go into business for yourself, you need to convince clients. Having decades of experience is one qualifier, but it doesn’t differentiate you from others who also have extensive experience. What is it about your experience, skills and expertise that sets you apart and solves a problem for your employer or client? For example, your decades of work mean that you have experienced both up and down economies. Have you also worked across industries, with big and small companies, in growth market and turnaround situations?

Don’t make hiring managers guess or plow through years’ worth of information to pinpoint what your superpower is. Design your story with the highlights readily available. Have clear examples and metrics to share. Be able to talk about yourself with enthusiasm and confidence. If you don’t feel competitive for a job, then do more work around your marketing, research or interview practice till you feel ready. In order to convince people to hire you, you must first convince yourself.

One of the primary differences between those who are successful and those who struggle to create the results they profess to want in their life is their view of who and what prevents them. The first group, those who create success for themselves, believe that the only person capable of preventing them from having what they want is the person who stares back at them in their mirror each morning. The second group, the group that struggles, believes that everything wrong in their life and their world is caused by someone or something outside of them.

First, and most importantly, no one cares about your success as much as you do—or as much as you should. Your life is your own, free and clear. The second factor you might recognize, as bad as it sounds, is that no one cares enough about your success to try to prevent you from creating it. No one is going to lift a finger to stop your ambition.

The Circumstances of Your Birth: Fate may have located you in some part of the world that doesn’t provide a great environment for building success, yet plenty of people find their way out of those circumstances by leaving those places. You may have had the good fortunes of being born into a family with very little money, even though you might have been hungry. For many people, their hunger manifests itself in a type of insatiable appetite to improve their position. The people who stay in environments that don’t provide opportunities don’t stay because someone prevents them from leaving, but because they don’t leave. No one will make any real effort to keep you poor, even your friends who’ll criticize you for “being too good for your old hood.”

Your Lack of Education: You didn’t go to the right schools. Or maybe you did go to the right schools but did so little that you may as well have stayed home. Perhaps you didn’t go to school at all. There may be people who believe you need formal education for some job, but there are countless entrepreneurs with nothing more than a high school diploma, many of whom have built incredible business and lives. You can find a path to success without an education, or you can work a day job and go to school at night and get yourself the sheepskin, should you so desire. No one will prevent you from taking either of these paths and outside your family and friends, no one will stop to notice, let alone stop you.

The Rigged System: You may be confronted with the idea that the system is rigged against you, and it can feel like the movie, The Matrix. In some ways, life every much resembles that movie; you can do what you want once you recognize your power. What you may notice is missing, however, is that no Mr. Smith is chasing you around, working to prevent you from exercising your power and liberating yourself. All of the things that block you are in your mind; the limits you place on yourself are far greater than any external constraints you might imagine.

The list of external forces you might use an excuse for not having the success you want is inexhaustible, starting with the few ideas above. This list also includes your parents, your boss, your lack of resources (an obstacle that always collapses when confronted with your resourcefulness), the Government, the President, Republicans, Democrats, giant companies with money and power and lobbyists, or, if you have a conspiracy bent, the Illuminati.

Only You Can Stop You

The only person who can stop you from being the better version of the person you are now is you. As tragic as this is, it is also fortunate. Because you are the only thing preventing you from whatever you might call success, you already possess the power to change your mind, change your circumstances, and create the life you imagine in your mind’s eye.
First, you have to know what you want from your single life.

Second, you need to recognize and act on your hunger. Acting on what you profess to want is the only proof that you really want it. Not acting on what you profess to want means it is nothing more than a pipe dream (well, for you, anyway). The difference between you and the people who have what you want is that they wanted it enough to act on their desire, and you have not yet done so.

Third, and most importantly, you need to recognize there are no external factors that prevent you from succeeding. Instead, most of the external factors fall into one of two categories: 1) They are excuses you make, whether they are due to a lack of confidence or a lack of will, or 2) They are the external excuses that have no relation to you and your goals, they provide you with something to point at to absolve yourself of responsibility to yourself.

