Does Your Resume Pass the 15 Second Test?

For any small to medium business owner, hiring new employees sucks.  The time to post a position, sift through the tidal wave of resumes, shortlist the best applicants, and whittle this down to a single hire can add up to tens of hours spread across several weeks.


I recently had to go through such an exercise and once again I was shocked by how poor some of the applications were.  Out of 113 resumes, 80 ended up filed under “60 Seconds of My Life I’ll Never Get Back”, 23 were filed under “Not Totally Unreasonable” and seven ended up in the “Worth A Look” category.

In these harsh economic times there are lots of people competing for every job that’s posted.  Luckily for me I can be ruthlessly barbaric when I’m filtering through resumes.  When I open your application, you’ve got less than 15 seconds to get my attention otherwise I’m closing it forever.  Here are a few pointers to keep in mind when you’re writing a cover letter and resume from a guy on the other side of the desk:

• Personalize each application:  If you get some of the basic details about my posting wrong, I’m immediately disinterested.  If I posted the position on Monster, don’t write that you’re responding to the position I posted on my company website.  Take a few minutes to specifically address some of the requirements listed in the position or mention something specific that you saw on my website.  Throw me a bone that you care enough to go beyond putting my company name at the top of your cover letter and emailing it to me.

• Don’t Dare Make a Spelling Mistake:  Just don’t do it, it’s that simple.  If you can’t be bothered to push the F7 key to launch your spell checker, I don’t want you working for me.  End of thought.

• Formatting Makes a Difference:  If I spend one minute to open an email, open the attachment, decide how I want to file it and move onto the next one, and I do that 113 times, I’m spending at least two hours straight staring at my computer screen.  And chances are, my eyes are going to get tired about half way through.  If you’re considerate enough on my poor eyes to consider the font and font size (11pt. Calibri with 1.2 line spacing is a nice combination), spacing (white space is a good thing) and your application is presented cleanly, I’ll like you.  And if I like you, I’m probably going to be more lenient when I’m deciding which category you end up in.

• Keep It Brief:  Whoever decided that resumes should be shorter than two pages is a genius.  If you can’t convince me to set up an interview with you in less than two pages you won’t be able to do it in a hundred pages and I’ll think that you’re trying to substitute quantity for quality.  To the guy who listed in significant detail (and I’m not even exaggerating here) the 31 projects he worked on at a previous company:  my eyes will never forgive you.

• Don’t Suck Up (Too Much):  I’m not Microsoft, Apple, Dell, General Electric, Samsung or any of the other mega-corporations out there.  I’m a wee little company trying to make the world better one project at a time.  If you use the words prestigious, distinguished, illustrious, glorious, wonderful or anything else that strong, I think that you’re sucking up and I don’t trust anything else you’ve written.  On the other hand, if you say that you’ve done your homework on me and my company and in your eyes we’re alright, I’m cautiously appreciative of your kind remark and (unless you’ve blundered some other way) you’re likely headed towards my “Worth A Look” pile.

On a serious and sincere note, I don’t intend to make light of people looking for work, especially those in the unfortunate position of being unemployed.  My point is that given the current economic climate competition is stiff for every position that’s available.  Rather than sending out 10 generic applications, spend the time to focus on one or two well written, good looking and carefully tailored ones.  In my experience, it’s not really that hard to stand out from the crowd and any edge you can get over the next guy or gal is worth spending time on.


Got something to say? Leave a comment below, we’d love to hear from you! Got a question that we can address in our blog? Contact us through our website or email me directly and we’ll put our crack team to work and let you know when we post a reply.


Steve Hartley, Managing Partner
Fering Communications Inc.
Website: www.feringcommunications.com
Email: steve.hartley@feringcommunications.com

Do Your Sales Quotations Leave a Positive and Lasting Impression?

I recently purchased a new car and found it mind-boggling how many different makes, models and options there are.  Keeping everything organized was something of a Herculean task.

