This topic can be quite a minefield and a conversation that may need to be looked at from many different angles. In the UK age discrimination has been unlawful in employment, training and education since October 2006. In the recruitment world in the UK there are strict rules in relation to posting job adverts, collecting resumes and obtaining information from candidates that contain data reflecting their age.

Now what I am looking for here is comments and responses relating to you being honest, this is a blog post for honesty and not just the ‘Politically Correct’ answers. Here some questions to put some meat on the bone:

Do you really agree with ruling out Ageism in the work place?
What obstacles have you come across in recruitment which relate to an individuals age?
Have you ever been accused of being ageist and what was the outcome?
Have you been in a situation when ageism was against someone because they were too young?
Do you honestly think older people are more wiser and better groomed for the working world?
If a client asks you how old a candidate is, what do you reply, how do you deal with this?
Removing dates of education on a resume is a step too far don’t you think? But the dates do give away the persons age!

I am going to sit on the fence on this one, the jury’s out for me and I am really undecided. With more candidates and less jobs currently it would be a tough call to choose between a 30 year old Oxford educated individual and a 58 year old person with 35 years worth of commercial experience. Is it fair to discriminate when it comes to age. If you are, lets say over 50, how would you feel up against a 27 year old for the same position?

What are the right answers here??
This is a tough one…. Let’s debate.

Ok, So we all have to start somewhere and I have recently launched myself into the blogging sphere and not without a few bruises along the way!! It seems that there is a protocol when it comes to the blogging world, but a protocol that you are not warned or advised about, it’s similar to going on a roller-coaster for the first time and hitting a peak at the top with a vertical drop, nobody told you it was going to be there you just had to experience it and deal with it yourself!

Recently I created a blog post about my wonderful new business product/service (which I won’t mention for fear of being accused that this is just a blatant spam!), that since its launch has attracted great reviews and paying customers both in the UK and the USA. Now forgive me for perhaps getting it wrong first time round but it seems that you are not allowed to discuss or promote your services on blogs as this is frowned upon? Now I accept that if someone appears onto a blog, makes a single post and then disappears into the Wild West never to be seen again, then this most definitely could be taken as a blatant spam, but what if the the blogger was genuine, what if they wanted to promote their product to the blogging world relating to their industry sector which in this case was recruitment? What if the blogger was that excited about something that is helping recruiters globally that he wanted to share it with others. What if the blogger had 16 years of successful recruitment experience behind him to realise the potential of what his product was capable of doing?

Now this blog post is not about discussing my product and service, I believe the product and service is excellent and so do our customers, I do not expect everyone to agree with me, we live in a democratic world, not everyone loves the iPhone and I do not expect everyone to agree with my posts. This blog post is to bring to everyone’s attention to the unfair and in my opinion quite rude and blatant attacks that are put upon new bloggers from the hounds of the blogging world. The only way I can describe it, is when a new child joins a school and is not accepted by his fellow classmates, they form a gang and one by one they taunt and bully the child. There is always a gang leader and his fellow gang classmates of weak and bad judgement who then decide to tag along for the ride in fear of being a victim themselves, in fact one of the classmates in the recent attack even claims that one of the instigators has an image that we ‘ALL know and Love’ ?? We let me say that I don’t ‘Know’ it and I certainly don’t ‘Love’ it..

Now I’m not going to go as far as saying this is cyber bullying and personally I was never bullied as a kid at school but can really understand what it feels like and would want to protect my own kids from this ever happening. This is just sheer rudeness of the highest degree, rudeness from adult people who utilise a 17 inch flat screen computer monitor to sit behind and have their little sarcastic and offensive rants. I do wonder if these bloggers were if ever put into a civilised environment (god help us) within a room of people, they would still be as blatantly offensive? The computer and social networking for some people seems to have given them the right to judge and belittle others with extreme ease.

