Inquiring minds want to know, and no minds are more inquiring than those about to hire you. Rest assured, you will be investigated. As a rule of thumb, the better the job and the higher the pay, the tougher the screening process. If you are up for a good job at a visible company, your references and past employers will be checked in great detail. Your list of references is simply the beginning of the investigation a prospective employer will conduct.

When a prospective employer has completed the first round of interviews and you are among the top candidates, its next logical step is to check your references and interview those individuals to whom you reported. Are you certain these individuals will seal the deal for you, or will they blow it away? If you are like most people, you probably haven’t given your references much thought. Instead, you have focused on your resume, interviewing skills, networking, and what to wear to the interview. Now the focus shifts.
Your biggest concern should be the quality of your references and recommendations from past employers, because they can make or break your chances. About half of all references that get checked range from mediocre to poor, so it is very possible that the great job you lost out on at the last moment had nothing to do with your skill level. It could have had more to do with what a reference or past employer said about you. So, if you are concerned that someone, somewhere, might be giving you a bum rap, you are probably right. That’s a frightening scenario when your livelihood is at stake.

Here is a sampling of the damaging comments HR people and line managers hear when they check references:

• “Our company policy prohibits us saying anything. We can only verify dates of employment and title.” Then the reference goes on to say something like, “Check his references very, very carefully.”

•  “Are you certain he gave my name as a reference?”
•  “After we settle our lawsuit…”
•   “Let me see what the paperwork says I am able to give out regarding _______.”
•    “Is he still in this field?”

References and past employers won’t call and warn you that they are not going to be complimentary. The reference situation is ever changing and therefore very volatile because of shifting company policies (not that many employees choose to follow them anyway), new employees in HR departments, new laws governing references, and company liability for giving references.

You are well advised to take more control of your career momentum by finding out what every potential reference will say about you. If the odds hold, as they will, those references will range from stellar to negative; yet when you know what someone is going to say about you, you can pass on your best references with greater confidence. You will also have the opportunity to stop references from saying things that are not true or inaccurate.

Increasing Your Chances of a Good Reference. Here are some general rules of thumb to maximize the tone and accuracy of your references.

1. Make sure your records are correct. Occasionally an interviewee looks bad because his former HR department did not have the same job date and title information in his file as he did on his resume. Data entry or communications errors are not unusual, so check with your HR department to ensure that their records correspond to yours. Conflicting data will be perceived as a big negative to a prospective employer.

2. Maintain active and positive relationships with your references. Stay in touch over the phone or over coffee. Keep the reference up-to-date about your progress, and make sure you have the most up-to-date information about them. If the reference’s title (or name) has changed, or if they’ve left their position and you’ve provided old information to the prospective employer, it doesn’t look good.

3. Advise a reference about an important opportunity. To avoid burning out your references, you don’t need to call about every single job opportunity. However, if a particular position is very important to you, call the reference and give them details about what the company may be looking for.

4. Know reporting relationships. Even though you’ve given the senior vice president’s name as a reference, the prospective employer may resort to calling the director you reported to because she can’t reach the senior VP. Even though you have not given that person’s name as a reference, it is on the application that you probably filled out. You may want to advise your former boss about the potential for a reference check and explain what the company is looking for.

5. Know your company’s policy. Although federal law restricts reference information, some states now allow more extensive disclosure. Know which regulations and policies govern your company. In addition, be aware that some employees will break company policy. Make sure that works in your favor by checking with references to gain an understanding of what they might say.

6. Don’t rely on relatives or letters of recommendation. You are well advised not to let Uncle John regale a prospective employer about your antics as a youth. Also, although letters of recommendation can be helpful, information such as titles and even names can change over time. Make sure that the information on your letter of recommendation is correct by contacting the reference periodically.

7. Use a reference-checking service. If you want help in providing good references or if you find that you are losing too many opportunities after several interviews with an organization, you might want to commission a professional reference-checking service. Check to ensure that the service has the professional and legal personnel that can develop a strategic use of your references. Typical service fees range from $59 to $99 per reference checked, depending on level of job position being sought.