What struck me through the process was the huge discrepancy between the quality and style of the sales quotations I received.  I received everything from a computer generated report listing the year, make, model, features and multiple payment options to literally a year, model and price written with a Sharpie on the back of a folded up piece of paper.  In the latter experience I asked for a price on an earlier model year and had to write it down myself.  It wasn’t all bad - the sales rep did let me use his marker.  (I’m not even going to mention the sales rep who wouldn’t even write prices down – I had to do it myself but he too did let me use his pen.)

Crafting a well-written and eye-catching quotation or proposal is a vitally important part of the sales process.  Here are some points on why your sales proposal or quotation is so important and why it needs to look perfect and read flawlessly:

• It may be your first impression.  While you have hopefully built a good rapport with some of the decision making team, there might be others involved who you have never met.  Your proposal will be the first and only impression that your organization makes and will need to engage and convince them on it’s own.
• Convince your prospect that you understand their needs and that you are fully capable of meeting them.  This is not the same as describing how great your product is – sure, you have a great product but your proposal should be all about your prospects need and how you can satisfy that need.  If you don’t someone else will and you’ll be left on the outside looking in.
• Make your proposal about your prospect.  Too many times companies want to talk about themselves.  They describe their long and illustrious history, describe the plethora of awards they have received, name-drop some of their prominent clients.  Before you know it, they’re pushing onto page 7 without even a mention of the prospects need and how they can meet it.  Good proposals immediately address how thoroughly the vendor understands the prospects problem and how their products or services can address that need.  All of that other stuff might have a place near the end of the document as an appendix.  Better yet, keep the document concise and precise by holding this type of information on your corporate website where the whole world can see it and include links in your proposal.
• Think benefits, not features.  Proposals that are framed from a benefit viewpoint are far more impactful than those that list product or service features.  Your prospect might be interested in your feature list but they’re definitely going to be more interested in how you can help grow their revenue, reduce their expenses, or benefit their business in some other way.  Always keep the commercial value as a central theme in your proposal.
• Make sure it looks great.  As vain as it sounds, appearance makes a huge difference.  In his best selling book “Blink”, Malcolm Gladwell argues that a person’s mind makes a series of conclusions within two seconds of them seeing something.  If your proposal doesn’t look appealing, or worse looks unapplealing, then there’s a good chance that’s how it’s going to be perceived even if it describes the best product or service that the prospect is looking for.  Adding colour, using a clear system of headings and subheadings, including pictures, flowcharts and other graphics and making sure the document contains a balance of white space are some ways to ensure that your proposal is going to read well and look great.
• It may be your last impression.  Chances are your sales team has impressed your prospect – they’ve shook the appropriate hands, smiled at the appropriate people, made a great pitch and feel great that they’ve won the prospect over.  But every bidder has probably done the same and unless you are really, really good all of this feel-good will fade as the prospect gets closer to making a decision.  You want to make sure that your proposal is well written and formatted beautifully so it stands out on its own.

Conclusion

Sales quotations and proposals are the centerpiece of your entire sales process and you should go to any lengths necessary to make sure that your quotations and proposals stand out from the pack.  Fering Communications has crafted hundreds of well written and eye catching proposals.  Visit our website, fill out our a contact form or email me directly to find out how we can help you.  We offer a no-obigation review of your existing material and we’d be happy to offer some points for consideration or other helpful feedback.

Got something to say? Leave a comment below, we’d love to hear from you! Got a question that we can address in our blog? Contact us through our website or email me directly and we’ll put our crack team to work and let you know when we post a reply.

Steve Hartley, Managing Partner
Fering Communications Inc.
Website: www.feringcommunications.com
Email: steve.hartley@feringcommunications.com

Starbucks Made Me Wait ... And I "Liked" It!

A couple of weeks ago I hit a Starbucks in the lobby of a hotel where I was attending a conference.  I needed a little bit of help getting going that morning.   A grande (pronounced GRAWN-day, I learned while ordering) vanilla latte was sure to do the trick.  Upon placing my order, the young lady behind the counter asked one of her colleagues if she replaced the vanilla syrup yet.  Apparently she hadn’t but slinked off to the back to retrieve that critical ingredient.

