I am planning to launch Toronto4couples.com newspaper on Friday May 1st.  Due to the fact that right now I am doing a lot of duties, by myself I merely don’t have time to sell the ad space myself even though I like selling when I do feel passionate about the product I sell.

Hence, my search for advertising sales representative who will sell newspaper first and then when pageviews go up on the website to sell ad space there as well.

You would think that with a recession economy it would be easy to snatch some top talent, but I find it pretty hard. I posted ads on all of university websites, craigslist, my facebook and twitter.I specifically asked not to write “canned”  cover letters, but rather describe goals and how the job fits in with them. I need to know what my employees ultimately desire to see if this job will actually help them. In a nutshell I want somebody real who will be able to develop relationships with clients and is eager to learn real business, rather than just have a line on their resume.

Results after one day:

-got two resumes without cover letter at all

-three cover letters start with “To Whom it May Concern” even though my name is in the ad

-one letter says that working for RomanZ Media Group Inc. was a person’s life long aspiration. I am flattered, but the company is only couple of months old.

Needless to say that I didn’t read past the cover letter. They all might have been very qualified candidates, but they failed to start a conversation with me  – and that is a must have for any sales rep.

So I will keep looking, I would rather have no sales reps at all than have bad sales people (they cost more in a long run).

Conclusion: if you are desperately looking for a job, don’t send your resume to 1000 people per day, send it to 10 but make it personal – that would yield more results trust me!