For the past 14 years, JobReferences.com, an Allison & Taylor Reference Checking, Inc. company, has been assisting job seekers in determining the quality of their references. Founded by Heidi Allison, President of SOCRATES, this company has been featured in Glamour, New Woman, Worth, NBEW, Detroit News and St. Petersburg Times. Allison & Taylor is headquartered in Rochester, MI. We have a sound management team and an exceptionally well trained and motivated staff of loyal professionals committed to performing this service at the highest level. For additional information on this crucial service, call Heidi M. Allison, Managing Director, at 800 651 2460 or visit their comprehensive web site at www.jobreferences.com.

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Here’s a great article (Help! Save My Career!  My New Boss is Just a Kid!) that offers some really good advice for someone in that situation, including ways to position yourself for a promotion.   Of course, the main point is “Get over yourself!”, which I whole-heartedly agree with.  Don’t think some young whippersnapper can’t teach you a thing or two just because you have a lot of experience.  There’s a reason that young person got the job.  Find out what it is and see what you can learn from it, so that you can advance your career, too.

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Straight commission – just like it sounds…you get paid for what you sell

Variable commission – commission varies according to size of sale, new accounts, or other circumstances

Draw against commission – sort of a loan that you might utilize in the beginning of your position or sales cycle

Advance against commission – like a draw, but more of an occasional event

Base plus commission – base salary that doesn’t change, plus commissions off your sales

Salary – straight pay, no matter how much you sell

Salary plus bonus - salary plus one-time bonuses, as you meet certain requirements or at the company’s discretion

Residual commission – keeps paying even after you move on

Sales jobs include as wide a variety of pay structures as there are things to sell, and knowing how to navigate and negotiate your way through will benefit you in the long run.  Generally, base plus commission is standard, and desirable.  Straight commission is not as good (I think) because that means that the company isn’t investing in you–it’s more of a sink-or-swim situation.  Straight salary isn’t as good because you don’t get rewarded for your success, so where’s your motivation?.  Base pay plus bonuses are more often found in marketing arenas. 

If you’re in an area where you can’t negotiate commissions, you might find room to maneuver in company cars, trips, and other extras, sometimes in one-off deals.  Your recruiter can help smooth those kinds of discussions with the hiring company, giving you advice, feedback, and a realistic idea of what you can expect.

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1.  Research the company.  There is no substitute for doing your homework.  Know what the company does, what its current issues are, and what the future plans include.  Your job is to find out what you can do for them.  Your research gives you material to talk about during the interview and a way to custom-fit your answers to their specific questions. 

2.  Build a brag book.  Click the link for the video and more explanation, but basically it’s a collection of awards, sales rankings, successful projects, letters from happy customers or managers, and so on.  When you present it during the interview, it showcases your presentation skills as well as your accomplishments.  Here’s a link to a podcast if you need it.

3.  Create a 30/60/90-day plan.  This kind of plan is a written demonstration of what you will do for the company in your first 3 months on the job–how you will get your training, how you will transition into being a contributing member of the sales team, and so on.  Here’s a link to a video and a blog post that explains them in more detail, but if you need more help, you can download samples and a template with audio coaching from the Sales Recruiter.  This kind of plan will definitely get the attention of the hiring manager.

4.  Read my Tips on How to Ace Your Medical Sales Interview.   The same principles are true for all kinds of sales jobs.  Also, here’s an article on Sales Interview Questions for you.  Think of your interview as a sales call, and act accordingly. 

5.  Consider custom coaching.  Most people need no more than an hour.  Ask the questions you need in a private, one-on-one conversation to improve your personal situation.  I’ve been a medical sales recruiter for over 10 years now, and I was in the medical sales area before that as a sales rep, regional manager, and national accounts manager.  The sales process, skills, and hiring issues are the same across the board.  I can go over your resume with you, critique your answers to interview questions and prepare you for the interview, give you insider tips, teach you how to negotiate and recognize a fair offer, build your personal brand, or even decide between job offers.  Career coaching works.

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To help you, here’s a link to a video that I made about how to handle behavioral interviews.  Some of the main things to keep in mind are to have lots of stories ready that highlight how skilled you are, and it’s important that you are able to quantify your examples whenever possible.  (What happened when you had an unhappy customer?  How did you increase sales and by how much?  How did you save the company X amount of dollars?)  I’ve also provided a link to How to Survive a Behavioral Interview for more tips, and a lengthy list of possible behavioral interview questions for you to think about. 