I stood, credit card in hand waiting to pay because ... well, that’s how it works at Starbucks, right?  A few seconds passed before the young lady behind the counter suggested that I should wait down near the other end of the counter and my coffee would be ready within a couple of minutes.  I reminded her that I needed to pay, to which she replied with a sweet smile, “Today you can pay with your patience.  It’s going to take a little longer than normal.”  I happily wandered down to the other end of the counter and, as promised, a few minutes later left the store with a free grande vanilla latte.

As I sat waiting for the conference to get going, I felt rather warm and fuzzy that I’d just got a free coffee.  I took a picture of the coffee and posted it to my Facebook page accompanied by a caption explaining that I was thoroughly enjoying my free coffe and stating that Starbucks rocked .  Then I tweeted to the same effect.

Over the next couple of days, my Facebook post collected seventeen comments and four “Likes”.  My tweet spun off three replies.  I can’t guess how many other people shared in my glee but because Starbucks had the audacity to make me wait for my caffeine-inspired jolt that morning, they got in front of lots of sets of eyes and briefly became the topic of conversation for a few days.

Now the same story is up on the Fering Communications blog for all of our millions and millions of followers to see.

I’m not saying that this is going to shoot Starbucks’ sales through the roof or anything.  I have no idea if my experience sent any of my friends or blog followers charging for the nearest Starbucks cash in hand, but because of a customer-service decision they got the benefit of my word-of-mouth marketing and given the variety of social media channels at our disposal that included quite a few people.  The social media channels that are so popular today magnify the effects of word-of-mouth marketing and you want to make sure your customers and prospective customers are saying the right things about you and your company.

Got something to say?  Leave a comment below, we’d love to hear from you!  Got a question that we can address in our blog?  Contact us through our website or email me directly and we’ll put our crack team to work and let you know when we post a reply.

Steve Hartley, Managing Partner
Fering Communications Inc.
Website: www.feringcommunications.com
Email: steve.hartley@feringcommunications.com

Product Review: SlideShark – PowerPoint Presentations on the iPad

We’ve searched long and hard for a comprehensive tool that would run Powerpoint presentations on iPad devices.  In particular we were looking for something that could run non-linear presentations – presentations where you could jump between slides that weren’t necessarily in sequential order.  We thought we had something when we came across SlideShark but while this was a sleek and handy  product, without the ability to run non-sequential presentations it isn’t everything we hoped it would be.

Using SlideShark

Using SlideShark is very easy.  You sign up for a free account at www.slideshark.com and download the free app on your iPad.  Then you can upload Powerpoint presentations to your online account from your PC or you can import them straight into the SlideShark app on your iPad if you have the presentation file attached to an email.  Files are converted to an iPad-optimized format almost immediately.

SlideShark.com User Account Interface

iPad SlideShark App Interface

When you start the app on your iPad it connects with your online account, letting you choose which presentations you want to synchronize between your online account and your iPad.  Once you’ve downloaded a presentation it is stored on your iPad and you can use it even when you’re offline.

The SharkSlide website promises that the product preserves animations, fonts, graphics and colours although there is some fine print that “Some PowerPoint features not supported.”  Here is a comparison of what we put together in PowerPoint and how it rendered in the SlideShark app on an iPad2:

PowerPoint 2003 Slideshow

iPad2 SlideShark Slideshow

PowerPoint 2003 Slideshow

iPad2 SlideShark Slideshow

The graphics converted beautifully and most of the fonts did, too, however you can see from the fonts screenshots that the ‘Adobe Fangsong’ font didn’t convert perfectly and the ‘Blackoak Std’ and ‘Rosewood Std Regular’ fonts didn’t convert at all.

The animations rendered equally well on the SlideShark app.  Our testing included animating textboxes with the fade, wipe and fly in animations and all converted perfectly.  The app also provides some interesting features, including starting at any slide in the presentation, hiding slides and using an on-screen pointer.  The app features a helpful tutorial that is shown as, fittingly enough, a presentation.

There are several account options mostly based on the amount of storage space you need in your account.  The free account provides 100MB of storage but you can upgrade to an additional 500MB for $49 per year or an additional 1GB for $98 per year.  There is also a team account which allows team collaboration, usage analytics and up to 5GB of storage among other things.