The only person that can prevent you from having what you want is you. Only you can remove the single obstacle standing between you and success.

There's no doubt that things have shifted dramatically as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, leaders are asking themselves hard questions.

What does the next "normal" look like for them? And, how can they successfully implement new aspects of their culture into this new normal?

Here are four key things leaders must consider if they want to truly live their culture in the next new normal.

The cost of your company’s bad hiring decisions can be staggering. To calculate this cost, I tell my clients to add the first-year turnover rate to the percentage of people who the company wouldn’t rehire. This number is your company’s Bad Hiring Rate (BHR). Next, I ask them to multiply the BHR with the total increase in payroll for new hires to calculate the cost of bad hiring decisions at your company.

As you’ll see from the example and graphic below, this can be a huge number whether you’re hiring a few people or more than a thousand employees.

For instance, if you hired 100 people this past year and turnover was 10% and there’s another 10% who you wouldn’t rehire, at 20% X 100 X $100,000 in average payroll, this is a wasted $2 million! And that’s not even taking into account the positive impact stronger people would have had or the disruptive impact the bad hires made.

Fortunately, clues abound at every stage of the hiring process that suggest a bad hiring outcome is likely. Here are some of the most obvious:

1. The hiring team is not in agreement with respect to actual job needs

This is the #1 cause of bad hiring decisions, but the solution is easy. Before interviewing anyone, the interviewers need to agree on the answer to this question: “What must the person in the role do during the first year in order to be considered a successful hire?“ Usually this is 5-6 KPOs (Key Performance Objectives) or OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) describing the major objectives and critical subtasks.

2. Candidates are too vague about why they want the job

Before formalizing the offer, ask candidates to describe why they want the job. An appropriate response should include specific details about the actual work (the KPOs), the hiring manager’s leadership style, and an explanation of how the company/industry can offer the candidate continuous growth. A lack of these details may indicate an interest more in the compensation package and not the work itself, which will make on-the-job success and satisfaction problematic.

3. The evidence interviewers use to justify their yes/no decision is vague or unrelated to the actual requirements of the job

It’s my opinion that good evidence includes dates, metrics, and specific details about the candidate’s past performance doing work most comparable to the required KPOs and OKRs described in the job description. It is not possible to accurately predict someone’s performance when they’re hired without this evidence, or when it’s based on emotional bias or generic competencies.  

4. The strongest candidates opt-out early in the process or reject the offer

Recruiters and hiring managers need to agree on the best prospects before contacting anyone. The number of those top prospects who actually agree to be interviewed, complete the rigors of a series of interviews and assessments, and accept an offer is a good indicator of the ability of a company’s recruiters and hiring managers to attract the best for the right long-term career reasons.

As businesses and individuals face a shaky economic landscape, employee retention may not be the top issue on many employer’s minds—but there’s no time like the present to take steps to improve team spirit, encourage performance improvement and ultimately, instill loyalty.

Here are five ways employers can proactively focus on employee retention:

1) Encourage employee creativity. When an employee feels like they’re stuck doing the same job day after day, it will be an easier decision to jump ship if offered the chance. One of the best ways to help prevent this type of drone-like feeling is by giving your employees a new project every six to 12 months with a focus on something they find engages their creativity. It’s a win-win for both the employee and employer.

2) Create an environment of positive feedback. Giving positive feedback on a routine basis motivates employees to put their best foot forward. While constructive feedback is necessary, think about how much positive feedback you’re giving compared to constructive. The first step is being aware of the ratio of positive to constructive feedback and then moving the ratio toward six positive comments for every constructive comment.

3) Challenge your employees and encourage failure. When the right situation arises, challenge your employees beyond what they’re used to doing. Allow them to see failure as a learning opportunity and give them a chance to take a risk. The idea of finding a balance between supporting what they do and challenging them is not an easy task, but starting with small projects outside an employee’s wheelhouse can help retain employees and create growth opportunities at the same time.

