Xtra Effort updated its web site – www.xtraeffort.com –  to make it easier for candidates and clients to navigate.  Candidates can easily identify open positions with a variety of search/sort capabilities, and apply to any position online.

The XERD helps our clients better inform candidates what makes their company and the specific career opportunity attractive. It also provides an explanation of our client’s technology or services, and a no nonsense listing of the required candidate attributes and experiences to be considered suitable for the position.
Candidates can request a XERD for any open posted position.

Below is an example of a XERD.

Solution: Xtra Effort’s client develops and … Continue Reading

Computerworld’s “Best Places to Work” represents terrific enterprise sales leads across 100 corporations.

The profiles include quotes from key personnel, exciting projects, hot technology initiatives, work culture, and other data points to enable you to reference more meaningful topics when communicating with these enterprise prospects.

This resource should also enable you to send congratulation notes and build better rapport if the companies represent your existing clients.

Have at it!

Xtra Effort has noticed some employers are being adversely impacted by being too slow to evaluate candidates.  Their finalists join other employers.

Xtra Effort suggests employers define an objective for the timeline and processes necessary to evaluate, check references, and make an offer.

Employers have faced the challenge of increased customer demand (good news) with much leaner staffs from 2008-2009 cut backs.   More due diligence is being conducted to mitigate risk and insure alignment.  Lastly, with so many quality candidates previously being ”on the street”, employers sense they can afford 8 – 12 week evaluation cycles.

 However, candidates now have more quality options and fear joining employers who take … Continue Reading

Increased client hiring demand requires Xtra Effort to expand and hire a fifth team member.

We are looking for a professional:

1a) Whose last 2 – 4 years have been as a contingency based recruiter  in the IT segment, OR …

1b) have been a commission centric inside sales experience within the IT segment.

2) Candidates should have  2- 8 years experience since graduating a four school with a BA or BS degree, with a 3.0 or better GPA. 

3) Willing and able to make the commute to our Westford, MA office.

Xtra Effort is a four person, nine year, Westford, MA based recruiting firm who
helps technology centric companies … Continue Reading

You may have employees who leave your company because they were not sufficiently productive or there was not a cultural fit, but there may be a few whose departure represented a big loss to your team.  The loss disrupts team productivity, unity, and momentum.   The loss is particularly stinging if the departed employee was an entrenched ‘A’ player who was consistently surpassing all operating metrics for 24+ months.

As a leader, you respond by engaging your fortitude, put on a brave face, find a replacement, and lead the team to take that next hill.  “He had to do what was best for … Continue Reading

Many clients are requesting candidates with 3-8 years of experience because some employers consider them to be more affordable, coachable, energetic, driven, willing to travel, and equipped to implement new ideas related to web technologies.

If you are in your mid 20’s and have developed skills and produced results in Sales, Sales Engineering, and Professional Services in just a couple of years since graduating college – you are in very good situation.  However, the next five years of your career may contribute most to becoming “what you want to be when you grow up”.  It is recommended you not make a … Continue Reading

My bicycle trip to San Francisco, and through Sonoma and Napa Valleys helped validate the economy is improving and Americans are optimistic.

 Small town stores, the Backroads touring company, fellow tour guests, vineyards, estates, wineries, and  restaurants all agreed that their businesses have experienced a positive upturn.  

Fellow cycling guests were from all parts of the country, and included a venture capitalist, a CEO of a Healthcare company, advertising sales people, a petroleum engineer, a CPA, an ER Doctor and administrator, a bond trader, an environmental engineer (who advises heavy industry on air cleanliness), and a bicycle sales person.

Their common positive outlook … Continue Reading

Xtra Effort’s current service offering is recruiting Sales, Sales Engineers, and Professional Services people. However, back in February 2001, Xtra Effort was created to help IT departments and software companies hire software developers. 

The rational for change was the 2002 recession’s adverse impact on software developer hiring activity, and the increase in offshore development limited our target market for local permanent placement.  Demand for developers did not match the demand for customer facing roles, at least for full time, permanent placement hiring requirements.

In 2003 Xtra Effort received hiring requirements for Sales and Sales Engineers and we were enthusiastic to create standardized and repeatable best … Continue Reading

CIO Magazine April issue polled CIO’s for their 2010 investment priorities.

 Guess what is the leading initiative?  You guessed it, Cloud Computing, followed by mobile applications and infrastructure, server virtualization, and content/document management.

 Close runner ups are security, CRM, video conferencing, business intelligence, BPM, data management, and SOA.

 I was surprised not to see data storage, but suspect it’s been categorically absorbed by Cloud computing and Server virtualization.

 Despite the improving economy, I guess Service Desk Management, Asset Management, Software development management, Asset Management, portfolio management, change management, configuration management … and all things management are not sufficiently tied to ROI. Their … Continue Reading

Xtra Effort has been engaged by three different companies over the past three weeks to help them hire Inside sales people.

What is unique from the past:

Each company’s entire sales model is based on inside sales with no field sales emphasis.

Although outbound prospecting will be required, considerable resources will be dedicated to generated demand via Sales 2.0 and web marketing technologies, i.e., Eloqua, Marketo, Hubspot, etc, and their integration to Salesforce.com .

Channel relationships are established early in the companies’ evolution in order to gain more immediate access to channel partner clients and shorten the time to deals. Channel partners – as … Continue Reading