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Standard job interviews are about as effective as a coin toss in hiring new employees. In fact, most hiring decisions are made subconsciously within the first 4 to 20 seconds of meeting a candidate. Most hiring assumptions are made before the candidate even opens his or her mouth! But there are ways to improve your odds of hiring an effective employee.
Recently, IMDA Update spoke with John Saterfiel, a 30-year veteran of human resources management, about the drawbacks of current methods of hiring and the advantages of using pre-employment assessments. IMDA has entered into an agreement with Saterfiel & Associates (www.saterfiel.com), a developer of employment selection programs and an affiliate of Achievement Tec, a provider of validated assessments to employers. Per the agreement, Saterfiel will assess potential employees of IMDA member companies against a profile of peak-performing specialty medical sales reps.
Update: Why should specialty sales and marketing companies take a second look at how they hire sales reps?
Saterfiel: Typically, when a sales force fails to achieve desired results, the company establishes sales training programs and ultimately replaces the lowest-performing reps. It’s a never-ending cycle. In most companies, 80 percent of the sales seem to come from 20 percent of the sales force. While the objective has always been to try to clone the top 30 percent, that never seems to happen. If a competitor manages to target and hire away those top sales producers, what happens to the company’s bottom line? The results can be devastating. What we really need to do is to strengthen the selection process.
I once had a friend who claimed to be the best interviewer around. What’s the success rate for a really good interviewer?
About five years ago, the Society for Human Resource Management did a study in which human resource managers were asked about certain HR functions and how valid their decisions were. Most rated recruiting as the top function. The majority of the professional recruiters rated themselves as having about 50 percent effectiveness. The best rated themselves as roughly 60 percent effective. Also consider that most interviewers have little or no actual training regarding interviewing techniques.
It doesn’t sound like the interview process is very reliable. Can you give us a few examples of some of the problem areas?
Standard interviewing processes are about as effective as a coin toss. Many studies prove that the hiring decision is made subconsciously within the first 4 to 20 seconds of meeting a candidate. In fact, most of our hiring assumptions are made before the candidate even opens his mouth!
The majority of hiring decisions are made based upon the visual impact of the candidate. One headhunter used this factor very effectively by requiring that all of his clients wear a blue suit, white shirt and red tie to the interviews he set up. He had one of the highest placement rates in the industry!
We even judge factors such as intelligence based on appearance. If the candidate is lean and wiry and wearing gold-rimmed glasses, we assume that he is intelligent and energetic. If the candidate has a large frame (not necessarily fat), we assume that he is lower in intelligence, a bit awkward and somewhat on the lazy side.
Since we are not actually aware of all these subconscious determinations, the whole process is biased from the beginning. Many interview questions are asked in a manner that only confirms our subconscious decisions.
There’s another problem with interviewing. We know that most people exaggerate their levels of achievement and performance, and some even lie on their applications and resumes. Since interviewers have no way to verify many of the statements and claims made on applications and resumes, they base their decisions on "gut feelings" and primitive instincts.
It does appear that the standard interview is very subjective. What are some other problem areas that interviewers should watch out for?
Every interviewer has his own "hot buttons," which can cause a candidate to be rejected or embraced under the "halo effect." Very few interviewers can tell you what their personal hot buttons are, because they arise from subconscious instincts. You’ve heard of left brain and right brain theories. There is a third type of brain, the primitive brain, which controls our "fight or flee" responses. The primitive brain has no analytical abilities; it is entirely reactive.
When a negative hot button is pressed, the primitive brain is switched to the "off" position, and a candidate may be rejected due to subconscious instincts. Let’s say the interviewer moves on to the next candidate. Because his or her primitive brain switch is still set to the "off" position, the candidate doesn’t stand a chance unless the interviewer’s switch moves back to the “on” position.
I previously mentioned that some applicants exaggerate their levels of achievement and performance. Unfortunately, if the candidate lies with enthusiasm, the primitive brain usually accepts the fabrication as true. On the other hand, if the candidate tells the truth blandly, the primitive brain may evaluate it as a falsehood.