4) Make your employees feel like their input matters. Every employee wants their voice to be heard and their work to be recognized. At the end of the day, they are there to help the business achieve its objectives. Instead of employees being another cog in the wheel, sit down with each of your employees and have a conversation about their duties and role within the company.

5) Foster a better work-life balance. Work-life balance is a common topic of conversation, but not easily implemented. While expectations are high for most employees, it’s important to make sure team members have adequate time to take care of themselves and enjoy what life has to offer. It’s important to make sure employees take the time to reset, recharge and take advantage of some “me time.”

These steps are high-impact and low-cost, but take some conscious effort on the part of the company to implement. With any new initiative, it’s important to walk before you run. Survey your employees this month, see what is most important to them and take action based on the results. This will ensure you’re offering perks or growth opportunities that are important to your employees.

For some people, a job is there to serve one purpose – to earn money that can be used to cover bills and fund the more enjoyable purchases. However, for those driven in their careers and development, there are many reasons why a job is beneficial and why they are motivated to get up each morning to go to work.

The average person is estimated to spend over 90,000 hours in their lifetime at work and so may need some motivation along the way – especially on a Monday morning. Here, we take a look at some of the ways employees remain motivated by work and what you should consider implementing in your business to encourage positivity and further development in the workplace.

Motivation One: The opportunity to make a difference

One of the biggest motivations of work is to make a difference. Imagine if the likes of Marie Curie decided to stop her research. She was motivated to make a difference in the world, and that she did. Her “relentless resolve and insatiable curiosity” helped to change our understanding of radioactivity.

A job that gives employees a project to take control of, challenges them, is rewarding and ultimately makes a difference in their industry or the world around them, can help to motivate them to reach the end goal. Encourage employees to look at the bigger picture, share good results and ensure they see how their work impacts the wider business.

Motivation Two: Learning something new

It’s human instinct to want to learn something new. Most babies, for example, have the instinct and capacity to learn a new language when they’re born. An employee can be driven by the opportunity to learn a new skill or enhance and adapt one which has already been achieved.

Those employees who strive to develop and learn new skills may be more motivated by a job that offers regular training sessions and courses. As an employer, it’s a good idea to put a training plan in place offering people the opportunity to learn on the job and develop their skill set.

Motivation Three: Sharing knowledge

As well as them learning something new, it can also be motivating to pass that knowledge on. Becoming a mentor or ambassador to help others develop skills can help to motivate not only individuals but teams as a whole. And vice versa; attending seminars and listening to others share their knowledge of how they worked hard until they reached their goal can also be encouraging.

Consider hosting events where people within your business can share their knowledge and experiences or look into an external, motivational speaker who can come in and present a talk that will inspire your workforce.

Motivation Four: Making connections

Research last year revealed that 82% of people would consider someone they work with ‘a friend’. Meeting new people and developing friendships can be encouraging and motivational to the workforce. A YouGov poll revealed that three in 10 millennials always or often feel lonely – this means the office could be more than just a place to work to them. It’s where they get to talk to someone and form connections which can then be developed outside of working hours.

Encourage or organise events outside of working hours so that team members can connect on a personal level and maintain friendships.

Motivation Five: Progression and development

Humans have a desire to succeed and can feel more motivated by having the opportunity to climb the ladder and progress at work. Whether it’s the thought of a pay rise, change of job title or new office – the opportunity to progress can be a huge motivator at work.

Set up a progression plan for each team in your business, this ensures people know where they’re aiming for in terms of development and work with managers to set out goals that can be implemented on a day to day basis.

Motivation Six: A sense of belonging

Like food and shelter, a sense of belonging is something every human needs. Feeling like part of a team, part of something bigger, where everyone is sharing a common goal and willing to put in 100% to achieve it is a key motivator.

Comradery is important in a business, encourage in house events and celebrations to help people feel like they are part of something bigger. Treat everyone as equal, remove hierarchical seating plans and systems and encourage open and honest conversation across the board.