The Verdict

We liked the SharkSlide application and will happily add it our repertoire of tools.  However, the biggest feature that we were looking for, the ability to jump to slides that weren’t the next in order, wasn’t supported.  We’ll definately keep an eye on this app and hopefully one day the good folks at Brainshark, Inc. will add that Holy Grail feature that will complete this package.

Got something to say?  Leave a comment below, we’d love to hear from you!  Got a question that we can address on our blog?  Contact us through our website or email me directly and we’ll put our crack team to work and let you know when we post a reply.

Steve Hartley, Managing Partner

Fering Communications, Inc.
Website: www.feringcommunications.com
Email: steve.hartley@feringcommunications.com

When a Powerpoint Presentation Goes Bad

I sat through a webinar on www.authorstream.com last week given by an acclaimed Powerpoint and presentation expert.  The webinar was a huge dissappointment, with the presentation committing many of those common presentation blunders that anyone who has received the most basic presentation advice has been warned against.  Among the presenters biggest mistakes:

·         Make the Point and Move On:  The biggest focus in the first part of the presentation was on bad slides.  And bad slides were indeed presented.  There was the bullet slide, the slide with the complicated flowchart, the slide full of text.  Then there was the slide with the distracting background, the slide with many different fonts and sizes and the slide with the complex graph.  Then there was the slide with the distracting animations, the slide cluttered with needless graphics and ... well, you probably get the point.  There were probably 15 to 18 consecutive slides and significant discussion with each about bad slides.  After the first four or five bad slides the point was well made and it was time to move on to what a good slide looked like.

·         Read Your Audience:  There were about 65 – 70 people online for the webinar and there was a chat forum off to the side of the webinar screen where people were bantering back and forth.  By about the eighth bad slide in a row coupled with a full verbal description of what sins it committed, comments started trickling through about it being time to move on.  By the tenth slide, it had turned into a steady stream of comments.  By the twelfth bad slide the steady stream had turned into a torrent.  You should have a plan of how your presentation will flow when you’re putting it together – that’s one of the most important things you have to do before you even open up Powerpoint or whatever tool you use.  However, you have to be able to go with the flow during the actual presentation and if your audience is clearly disinterested or getting antsy, it’s time to think on your feet and modify your plan.  The webinar presenter should have quickly cycled through the last half dozen slides, stopping only momentarily to sum up in one short sentence what offended about the slide.

·         Tackle Adversity Head On:  We’ve all been there and it’s not fun:  You’re in the middle of a presentation and technical difficulties arise.  Your laptop goes to sleep or runs out of battery, the projector stops working properly, that embedded movie file just won’t start properly.  Here again you have to be quick on your feet.  In my experience it is best to confront the problem head on – don’t pretend it isn’t happening, the room full of people that you’re presenting to sees that it is.  Embrace what has happened, see if you can’t make a quick joke while you’re calmly (on the outside, frantically on the inside) resolving the issue.  Most people have been in a similar situation at some point in their lives and they’ll be more that a little sympathetic.  In the webinar, the presenters slides weren’t advancing properly.  He clicked to advance and nothing happened, so he clicked again and again and again, then his PC caught up and shot five or six slides ahead.  Then he started scrambling to get back to the slide he wanted to be on and the same thing happened and when his computer started responding it slingshot him back through slides that he had already presented.  I’ve experienced this exact issue – I’ve boiled the issue down to something between a Powerpoint presentation and the online meeting tool I use (GoToMeeting).  It still flusters me when it happens, but I know through experience that I just have to stall for a few moments and then everything will sort itself out.  The presenter either hadn’t encountered his particular issue before or failed to recognize what was happening.  Either way, he handled it poorly.  At this point in the presentation I stepped away to take a call from a client and when I returned just a few minutes later the webinar had been ended prematurely because of “technical difficulties”.

Presentations are usually very important times for you to shine when you’re trying to win a new account or order or climbing the corporate ladder.  Make sure that your presentations are focused, concise and precise and present them with confidence and grace.

Need help with an upcoming presentation?  Visit our website to contact us or email me directly, we’d love to help!

Steve Hartley, Managing Partner
Fering Communications, Inc.
Website: www.feringcommunications.com
Email: steve.hartley@feringcommunications.com