Important tip:  make sure you have a brag book and a 30/60/90-day plan ready to go.  A brag book will demonstrate how you handled particular situations, since you’ll hopefully include letters or e-mails from satisfied customers or happy managers, successfully completed projects, and lists/charts of how much money you’ve saved or made for the company.  A brag book covers what you’ve done in the past…a 30/60/90-day plan covers what you’ll do in the (immediate) future.  It’s a list, segmented in 30-day time spans, of what you’ll do to get trained and up-to-speed in your new company so that you can be a successful hire for them as fast as possible.  For more information, click here.  For a template of exactly how to do one, click here.

Good luck.

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What do you get for your $17.00?

• What a brag book is
• Why it definitely helps you shine in the interview and stand out over other candidates
• How to make one–with specific examples, in great detail
• When to introduce it in the interview–what to say, and how to say it, even if you’re not directly asked to show it

How important is your job interview?  BREAK THE GLASS!

PODCASTS

Polish Up Your Brag Book

Once you purchase the podcast, a link to it will be sent to your email.

See you at the top.

Peggy

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In an ideal situation, you bring your 30-60-90-day plan to the interview and “wow” the hiring manager when you bring it out and present it during your conversation.  You ask the hiring manager for input during the interview, and in your follow-up thank you note, you should attach your sales plan with the changes that the hiring manager suggested. 

Less than ideal, but better than nothing:  you don’t get a chance to present your 30-60-90-day plan during the interview, but you realize that thank you notes can be second chances.  Either you attach your sales plan to your thank you note (which points out how the information you gained during the interview is included), or you put a shortened version of a 30-60-90-day plan in the body of the note if you think he might not open the attachment. 

What if you can’t even get the interview?

If you can’t even secure an interview, this might be a good time to e-mail your 30-60-90-day sales plan to the hiring manager with the subject heading of:

“This is how I can help your company”

Or

“Here’s my plan for increasing your sales”

You get the drift…

This is an attention-grabber.  It’s a way to entice the hiring manager into meeting with you.  You’ve probably already sent your resume, which hasn’t helped, so it’s another opportunity for contact with out seeming annoying.  Showing what you can do for the manager and the company from the first few days of employment is powerful, and has a decent chance of securing a meeting. 

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You’ve already researched the specific company training, product training, or sales training that you need, so start setting that up.  Get to know your co-workers, support staff, and customers.  Learn the company culture and corporate systems. 

The most important thing you can do is to get feedback from your manager.  No later than one month into the job, meet with your manager to assess how you’re doing.  Having been on the job for that long, you will be able to rework the 60-day and the 90-day part of your plan if necessary, and you can take that re-written plan to your meeting for input on how to adjust it further. 

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Follow up phone calls can only get you so far.  What you need are the right keywords on your resume.

The right keywords on your resume will flag you in a search.  So, if you are looking for a management position in a diagnostics sales force (and you aren’t currently in that position or your company has some wacky title system), you need to consider putting a list of keywords across the bottom of your resume that would show up when a recruiter runs a keyword search on their ATS (Applicant Tracking System).  For example:  “regional sales manager,” “clinical diagnostics”, “sales”, “management”, etc. would be a good place to start.

If you’re interested in going into Surgical Sales (and aren’t there now), you may want to add “OR”, “operating room”, “surgical”, “surgeon”, “physician”, and so on.  Get the idea?  You might ask how a recruiter would view this addition to your resume…I can tell you that I appreciate innovative ways that candidates separate themselves from the pack!

For more extensive resume help, as well as an experienced recruiter’s advice on cover letters, references, brag books, technology sheets, and 30/60/90-day sales plans, click here.

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Aaron Stahl e-mailed me recently to bring my attention to his website (www.e-shadow.com) that prints interviews with people who work in particular fields.  He’s got one with a medical device sales rep and one with a pharmaceutical sales rep.  There’s some very candid, what’s-a-typical-day-like information, as well as advice on what steps you can take to enter this field…like taking a few classes in anatomy and physiology or medical terminology if your background is not in science.  They also point out how hard it is to get your foot in the door…the pharmaceutical sales rep says that it took him over a year to get hired because of the heavy competition.  All the more reason to have The Medical Sales Recruiter on your side!  (if I could do Superman music here, I would)

Want more help from the Medical Sales Recruiter?  Try audio coaching–this product covers every aspect of your bid to get a great job in medical sales, from how to build your resume with the proper keywords, to which documents to bring to the interview (like a brag book, a technology sheet, and a 30/60/90-day sales plan).

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