So, you’re looking to hire a new sales rep? That’s great news! Unfortunately, with this incredibly tight labor market, finding qualified talent—particularly in sales—is a significant challenge.

Hiring salespeople can be tricky. If you’re planning on hiring a new sales executive in 2020, avoid these five mistakes:

1) Start fresh. All too often, employers reuse an old job post, stick it on Indeed or LinkedIn and wait for the resumes to come in. That’s not going to work. Today’s market means that talent has a choice of job options and they’ll know if your offer is old and tired.

Instead, try to think strategically about what you truly need—today and tomorrow. Assess what you will need in the future because the right hire can take you there. Most importantly, make sure your posting communicates that strategic vision. The goal of the posting is to make potential talent excited about the opportunity.

When developing your job posting, make sure it:

• Captures the true interpersonal qualities you are looking for.
• Is creative and catchy. Remember, you’re not the only company recruiting, so make sure your post stands out.
• Quantifies the responsibilities and requirements of the job. Don’t make candidates guess what you’re looking for.

2) Stop recruiting and start marketing. You will need to post your position online. But if that’s all you do, you’ll be lucky to find what you’re looking for.

With unemployment at historic lows, most of the talent is currently employed. That means you need to find them and convince them that your opportunity is worth checking out.

Start mining your connections, both personal and professional. Get your employees, clients and friends in on your search. Have your marketing pitch ready for those who express interest in your position. You’re looking to hire sales professionals, so you need to be able to sell them on your opportunity.

Cast a wide net. When it comes to recruiting, you must be willing to put a little elbow grease into your search.

3) Don’t go with your gut. Your gastrointestinal tract is not the best tool for making a hiring decision, particularly when hiring a salesperson who is skilled at persuasion. Make a hiring decision based on the one-third rule: one-third on experience, one-third on the interview and one-third on behavioral testing. 

Behavioral testing can provide you with more data to evaluate candidates, including insights into their behaviors, motivators and values. How a candidate performs in a personal interview really is only an indication of one thing: their skill at interviewing. Remember, they are salespeople—they are trying to sell you too.

4) Be ready for sticker shock. It’s a talent-friendly market. Our recruiters find that if a candidate is actively searching, they typically have multiple offers on the table. You must be ready and able to take decisive action on hiring.

Qualified talent in the market today are expecting 15-20% more compensation than they did in recent years. Here’s a sample of recent trends in recruiting efforts:

• Entry-level Sales: $60,000 base, plus commission
• Mid-level CSR: $60,000
• Mid-level HR: $80,000
• Experienced Sales: $130,000 base, plus commission

Candidates ask for that much because they can get it—if not with you, then with your competitor.

If you want to know how much you’ll need to pay qualified talent, your candidates will tell you—and that’s the best indication of what the going market rate is for a vacancy.

5) Stop looking for unicorns. Recruiters never want clients to settle for inadequate talent. But sometimes, their bullseye for “perfect” talent is impossible to fill. Looking for someone with years of experience, willing to take $35,000 annually and living within 30 miles of your location? Chances are that person doesn’t exist.

If a solid workhorse will do, stop looking for unicorns. Here are the types of difficult conversations recruiters often have with clients:

• “Your pay is too low for the experience you’re looking for.”
• “If you can’t afford experienced talent, you may need to consider hiring someone with less experience.”
• “If there are only a handful of people within 100 miles of your company and none of them are interested in your position, you may need to consider remote workers.”

No one likes to have these conversations, but after screening hundreds of potential candidates without unearthing a unicorn, it’s unlikely that any will miraculously appear.

Ever made one of these mistakes? If so, now’s a perfect time to correct, redirect and start again.

Across the United States, nearly every nonessential business big and small has been forced to go remote. This puts people in leadership positions in a unique spot. As academic director of the Columbia Executive M.S. in Technology Management program, I interact with and coach hundreds of emerging leaders each year. The global health crisis has made the leadership skills we teach more important than ever. 

