BY C. Lee Smith
Are you looking for yet another sales professional to join your organization? Maybe you’ve had your eye on someone and hope to make an offer before a competitor does. You’re not alone. But this is not the best way to hire a sales rep. Making a decision without the help of objective assessment data could result in disaster.
Why You Should Avoid Going with Your Gut Feeling
If you have a lead on a high-performing sales rep, you know other employers will be courting them as well. You don’t want to waste time and risk losing a candidate, especially if they decide the interview and assessment process at your company is a giant hassle.
If you rush to hire a person who you’ve seen in action at another company, you may think you have some idea of what you’re getting. You may have heard great things about this employee from their co-workers. And you may believe that this person has a sales talent that you need, such as delivering excellent customer service.
On the surface, this candidate seems like a miracle. If that’s the case, hit the brakes. When something seems too good to be true, it usually is.
Why Hiring Outside Candidates Increases Risk
Peter Cappelli, the George W. Taylor Professor of Management at the Wharton School, for the Harvard Business Review, outlined the history of how U.S. organizations hire. From the 1940s through the 1970s, our economy ran on the notion of lifetime employment. Employees stayed with companies from their first job through retirement.
In those days, “Corporations filled roughly 90% of their vacancies through promotions and lateral assignments,” Cappelli notes. Employers now only fill about 30% of open positions with internal candidates.
This trend means organizations don’t have much information about who they are hiring when they recruit outsiders. While it’s always appropriate to require an internal candidate to take an assessment before considering them for a promotion, it’s doubly important to enforce that rule for external candidates.
The Drawback of Using an Agency
If you’re like many hiring managers, you may rely on an outside agency to find candidates. In their search, your recruiters may dig up “passive” candidates. These candidates, says Cappelli, are not looking for work. But they could be convinced to jump ship for more money.
On the other hand, active candidates don’t always want more money. They may be more interested in the potential to advance their skills and their position in an organization. How will you know for sure? It may all come down to motivation.
Why Sales Assessments Must Measure Motivation
A hiring manager needs insight into the true motivations of the candidate. Often, a person who’s being recruited won’t understand what drives them. Or they may fear acknowledging that they have a high need for power.
This information, which is part of the assessment tool offered by TeamTrait™, will help you see what your candidate wants, and needs, from their work experience.
Do Assessments Work?
While you might worry that asking candidates to take assessments will put them off, the practice is gaining traction. Research shows that around 65% of employers use some kind of skills-based testing.
Do these efforts work? Researchers cite an Aberdeen Group study that reveals a 39% lower turnover rate when companies use pre-hire assessments to vet their candidates.
Which Type of Assessment is Best?
One way to improve your outcome is to pinpoint what you’re trying to accomplish with your assessment effort. For sales organizations, a comprehensive assessment like TeamTrait™ is the best way to hire a sales rep. While you need to understand a candidate’s sales skills and their behavioral tendencies, you can’t stop there. Measuring work tendencies such as resilience and determination will allow you to predict how a candidate will react in a challenging sales environment.
Similarly, assessment tools should also measure a candidate’s decision-making tendencies. How do they reason through problems they encounter? Are their reactions fueled by logic or emotion? And wouldn’t it be nice to know if that candidate you’ve been watching from afar possesses the chops to strategically think about how a prospect could use your product to improve productivity?
Conclusion
Don’t wing it when it’s time to recruit. The best way to hire a sales rep is to use a sales assessment that will indicate how the individual will behave in a variety of situations, interact with your team, and react after a hot prospect ghosts them.
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