The following e-mail was sent to me by a former CareerBuilder (wiki – search) sales rep. The locations and names have been changed to protect the innocent:
“In late ‘07 I went through CareerBuilder’s new hire training in Anytown, USA. During training we were told NOT TO TALK TO HR when calling into companies. I am not one to bash my previous employers and I have no reason to be bitter towards CareerBuilder, however I really don’t have many positive things to say about my experience there. Also during training they focused more on teaching us ‘how to sell’ than how to help employers and understand their needs.
“We had to learn a sales presentation that was to be exercised in every sales call. We were also required to learn rebuttals verbatim to every type of objection a client could possibly have. Bottom line is they are so focused on sales and revenue they forget to really help their clients. Not to mention their inside sales reps are required to make 125 outgoing calls-per-day. I believe there is a line between quality and quantity and they definitely care more about the quantity. On a positive note I have talked to many recruiters an HR professionals in the Anytown market who say they have good responses from CareerBuilder. I think their newspaper partners are their saving grace.”
Such commentary is not exclusive to CareerBuilder. Aggressive sales activities in our highly competitive environment are just the nature of the beast, I guess. I do wonder, however, how many times anecdotes like this have occurred when Craigslist is concerned. Yeah, like, never.
And maybe there’s a lesson to be learned there.
Popularity: 100% [?]
June 22nd, 2008 at 11:40 am
All I have to say based on my experience working with CareerBuilder over the years is.. RIGHT ON! to the author. Just take a look at their commercials and you can see the tone has changed to how they view candidates and employers.
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:44 pm
I’m not sure why this is so negative. The sender of this email seems to have no prior sales experience, as I see this training and program to be quite standard in a sales organization with high volume and low price points. And as far as the Craig’s List comment goes, they have no investors to answer to with revenue targets and trends. This sales approach is the right one for Careerbuilder, and applying the Craigslist approach would be a disaster for them as a company.
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:51 pm
I too am a former CB sales rep and this article is dead-on accurate. I have 10+ years in the industry and suffered through CB’s training program. There is no time spent on educating sales people on industry (HR) or the challenges that HR leaders face. The fact that CB wants their sales people calling everyone in the company but HR, does not help build credibility with the people that ultimately hold the budget.
CB’s open territory policy leaves a bad impression with just about everyone that I have talked to. Company leaders get anywhere from 15-20 sales calls/day-who needs 5-8 calls from different sales people from the same company?
Like all companies Careerbuilder has to deliver revenue targets to their parent companies. With the enormous spending on advertising they have to keep the $$ rolling in. There is no comparison between Craigslist and Careerbuilder. I don’t know many people who look at the job section of Craigslist but I do know quite a few who have sold and bought things on the site. No $$ for Craigslist on those sales so I’m not sure how they grow revenues to stay viabe.
June 22nd, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Jeremy’s spot on.
This is a transactional sale. In companies like CB, call volume always means more biz.
And yes, careerbuilder is in business to make money, so whats the problem.
Am inside sales rep is better off being a calling machine because he’s not going to get the respect he needs from the buyer to fix critical issues anyway…sitting 500 miles away.
Even if HR did give him the respect he needed to truly consult on a problem, his time’s likely to be wasted trying to help an hr director or generalist pitch something to executive management and in my experience, that is more likely to fail than it is to succeed.
I dont see what the big deal is.
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:48 am
Junior people are always surprised by sales training because it reminds them how little they know and understand and how different the job’s requirements really are as opposed to what they thought they would be. Negative reactions to learning “sales tactics” are common.
