Hardly imaginable 3-4 years ago, the community of medical representatives in Romania is shaken with an increasing pace by word-of-mouth news about massive layoffs in different pharmaceutical companies, restructuring (read downsizing if not closing) of some operations, hire freezes and so on. Mergers and acquisitions are now viewed with a degree of pessimism, higher than ever. Such news come more often than not with a speed of lightning and takes most of the people by surprise. (more…)

It is said that Albert Einstein had hung in his office a poster that mentioned: “Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts”. Although this seems rather easy to understand it is often overlooked by business managers in their quest to prove soundness of their decisions. This comes as a consequence of business tendency to promote in management employees with quantitative and analytical skills rather than the intuitive more qualitatively inclined ones. (more…)

I happened to have a question whether 360° feedback shall be used as an “unequivocal” instrument in evaluating performance of managers.

Although at the first sight seems quite a good idea I have my doubts as whether it will provide a real value in evaluating performance of managers, especially in creating a link between rewards of managers for their activity and 360° feedback results.

Here there are a couple of reasons why: (more…)

A coment posted on: http://social.eyeforpharma.com/story/demonstrating-impact-training-and-development-programs-sfe

I do have a couple of comments on this interesting article, most of them actually building on Nick Pope’s (my regards for a beautiful workshop led in Barcelona SFE conference in spring 2008) ideas and insights.

One of the obstacles I see in measuring the effectiveness of T&D programs is a language conflict at the top. Senior executives (others than HR) are too much financially oriented. They want to see how much they get for how much they pay and less about others. HR executives in their attempt to comply with this and are looking for programs that have some kind of proof in this regard. In between is the sales executive who has to implement with little involvement in the equation (I am speaking about the real implementers in field). Actually there is a little room for articulating a vision about desired competences and specific processes to reach and certify them. Without such vision sales people often have the chance to witness one totally new training rollout or initiative every 2-3 years. Many of them are made to look like something totally new and are implemented as if no previous skill or training has been recorded earlier. (more…)

 I never had much respect for candidates who never asked at least a question at the end of the interview (or more if applying for sales job, also during the interview). Lack of curiosity is only smaller in relevance than integrity, especially if we speak about sales field.

During last week’s workshop on recruitment I just happen to realise that the greatest majority of applicants fail to ask their prospective employer an important question: How would their contribution to the organisation be evaluated if hired? (Who does it? How often? What are the criteria?) (more…)