Despite what you may have heard, leadership is not innate: It can be taught. If you’re struggling to lead your team during this pandemic, here’s a roundup of my advice with the help of some successful students and alumni.

Be open 

An increase in news consumption and seeking of information are common psychological responses to a crisis. On a global level, we see governments holding daily press briefings and ramping up information sharing. It’s critical that business leaders also keep the information flowing. EMSTM alumna Sam Wilmot, now the VP of strategic programs at Xerox, says that this idea has kept her team going.

Wilmot recommends increasing the number of check-ins you normally would have with your employees. She says it’s important to account for the fact that there are no “water-cooler moments,” where information is spontaneously shared or connections are made, and that this can lead to feelings of isolation amongst your team. As we continue into month three of working from home, try to keep up or even increase the amount of check-ins with employees. Even if you have no new information to share, sometimes a simple “hello” can go a long way. 

Be clear and calm

There are plenty of legitimate reasons for business leaders to feel wary during this unprecedented time, but it’s important to relay hope to employees who might feel lost. Wimot’s advice: Try not to offload too much and stay as bright and positive as possible — while remaining realistic. People are looking to you for cues and signals on the evolving situation. Be strong but be honest and always authentic.

To do this effectively, emotional intelligence is critical. Emotional intelligence is the capacity to be aware of, control and express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically. It should be in every executive’s repertoire. The skills it takes to successfully perform in a position of leadership, like emotional intelligence, can be learned and perfected with daily practice. Good leaders remember that every employee under their management is unique and can recognize how to interact with each person to maximize efficiency, productivity and happiness.

Be flexible

This crisis has forced us to get comfortable with ambiguity. Laura Kudia, one of my current students and an incoming chief of staff at American Express, says this is one skill that has become particularly handy for her. Before enrolling in the EMSTM program, Kudia spent a decade in the media industry. Her shift to financial services was a complete career pivot. The program gave her “tools in the toolbox" — a combination of hard and soft skills — and taught her to speak the language of tech execs. It also taught her something just as important: to be ready to adapt to and learn from new situations quickly and efficiently. 

As chief of staff to the unit CIO who oversees global risk and tech transformation, Laura’s job is to be a translator for the organization. She must speak to the mission and challenges and communicate these to her direct-reports. This, of course, has involved a lot of spontaneous adjustment right now. The entirety of her onboarding was remote, for example. Of course it wasn’t ideal, but leaders need to be able to adapt to unforeseen challenges with grace and agility. She credits the ability to do this confidently to her weekly sessions with her Columbia mentor but says now is the time for all leaders to use their conviction.

Leadership is a timeless skill that’s being tested now more than ever before. Whether you’re managing a team of 15 or 1,500, the crisis has stretched the bounds of our workplaces and demanded that every professional think outside the box. Wilmot and Kudia are two examples of executives who are forging ahead in these uncertain times. If businesses are going to thrive in the weeks and months to come, they should follow their lead and re-examine what it means to be an effective leader. 

Jessica Klek is RVP of Enterprise Sales at SalesLoft, the leading sales engagement platform, helping sales organizations to deliver a better sales experience for their customers.

I’ve always been intentional with my career. Even though my plan has changed many times, just having a plan gets you where you need to go.

Being an intentional leader is equally important. Have a plan for how you want to treat your team, live by it, and adjust it as you learn to lead better. I promise you’ll get back what you invest.

The first place I truly realized this was at LinkedIn. That’s where I discovered I wanted to be a leader. The culture was all about compassionate management. There were no jerks allowed.

But they actually meant that. In my first week, I saw them fire a top-performing sales rep because, frankly, he was a jerk. 

It was such a relief to be part of a culture that’s stated values aligned with its actions. 

That experience left an impression on me. It illuminated the type of team I wanted to build, the type of leader I wanted to be, and the values I wanted to perpetuate anywhere I went.