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:18 am
I’m a Careerbuilder sales professional and I can assure the readers the author is completely inaccurate. In fact, either he/she slept through sales training or, as his/her employment dates indicate, didn’t have enough tenure to make an educated assessment of Careerbuilder’s sales process and philosophy. For the record, Careerbuilder firmly believes you cannot develop a long-term, sustainable and mutually beneficial working relationship without developing a strong relationship with HR; that is a solid relationship with HR is critical to a client relationship. Sure, as a strategic sales professional, you develop relationships with all functional organizational departments, but isn’t that how you would expect a business partner to educate his/herself on client needs, strategies and initiatives? How can you help a client if you don’t understand what makes them tick? Sales and revenue are by-products of helping our clients. For the record, last time I checked sales and revenue were good things. P.S. – I talk to HR every day, in fact, I actually enjoy it ; )
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:39 pm
As a former CB employee I can say for a fact they do indeed train their new-hires to specifically not ask for HR on sales calls, they will even scold you if they hear you do it. I think that alone shows how they feel about HR. Also notice the comments posted by CB employees don’t deny this, they actually defend it as the CB way.
In regards to Jeremy’s comment… you say CB is a sales organization with “high volume and low price points”. It is very well known that CB and Monster are the most expensive recruitment sites out there. I would like to know when CB has ever been more cost effective then their competition? Better yet, go to their home page, click on “employers” in the top right corner and view their so called low price points. Don’t worry though, you can always call you CB rep and haggle the price like a used car deal.
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:13 pm
I too have gone through the training program at CB, and it’s there that I learned the ABC’s and AIDA’s of sales. With that being said, the training at CB should focus on selling TO HR, instead of trying to sell around them.
The folks in HR are a unique breed, and every day are being pulled in a million different directions. From fielding headhunter cold calls to phone screening unqualified candidates (most from job boards like Careerbuilder), HR faces unique challenges and difficulties in their jobs that if a sales rep were properly trained and educated on, would in turn be better able to pitch their CB products to HR, instead of calling the CFO or President of the company 30 times a day hoping they pick up…
June 25th, 2008 at 9:09 am
We deal with a rep from CB and he calls us every day, sometimes two and three times a day – each time leaving 1 minute + voicemails. He’s become unbearable to talk to because he DOES NOT HEAR WHAT WE SAY, and only cares about the upsell. He always tries to rebuff your concerns with a package or tool solution. If you had a 5yr+ loyal customer, would you try to upsell them at the renewal for the SAME package for 37% increase?
They will not be getting our business much longer.
July 14th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
I work for a private equity firm here in Newport Beach. I have been continually hounded by Careerbuilder.com for business. After explaining I am not interested, please take me off your list. I have been told they can’t do it. Today, I had my fourth call in a week from another rep. I explained briefly again – that I am not interested. He kept coming back with questions and I finally came back and said give me your supervisor and he hung up. Are you serious about my company using this type of service… no way.
July 21st, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Having worked for a major job site in the past, CB’s MO of bypassing HR and working directly with C-level execs isnt surrprsing given the level of professionalism in the HR the industry. There are exceptions of course, but dealing with C-level execs almost always netted better results. They returned phone calls. They showed up for appointments on time. They gave you straight up answers regarding whether they wanted to work with you or not, and explained why. HR execs couldnt be bothered 90% of the time, and it shows. Sorry. Many of you should think about the way you treat salesreps and candidates alike. When you do, I bet you’ll why it isnt so surprising that CB bypasses you afterall.
July 24th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
WOW… The above comment really shows CB’s feelings towards HR.
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I, too, am a former CB employee and I do agree with what was said. Now, understandably, those who still work there and/or have been successful in their sales career will defend CB. I won’t argue with you. I understand. I’m not bitter towards CB, I in fact think they’re a great company and offer their employees great benefits. FOR WHAT THESE EMPLOYEES MUST DO — especially if they come into it right out of college, which are the majority of the employees.
But let me say this. Although this was my first job out of college –first sales job at that– I did study marketing and sales in college and had built my experience in that field.
Bert: I do agree with you. CB’s training is much more than what is described in the post. Information and tactics they show in training are in fact what they do teach in sales classes and what I have had learned in other sales experience I had had.
In terms of asking for people in HR … you know what…they were inconsistent with that. It would actually depend on your team lead, manager, who trained you and what worked for you. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.
