Attitude. One word, with a big punch, and some make or break connotations for your career. How many times have you heard people extol an employee for their great attitude, no matter what, or condemn them for having a bad attitude when, by all accounts, the rest of their work performance was fine? Attitude, and other people’s perception of yours, plays a big role in the workplace.

Research suggests that 85% of job success can be “determined by ‘attitude’ and the ‘ability to deal with people,’” according to the Carnegie Foundation. Combine that with our own anecdotal evidence of people’s perceptions, and you can see how important a positive attitude is for any career—but especially in sales, where your “ability to deal with people” is critical.

Attitude in Job Interviews

Attitude is also a major factor when interviewing for a job, in any industry. Knowing all this, it seems logical that anyone pursuing a career in sales would invest in some sort of “attitude adjustment,” but that’s where it becomes tricky. What qualifies as a legitimately “bad” attitude, and what can be chalked up to personality differences? Can you be realistic, or even pessimistic, and maintain a good attitude?

We’ve all heard horror stories of customer service representatives who put their company to shame and inspire nothing but laughs at what they call “service.” But everyone has bad days, head colds, breakups and personal problems. The difference between a great salesperson and an average one really does come down to attitude: who is able to rise above a bump in the road, and who cannot.

Fake It ‘Til You Make It

You don’t have to be an Oscar winning actor to succeed at work, even when you’re having a bad day. You just need to put things in their place and focus. Bringing your personal life to work can be beneficial when it allows you to connect with customers, but on a bad day, you may need to focus just on the 9 to 5. Prioritize, organize and by all means, slap a fake smile on your face—it really can help. Then take a deep breath, and focus.

The ability to segment two parts of your life in order to regroup and refocus on one will help tremendously on bad days, but it can also have residual effects on everyday performance, giving you the edge you need. When you’re able to put yourself aside and focus on the person you’re talking to, you can’t help but do a better job. Whether you’re in sales, customer service or hospitality, people like to feel that they are the center of attention. And when you give them that sense, you’ve automatically done your job a little bit better.

Try it out: give yourself a mini attitude adjustment, and see your performance improve.

Sales recruiting is obviously about sales, but in many ways, it’s also about marketing--as a job seeker, a recruiting agent or company. Selling yourself, even if your job is in sales, takes a certain finesse, particularly when times are tight. And this hold true whether you want to market yourself as a potential hire, your candidate as a recruiting agency, or your brand as a company.

It’s no surprise that job seekers need to market themselves, both to a recruiter and to hiring managers or other people along the interview process. By extension, recruiters often need to help sales candidates by selling them in a slightly different way. But recruiters can and should sell themselves, and therefore their candidates, by focusing on the right kind of marketing for their recruitment process and track record. Companies aren’t exempt either; they need to work with a recruiter to create a triple-win situation.

Here’s some advice for all parties that will lead to better candidates, more accurate placement and higher job satisfaction all around.

Be Professional

You’d be surprised at how often professionalism flies out the window when dealing with hiring, even among those looking for a new job. Everyone involved in the hiring process should use polite conversation, and job seekers especially should be sure to dress the part; casual attire may fly for those who work there, but you need to impress at an interview. And please, refrain from slamming companies on social networking sites; it will come back and bite you. Same goes for interviewers and recruiters; never trash other candidates.

Be Honest

Honesty may seem counter-intuitive to traditional marketing advice, but it plays right into the need to be professional at any and all levels of a job search, no matter what side you’re on.  Job seekers, be upfront and honest about your resume and experience; never lie to fill in the gaps. Likewise, HR people need to provide accurate job descriptions and requirements. As for recruitment agents, we often have an insider perspective into companies where we’ve placed people, and that feedback is valuable to both applicants and hiring managers.

Be Promotional

If you’re in sales, this goes without saying, but it holds true in any interview situation, and on both sides of the table. And while it may be your job to sell for the company you want to work for, or to sell your candidate to the HR manager, you often need to sell yourself first. The trick is to demonstrate your skills and abilities without bragging or inflating them; see the above two pieces of advice if this is unclear. Examples and track records work great here to prove your point. If you’re just starting out, doing your homework can go along way to tailoring your pitch to exactly what they need.

