Sales-rep positions rank at top of hard-to-fill jobs

Carol Ann Schneider knows the value of sales talent.

"There isn't a business in the world that doesn't run by sales," Schneider said.

As founder, chairwoman and chief executive officer of Seek Inc., an employment agency with 16 offices in four states, Schneider has had to be her own sales representative. She knows that effective sales reps are rare enough that she doesn't offer to find sales people for her clients.

"It is very hard to find good salespeople," Schneider said.

From Seek's headquarters in Grafton, Wis., Schneider can see why sales representatives top Manpower Inc.'s latest lists of hardest-to-fill jobs.

Manpower, the nation's leading staffing company, recently reported that sales reps top the wish lists of employers surveyed globally.

Manpower tapped more than 2,400 U.S. employers and nearly 37,000 organizations worldwide for its second annual look at talent supply. And for the second year in a row, sales representatives ranked toughest to hire.

"The salespeople, they need those people on the front line because they bring in the money," said Laurie Purcell, president of Key Search Group, a placement firm in Wisconsin.

"The good people are always going to be busy working."

Teachers, managers/executives, truck drivers, delivery drivers and accountants also repeated from the 2006 U.S. list.

Besides finding which positions are in shortest supply, Manpower also learned that 41 percent of the employers — both domestically and globally — report difficulty filling jobs because of a lack of available talent.

That is up from 40 percent in the 2006 survey worldwide and down from 44 percent in the United States, though Manpower noted that its quarterly research on employment intentions has found that U.S. employers are in less of a hiring mode than one year ago.

A separate survey released recently by Monster Worldwide and Development Dimensions International found 51 percent of 1,250 hiring managers globally reported finding fewer qualified candidates than two years ago.

Jonas Prising, president of Manpower North America, pointed out that researchers are discovering a disparity between what employers want and what job applicants are offering.

"The reality is that the talent crunch is more complex than a shortage of people," Prising said in a statement. "To bridge the talent gap, we must dig deeper and consider issues such as skill levels, geographic dispersion and demographics."

To keep their businesses going despite insufficient job candidates, employers are using outsourcing, technology and contingency hiring, Prising said.

Employment specialists say they're seeing companies being more flexible in their personnel policies to attract more of the workers they're seeking.

For instance, Jill Zoromski, Milwaukee managing director for Capital H Group consultants, said some employers are "silver mining," arranging part-time and flexible schedules for senior-level executives who are nearing or past retirement.

"There are some positions that don't lend themselves to flexibility, and flexibility is a big currency these days," Zoromski said.