Newport Business Exec: Though this will not make you feel better in any way, we don’t get too many leads. I mean, we do in certain numbers and I’m sure that poor fellow only had a certain number of leads which he has also probably called already. But like with “In the Industry” says, we had to make 125 calls. EVERYDAY. If the poor guy only had about 300 leads for your area, and probably new Mexico and Arizona (which there weren’t a lot of leads for), he was just trying. and even if he did “take you off his list”, your company info is already in the Duns and Bradstreet database, and it would probably be found in another person’s leads a week later. So though I can’t personally represent CB, I’m sorry.
And what makes my whole experience at CB ironic. I found my next job through Craigslist, as a “gatekeeper” of a company about to take off. Thank you CB for teaching me how to avoid calls from people like you, haha.
August 7th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Read as:
“I was bad at my job and got fired – and it’s all somebody else’s fault.”
August 7th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
It’s all about Yahoo! Hotjobs. They seem to have it figured out when it comes to exceptional customer service, and their visitor traffic is through the roof right now. Not to mention if you can secure a good rep on the West Coast, they will go to bat for you to obtain the most cost effective recruiting package possible. Only downside is that their pricing will undoubtedly increase with the surge in traffic.
August 8th, 2008 at 11:55 am
I Just went to hotjobs (never been there before) and did the same job searches that I do on Careebuilder and had what seemed to be a fraction of the results. Not only were the results a lot less but the majority of the job postings were from recruiting agencies.
I personally have had bad experiences working with recruiters and prefer to be hired directly from the company.
Is there a way to do a search without getting 2 pages of recruiter ads?
August 13th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Before recruitment, I worked in event sales. While almost every company has a conference manager allegedly responsible for deciding which events to attend, the only really effective sales method was to speak with C level budget holders, and sell it at a strategic level. We didn’t pester them – a good sales guy could sell a 25K GBP package with 2 calls.
So, I don’t necessarily blame CB from avoiding HR, because like conference managers, they get a lot of calls so are tricky to sell to, they often aren’t the budget holders, and always are the hardest people to get hold of. Ever asked for HR at reception? Doesn’t get you very far!
The only other thing I would add – ask a CEO for 10 grand and he probably won’t bat an eyelid if you’ve competently demonstrated the value. Ask a recruitment consultant for 10 grand and it’s as if you’ve asked for the world. I know who I’m going to speak to.
August 13th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
All of the jobs boards are awful anymore. 5-6 years ago they were great, but now…forget it! You get unqualified people who blindly apply for jobs and the resume databases are filled with the habiutally unemployed. I work for a Fortune 100 company and we do not use any of them anymore. Good luck getting them to stop hounding you though…all the reps from Monster, Careerbuilder and Hotjobs are really glorified used car salesman in my book.
August 14th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
I will tell you that as a job-seeker, Careerbuilder is sorely lacking. The main activity I get as a result of being signed up to that site, is spam in my mailbox. The other frustrating part is the “Work from Home” and other shady types of jobs listed on there. If it wasn’t for their connection to the newspapers, I don’t see how they survive. I believe it started out as a noble business model, but morphed into a poor one.
August 15th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Mark, I don’t believe for a second you work for a Fortune 100 company because if you did you would have given reason and alternatives to why you’re not using the major job boards, instead of making blanket statements. I DO work for a Fortune 100 company and as someone who speaks with all three boards often the reps I deal with are all pretty good. I’m partial to the monster rep because we went to the same University. However, we’ve seen the best results as of late from CareerBuilder and Hotjobs, so most of our spend will go in there direction.
My biggest problem with all the major job boards is that anyone can apply to any job and sometimes sifting through a lot of garbage trying to find the diamond. We used to use staffing exclusively, then we witnessed our job description on these sites under a staffing firm. Needless to say we we’re upset and went to job boards and haven’t looked back. Were branching out now and using LinkedIn and such put again it’s a time issue. We don’t have time to be going after these people on LinkedIn and other sites.
