“They weren’t terrible when we hired them…it can’t always be their fault they don’t work out” came the statement from a highly successful CEO whilst discussing his frustrations with me regarding sales attrition.
This CEO’s observation and frustration is common across large and small companies. He was witnessing a disturbing pattern that goes a little something like this:-
Expensive recruitment process, impressive early signs of team fit and performance turning into a full year lack-lustre performance, 6 months of poor performance leading to performance management and/or further expense through a compromise agreement. Repeat cycle.
Most companies rely on traditional approaches to recruitment in the sales environment. This typically involves working with a recruiter or in house team on the sourcing of candidates followed by interviews with various sales leaders and possibly an HR representative. The Sales leaders or business owners of smaller companies know what ‘good’ looks like, have prepared well for the interview and recruit accordingly. So why does it consistently go wrong? Why are companies spending vast resources and missing their growth objectives due to vacant sales territories and under-performing people?
A study by Deloitte in 2015 found that organisations on average spend around 52 days filling a vacancy. Empty territories don’t help much in the delivery of sales and business targets. Why are the women and men that had so much potential transformed from the recruits that the leaders had high hopes for to ‘another one that didn’t work out’? A Harvard University study reported that 80% of employee turnover can be attributed to mistakes made during the hiring process. Research from Michigan State University indicates that traditional hiring techniques only provide a 14% likelihood of successful job hire. It is worth noting that the odds of winning a hand at Black Jack are significantly higher at around 40%.
There is a huge and repeatedly missed opportunity to use candidate psychometric and competency based profile testing to dramatically improve the chances of getting that initial decision right. Traditional interviewing just doesn’t work alone due to the following myths:
1. Companies believe they have an objective, unbiased interviewing process.
2. Companies believe they interview the candidate impartially, and don’t focus on his or her personality.
3. Companies believe that performance-on-the-interview indicates performance on the job.
If these three myths were true, hiring managers could follow this plan and hire top talent and reduce turnover, therefore mitigating some of the costs associated with it. Unfortunately, most interviewers fall prey to the urge to size up a candidate by relying on their gut instinct—and then selling the job to them.
The truth is:
1. They don’t have an objective, repeatable, scalable, and assessable interviewing process. In addition to investing in structured behavioural interview training, on-line competency based assessments can help you figure out a person’s true strengths and weaknesses. It is one of the few tools in the process that is completely objective and quantitative. When given early enough, assessments can also uncover information that the interviewer can use during the interview.
2. Many hiring managers have tremendous difficulty separating the candidate’s personality from his or her qualifications. They may spend too much time bonding with an amiable candidate, and then ask very few job-pertinent questions. Worse, and this is most often the case, the interviewer spends 80 percent of the time talking instead of listening, thus gleaning little information from the candidate.
3. The final mistake in interviewing is to believe a candidate’s performance in an interview mirrors his or her performance on the job. Candidates will be on their best behaviour during an interview and will undoubtedly tell a hiring manager exactly what they want to hear. This is quite similar to going on a first date. It isn’t until the third or fourth date when you begin to meet the real person you are dating. The same can be said for interviewing. Unfortunately, many hiring managers are fooled by a one-hour schmooze-fest and end up hiring the wrong person because they like the candidate… and they don’t like interviewing. In their minds, the quicker the job is filled, the better.
Think about spending a few hundred pounds using a sales specific psychometric competency based assessment to support your decision making process. It’s a miniscule investment given the amount of wasted time, resources and opportunity that you are likely to expend without one.
Once you have improved your odds of selecting the right candidate you have a far better chance of success. The first few months are likely to be really positive but a lack-lustre performance is still just around the corner despite the assessment. In Part two of this post we will explore the pitfalls awaiting the new recruit and what you can both do to navigate them.
Get in touch if you would like to know more about our competency based assessments for sales or how we help organisations achieve their potential. Many of the best and most advanced organisations in the world work with us.
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