I did wonder why we have the option to moderate comments on blogs before they are publicly displayed? I now know why! It seems that if someone writes sarcastic and abrupt responses they then find it odd that the person who initiated the blog post will not allow their comments to be shown? How strange can that be that if someone uses the term ‘Absurd’ or an actual individual who supposedly works for the site then uses the term ‘we are gonna get shit’ can then expect their posts to be publicly displayed??… It then amazes me that the witch hunt continues and these bloggers then have enough time on their hands from not doing what they should be and recruiting, to then go and attempt to repost the original blog for others to see??

A warning to ALL new bloggers, be careful out there in the blogging world.. Dip you toe in gently and look out for the hounds that feel that this part of the internet world solely belongs to them because they have been around it longer than you have. Do not shy away from blogging, do not feel bullied to respond or accept comments from people who do not have the common sense to communicate decently. Do keep blogging about what you believe in and what you have an opinion about, but ALWAYS respect others and the tone in which you communicate. A rule of thumb is that if you wouldn’t speak to someone face to face in the way that you blog, then don’t attempt to post the blog in the first place.

Now maybe us Brits with our stiff upper lips are lets say slightly more sensitive when it comes to sarcasm and down right stupidity but there should be a global rule for everyone with regards to blogging which is; don’t use a blog to offend others just to win yourself points from your small little clan of followers, use a blog constructively to talk and discuss about things relevant to the blogs industry and topics of conversation. If you really do not like something you see on a blog, rather than publicly trying to embarrass or undermined someone’s comment, maybe consider a direct message to the individual to discuss things in a more mature and business like fashion.

Blogging from what I can see is here to stay, it’s a social network tool but is also a great way of business people communicating, it is not an excuse to have a fight with kids at play time. For those King Pins in the blogging world, sit back, take a deep breath and remember that us newbies to the blogging world will NOT be put off by silly comments, be respectful of each other and that way we will all have a more harmonious experience.

I have learnt my lesson with the more experienced bloggers, but hope that they will learn theirs and never to assume that everyone knows the rules.. I am a happy family man and a successful businessman trying to make an honest decent living, I hold no grudges and do not go out of my way to offend people or make enemies, I refuse to be made to feel uncomfortable by others and will stamp on anyone that behaves inappropriately. All that said… I now know the ‘unspoken’ rules.

For my fellow new bloggers like me, welcome on board, its great to make your acquaintance! For the other bloggers, you know who you are… Lets start again.

Now I am all for new technology when it comes to benefiting my business processes. I have developed my skills in recruitment and sales through quite a few technological changes and started in recruitment with a Rolodex and some applicant cards (we now call them candidates!). We have been introduced to that wonderful piece of technology called the database or if you are really into your terminology I think the today’s trendy description would be a CRM or Customer Relationship Management system, personally I prefer the word ‘database’ and call me old fashion but each to their own!

When I first started out in the crazy world of recruitment the use of a pen was as common as James Bond ending up in bed with a woman who turned out to be working for the dark side.. The use of the pen was an everyday occurrence from the moment you walked into the office to the moment you left. But alas the pen is a thing of the past and the keyboard is now its replacement.

It took me a great while to perfect the use of the keyboard and if truth be know I still am not a fluent touch typist! It also has taken me a great while to really get to grips (or not so) of not using the pen as the main tool in every day business. We are now encouraged and to a degree forced to record every single piece of business process onto the database by using our wonderful keyboard, we spend more time tapping the keyboard than near on anything else in our everyday lives, if its a call, if its a new candidate, if its a lead, if its a new client – we log it. In fact we record everything that happens, although I do wonder sometimes if we do actually record and log information because we can rather than if we actually need to?

I accept that the human mind cannot remember everything, but computers can. I also accept that technology is very much here to stay and we should embrace it and make it work for us and not us work for it! I do still miss the pen, my wife bought a Montblanc pen for a ‘special’ birthday recently, and if I use it twice a week its a lot! This blog post was not to dismiss technology at all, in fact I have welcomed technology with open arms to the point that I am the Co-Founder of MyResourcer.com an internet based application for the global recruitment industry and therefore realise the power and potential that we have at our finger tips. But just for one tiny moment, let us all remember (if we are old enough) the days when fountain pens, ball point pens and any other types of writing device were used in every day business. I guarantee that the ‘Pen’ will be a historic feature within our museums worldwide within the next 50 years as digital signatory will be the new age and our beloved ink friend will be a distant memory. Long live the ballpoint.

