The Hiring/Training Tradeoff

Selling organizations such as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, and Xerox mainly hire recent college graduates for their sales positions and train them thoroughly to be successful. These companies view their training programs as a corporate asset that generates a differential competitive advantage. In contrast, some other companies hire only people with sales experience; they expect the new hires to integrate quickly and contribute to the selling effort.

The labor market has an impact on which of these hiring strategies a company chooses. In tight labor markets, it's typical for companies to seek inexperienced hires. Economic recessions, on the other hand, result in corporate downsizing initiatives that ...

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