The bottom line? To be in sales, you need to be able to market. At least yourself. And whether that means building a reputation as a recruiter with great placements, earning the esteem of recruiters with the badge of a “great place to work” or showcasing yourself as a necessity for your next employer, sales and marketing skills go hand in hand.

In dealing with a recession, it’s can be difficult to look on the bright side of a not-always-promising economy and job market. But recent studies provide some hope, and helpful advice, for both job seekers and recruiters.

The good news: this will end. The bad? No one’s quite sure when. But what we do know is the recession will have lasting effects on employers and job seekers. Sounds like a no-brainer, but a lot of the changes we see coming out of this economic climate are leading to good lessons and even better tips for employers

and employees alike.

Become a Rockstar.

Figuratively, not literally, of course. The best and the brightest stand out, time after time, and are worth hiring even when budgets are tight. In fact, many have speculated that tough times are the perfect opportunity to reach for a rockstar—with greater competition than ever and a more level playing field, you want the best working for you. And having one amazing talent is better than three mediocre workers. Be that rockstar, in whatever field, and you’ll greatly increase your hiring advantage.

Market Yourself.

While you’re working on this rockstar status, also called professional development, you should start thinking about how to stand out from the crowd. Even if you far outshine all the other applicants in terms of skills and ace every interview, you need to make sure your name gets noticed before they meet you. That means marketing yourself. Spruce up your résumé, use social media and be a little adventurous. Do your homework, check out the company culture, and then find a way to sell yourself specifically to them. Get creative.

Aim for the Future.

Outside of working for yourself, which can be tough to do, the next biggest business and hiring growth will occur in medium-sized businesses.



So plan ahead and look for companies that have optimal growth potential and hiring power as things begin to look up. And above all else, keep working on your “personal brand” and making yourself the best, and easy, choice in your field.

One of the most important skills for a sales recruitment consultant, and one of the very first things every recruitment consultant learns, is good time management. Time is money in every business, but none exemplifies it quite as well as sales recruitment.

Think about it: every second spent on a potential hire that’s not a good fit, or lost to any of the day’s many distractions, is time that could have been better allocated to a more promising candidate. And time a recruitment consultant spends with that qualified candidate is time invested in a placement that will pay off, for both the employer and the sales recruitment firm.

The importance of good time management and responsible scheduling may not break down so clearly in other industries, but it is not unique to sales recruitment. Whether you are an up-and-coming recruitment consultant, a college student, part-time sales clerk, self-employed entrepreneur, stay-at-home mom or big wig executive, you can always benefit from structuring your day to be more efficient and productive. Take a few tips from a successful sales recruitment consultant and make them fit to your end goals:

Make a plan every day. Write it down.

Sounds silly, and like a kind of “duh” tip, but I’ve seen more than one recruitment consultant miss something because they gave themselves too much credit and assumed they could “keep it all up here.” Nope. The exercise of writing down what you need to accomplish will help you remember in itself, and seeing it there will give you a map of what to do next.

Find an end goal. Work towards that by working backwards.

Figure out what your ultimate goal for the day or week is, and then work your way backwards and determine what you need to do to get there. A sales recruitment consultant may see placing a hire as the final goal, so the steps before are to make contacts, call candidates, set up meetings, etc. Apply this somewhat backwards thinking in order to effectively work your way forward.

Stick to your list. Set up a mini-reward system if you need to.

Use the list to stay on task. Break it into manageable chunks with mini-goals and corresponding mini-rewards. Tell yourself you need to return all your phone calls before lunch; this gives you something to work towards beside the ultimate end goal, with the added enticement of a break for lunch at the end. There’s also the motivating sense of accomplishment every time you get to cross something off.

These simple tips can really help structure your day and increase your productivity, no matter what your final goal is. What other time management strategies work for you? As a sales recruitment consultant firm, we’re always looking for ways to improve performance and we’d love to hear your input.