Those of us that have been fortunate enough to be involved in world of sales have at some stage in our career been taught the open questioning technique. It seems that regardless of technical innovations, wars, medicine, politics and anything else, the open questioning within a sales technique, has never, and will never, die.

Mr Kipling does make great cakes but Mr Rudyard Kipling was the man that created our 5 opening questions…

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

Opening questioning has been taught in many training sessions and classrooms around the globe and today the open question is still going strong. It works well, in fact it works extremely well!

Open questioning is not just used in sales scenarios but in every day life, when speaking to spouses, friends and colleagues. The power of asking a question which MUST require an answer other than a YES or a NO is a clever and valuable tool in many situations in life.

Attempting to get someone to respond to a question with an answer other than yes or no is achieved with the open question but when you actually are seeking the yes or no answer, then asking the closed question is totally acceptable and the technique just as powerful.

How good are you at using open and closed questions in your profession? It’s used in Recruitment and all other forms of sales and some people are great at these techniques and some people are not so! One of my old time favourites of a closed question with the hope of receiving a resounding YES would be “If I could show you a way of ……. would you be interested?” Now you have to be pretty confident that what you are showing your prospect is damn good and he/she will be itching to say YES. Opening Questions such as “How often do you think you would use this service” are great or “What time is best for you to visit, either 3pm or 5pm?”, now that last cracker was a combination of an open questioning technique with an alternative close thrown in for good measure!

Alternative closing is another tool in the sales persons box and when used correctly has a great use in various situations. Recruiter’s as well as all sales people may tend to use alternative closing on time or day related questions such as “Mr Client I would like to visit you on Tuesday at 12 or would Wednesday at 9 , which one would be best for you?” now this prospect cannot say yes and neither can he say no to the question, he has to communicate with hopefully an agreement to one of your suggestions or at least a suggestion from him of an alternative day or time.

I have been involved in sales for nearly 25 years now and I never stop learning new techniques. A great sales person is someone that can listen and listen well, maybe that’s why we were given 2 ears and just one mouth? The art of a good sales person is one that can utilise their listening and spoken skills at the right time. Listen out for buying signals, if you don’t stop yapping, you may not hear them!

Twenty years ago I was fortunate enough to receive training from an American trainer at a course in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. The trainer taught me a skill which I still use to this day called ‘needs based selling’, it’s nothing new to the sales world and its technique as with all sales techniques is quite easy to use, as long as you apply it correctly. Always sell to someone’s needs is the key to this technique. Here’s an example:

A man goes into a shop to purchase a radio. The shop sales person grabs the opportunity and asks if he can help the customer. The customer says “yes I am looking to purchase a radio”. The sales person proceeds to say the following “Great, this radio I have here is the best on the market, it has Dolby digital stereo, multi channel broadcasting pre-sets, a large base speaker, sleep timer and a great carry case for transporting it”. The customer looks at the sales person and says “Thanks very much, I will think about it” and walks out the shop. No sale there!

The customer proceeds to walk into the next shop and again says to the sales person “I am looking to purchase a radio”, This sales person then says to the customer “Great, lets find out what features you need from the radio Sir, what is it that’s important to you that this radio offers?” The customer then says “I would like a radio that has a an alarm clock built into it so I can use it when I travel, I would also like it to be able to run on both mains and battery power, I would like to plug my mp3 player into it so it needs to have an audio in socket and finally it must be able to transmit on all wave lengths such as MW, FM and LW”. The salesman presents the customer with a radio that’s provides all those needs that the customer had. The customer purchased the radio and the sale was closed. Finding out the needs of your prospect is critical, needs based selling works. Try it.

I would be very interested to hear of other techniques that you use in everyday sales scenarios. What works for you and what doesn’t? There are so many other techniques that I have not yet mentioned that I will cover such as “Negative Selling”.

If you have any techniques that work well for you then please do share them with us all.