As someone whose been in Sales their entire career I can venture a guess that these companies are all Sales people and well that’s what sales companies do, make lots of out bound calls. Get over yourselves acting like you’re too busy to take a sales call.
August 25th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Matt–Judging by your poor use of punctuation and sentence structure, I find it hard to believe you work for anyone! It’s clear you are a either a rep for one of the “Big 3,” or more likely, a lazy recruiter who is deathly afraid your company will get rid of your “crutch.” You are probably one of those recruiters that simply pulls resumes out of the database, pass them along to the hiring managers and then pat yourself on the back for a job well done. ha A trained monkey could do that! A GOOD recruiter uses networking, industry contacts and plenty of other web resources to find qulaity talent. You can continue to use the boards and scoop up their sub-par talent all you like. Leave the good candidates for those of us that know what we are doing!
August 26th, 2008 at 7:55 am
“We had to learn a sales presentation that was to be exercised in every sales call. We were also required to learn rebuttals verbatim to every type of objection a client could possibly have.” – original writer
Learning a presentation about your services and products; preparing your employees on how to handle objections…how ridiculous…this is unheard of (sarcasm).
“Former Sales Guy,” I wish you well in next career, but note, sometimes you have to find something within a company or position that you can truly enjoy and can find some form of opportunity that can motivate you to commit your daily actions to excellence because finding something you don’t like about a company or position is inevitable.
August 27th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Read the whole thing.
“During training we were told NOT TO TALK TO HR when calling into companies”.
“focused more on teaching us ‘how to sell’ than how to help employers and understand their needs”.
“sales reps are required to make 125 outgoing calls-per-day”.
Not to mention they do mass hiring and will bring on anyone with a pulse. They lose them just as fast as they bring them on.
They have about 20 reps calling into one small area at a time. No wonder so many employers hate them.
November 17th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
CB does work better than the horrible monster known popularly as Monster.com.
However, i too am hounded by local papers calling themselves CareerBuilder. Because my company is National, they all get to me and none of them care a lick. As a result, i never pick up the phone unless i know who is calling, and i always delete messages from CB or monster reps after they identify themselves.
November 18th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
All of the “previously employed” at Careerbuilder.com are only complaining because they were not good at their job. I thank you for putting a smile on my face with your idiotic comments today. Just like any job out there, people complain when they dont succeed. As far as “HR” is concerned, we dont need nor should we want to talk to them. They are never the decsion makers and hardly hold a budget worth having a conversation about.
February 14th, 2009 at 4:33 am
I have always claimed that >95% of the people in the “industry” don’t have a sniff. After reading these posts, this assertion seems to have been further validated.
Recruiting / consulting IS sales – and very few will succeed in it. Even less will be honest and ethical which is what is required to develop a trusting and positive relationship with HR (which is the last on the list – after you have gone direct to management and proven your worth). My harshest comments are yet to come: very few should be in this career – and in another 2-6 months – about 75% will have bailed back toi McD’s anyways (same statistic in every economic downturn) It’s a REALLY hard job and will drive most people crazy. Either you can do it – or not (likely not) Not a whole lot different than selling real estate. I wish everyone all the best though – it takes guts to get into this bus and try to make it work and that sets you apart from your friends and colleagues in almost every respect.
Cheers!
August 13th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
We’ve heard all of the above a million times which is why we created Talent Hog.
Sorry for adding a cheezy plug about my company….it was just too eezy.
And best of all, we’re looking for good sales people all the time so any of you ex-CB people, give us a call
Scott
September 24th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Posts like this are interesting. You are on one side or the other, not much middle. You are the Sales Person or you are the HR Buying Person. On both sides you have people that are very bad-poor at their job, people that are average, and people that are good-great.
You really only get the best experience from people that are good-great at their job on both sides. Any mixture there is going to be some sort of negative response.
Unfortunately, the agressive Sales Person who is bad-poor at selling gives the Sales Person a bad name. On the other hand, the HR Buying Person who is bad-poor at their job gives HR a bad name.