Welcome to The Fordyce Letter:
The last two years have really proven challenging to any staffing firm, let alone a small, two-office firm specializing in worker bees—the entry-level workers that are often the first to be let go in a downturn. As our clients experienced layoff after layoff (starting with our temporary workforce), we were forced to do our own layoffs, trimming our staff from a dozen people to four. How could we not only survive, but thrive, in this downturn? This question—how to make “lemonade” out of the lemons that this economy was dealing out—was critical. And the reality and gravity of the situation really forced us to evaluate who we were—our values, our brand, our essence. We discovered some interesting things.
I recently had a candid conversation with 
There are lots of kudos today for the tenor and tone of 
In my last article about hiring salespeople 
Recruiters, we are thrilled to announce that registration is now open for the fifth annual 
Every now and then I have an encounter with a sales professional that is so off base and incongruent with my dominant buying motivation that the lack of training, focus, and need for improvement is written across their forehead.
This is a time when many organizations are scrambling to produce sales. Some will be successful and some will not. Sales success and trust-building skills go hand in hand; yet, a salesperson’s ability to develop and maintain trust often goes unmeasured in the pre-hire phase.
Recruiting is a tough business; an activity oriented phone- and Internet-based business where statistics indicate that nine out of ten new recruits don’t survive their first calendar year. It’s also one of the only businesses where the product can tell you “no.” Add to these inherent challenges the fact that research shows the average US worker wastes 26% of their day on socializing and personal Internet use (Malachowski, 2005), which is probably closer to 40% now that social media has taken over with Facebook and Twitter. The ability for a manager to develop a strong culture of performance is extremely difficult, if not outright impossible.