And it’s caused me to seek authentic cultures that say what they mean and play by their own rules, which is one of the things I love about SalesLoft.

Building Your A Team

Part of retaining the best talent is attracting it in the first place. Not only because you want great players on your roster — you want to keep the great players alreadythere challenged, fulfilled, and content. The quickest way to lose a star employee is to surround her with less than stellar ones. 

So, when I’m searching for a new team member, the skills I look for depend on the role, but there are certain things I always bear in mind.

First, I take inventory of my team’s existing skill set and look for additional levers that would elevate both the incoming individual and the team — it’s like putting a puzzle together.

My two non-negotiables in hiring are culture and personality. Will this person be successful within both the company culture and the microculture on my team? Will their personality fit? If I have any doubt in answering either of those questions, it’s a no-go.

While tech sales experience is important, what’s more valuable is that the person has tons of passion for what they’ve sold in the past. Two more points: can they articulate why they want to join the organization? And, is their nature collaborative and giving? 

These qualities aside, I wish more leaders recognized that a diverse team is a high-performing team. There’s so much opportunity for people of color and women to bring more to the table in the workplace — especially in sales organizations. 

For many recruiters and managers, it’s tempting to default to candidates who are easiest to find. But seek the ones who may not be as prevalent. They’ll push your team to grow and offer alternate perspectives you need to hear to be an effective, well-rounded leader. 

Protecting Your Team

As I witnessed during that formative experience at LinkedIn, people who don’t live up to your organizational values must go. It’s the only way to protect your culture and the people who’ve put their trust in you as a leader. 

I believe in bringing my whole self to work and encourage my team to do the same. We behave authentically with one another, and they know I care about them beyond the confines of our office. When people realize this, that inspires and motivates them.

Leaders also need to protect their team’s free time. When I see people not using vacation, I demand it. Sometimes I’ll Venmo them money for a massage as a way of saying, “I’m begging you to take some time for yourself.” Emphasizing the importance of breaks gives people the mental freedom to actually unplug and get away.

Even so, work/life balance can be illusory. Instead, look at work and life through the lens of harmony. Choose how to invest time in work or home. And when you’re over-investing in one or the other, recalibrate and ask your team to do the same. 

Motivating Your Team

Having transparency at the executive level goes a long way in retaining top talent. Choose to be overly transparent with people because the more they know, the more comfortable they are with change. And the more agile they become.

Setting and sharing individual performance goals like OKRs is a transparent way to motivate people. At SalesLoft, anyone in the company can see anyone else’s OKRs. We aren’t a secretive culture and that keeps everyone accountable and invested.

Beyond goal setting, motivate individual team members simply by asking what drives them. Devote some one-on-one  time to talk deeply about personal and professional goals. Then provide meaning for people by tying the organizational goals back to their personal ones.

As for team motivation, each year I ask, what do we want to be known for? What’s our stretch goal? Obviously, we’ve got to make quota but beyond that, what’s the one big thing we’ll do to move the company forward?

And that becomes a rally cry we come back to when we need to inject some excitement or passion into our work. To move a bit quicker or bound up a big hill. That rally cry is the touchstone that grounds and motivates us.

Promoting Personal and Professional Growth

But eventually, even those measures may not be enough. Because of the expectations they place on themselves, high performers sometimes feel stuck, or maybe they’ve outgrown their job. To mitigate this, I do quarterly check ins about career pathing and personal and professional goals with everyone on my team.

From there, I’ll give them projects to help them achieve their goals. Let’s say someone wants to be in leadership but they don’t have enough experience or we don’t have an opening just yet. I’ll delegate projects to help them exercise that leadership muscle. I also give them exposure to the duties required of a leader, like having tough conversations.

It shouldn’t be enough for a sales team to hit their number. You want them to also give back to the organization. Be project-driven with your people, and through these projects, they can develop other skills, succeed, and move on, whether it’s with your company or elsewhere. Make sure your team feels supported, challenged, and excited about work every single day. That’s how you’ll help great people grow.