Lee Salz is a Featured Columnist for The Business Journals.
There are so many questions on an interviewer’s mind when considering a candidate for a sales role. Yet, there is one foundational question that must be satisfactorily answered before extending an employment offer: Does this person want a job or this job?
In other words, does this candidate want any job other than the one he has or is he passionate about this specific sales role? There are unemployed job seekers who want and need to be working again. There are salespeople in miserable business environments who just want out. While you can certainly sympathize with those candidates and the situation they are in, it would be a mistake to empathize with them by extending job offers.
I got to see “a job” versus “this job” in action during a visit to the local mall’s hobby shop.
If you have teenagers, you probably know that the yo-yo is back in vogue. These aren’t the 25-cent yo-yos we grew up playing. These range in price from $50 to more than $100 each and are sold in hobby shops. My sons took an interest in these new toys, so I took them to the mall’s hobby shop one Saturday afternoon.