If interviewing isn’t the answer to getting great sales reps, what is?
Pre-employment assessments, which measure mental ability and personality factors, should be used in conjunction with interviews. Pre-assessments are not influenced by warm and fuzzy feelings, nor are they bedazzled by visual sensory perception. They add an element of objectivity to the selection process. By using a pre-employment assessment, for example, we might see that an intelligent-looking candidate with a master’s degree may actually be a slow learner and poor problem-solver. I have seen that happen on a number of occasions.
Ideally, we want to see agreement between the assessment report and the information gathered during the interview. Where agreement is lacking, we should raise a red flag. A validated pre-employment assessment gives the interviewer a sense of a candidate’s overall strengths and weaknesses. That’s important, because each strength carries a weakness with it, and vice versa.
Most interviews focus on only uncovering a few of the negatives. Personality assessments help provide a more objective view of the candidate and frequently show that some of the areas regarded strictly as weaknesses also have positive factors associated with them.
For example, applicants who are low in sociability often fare poorly in interviews. That’s because the interviewer doesn’t get any of the warm and fuzzy feelings that he or she gets from the highly sociable candidates. The candidate with the lower sociability level may actually be the best candidate for the job. A good personality assessment evaluates a number of factors and places individual traits, such as a low sociability level, into proper focus.
How do pre-employment assessments work when screening potential sales reps?
They should look at both the mental aptitudes and personality dimensions. That’s important because personality measures alone do not give us the complete picture of an applicant. In fact, it is extremely difficult to accurately predict sales performance without some measure of a person’s mental aptitudes.
For example, one person might score high in mental acuity but low in organizational skills. Such a combination might indicate that the person is good at thinking on his or her feet. Another person who scores low in mental acuity could achieve some balance with a high score in the organization dimension.
If you were to use a sales assessment that lacked some type of measure of mental ability, you would probably fall into the old trap of looking for salespeople with high levels of organization or planfulness. By doing so, you could very well disqualify some of the most intelligent applicants. It is quite common for individuals that score high in mental acuity to also score low in organization.
What are some of the criteria by which a pre-employment assessment evaluates a candidate’s mental abilities, and how can they be applied to potential sales reps?
One parameter is Memory Recall. A candidate who scores low in that aptitude probably does not pay much attention to what is going on in the world around them. This can be extremely detrimental in sales as far as prospecting is concerned. Would you really expect that sales rep to be aware of competitive trends and products? What about the ability to keep up with the company’s new products and those of their competitors?
Another parameter is Vocabulary. A low score might be a liability, especially for a sales rep that is expected to regularly call on physicians or upper level management. The people in those positions will subconsciously associate poor vocabulary with low mental acuity. We rarely seek advice or listen to recommendations from people whom we do not regard as being close to our own level of intelligence.
Other criteria may include knowledge of business terms, mechanical interest and numerical perception.
How about personality traits?
The Sales Achiever [the assessment for potential sales reps] measures 10 personality dimensions. Different personality dimensions and mental aptitudes can work together to produce certain predictable behaviors. We refer to those combinations as correlations. For example, let’s say that a sales rep has a very low energy level. He starts his day with his batteries only half-charged and wishing that he could get another couple of hours of sleep. If that individual also scored high in Emotional Development (mainly a measure of a person's sense of urgency) we would know that he has the tendency to procrastinate. Someone who lacks a good sense of urgency will wait forever to see results. The Emotional Development score in this case is also compounded by the individual’s calm nature, which results in a very “laid back” sales rep. In some circles, such a person might be labeled as being motivationally challenged. That is an example of how correlations work.
Assessments can be shallow. The test taker can usually tell what is being measured and can therefore put down the “right” answers. How can you tell if the candidate is being honest with his answers, and how do you know how accurate the results really are?
The personality questionnaire is designed so that most applicants do not know what is being measured. Still, that doesn’t deter them from trying to put down the “right” answers. The Sales Achiever includes a distortion scale that gives an indication of just how direct or honest the candidate has been regarding his responses. High scores indicate that the candidate has exaggerated his standards or he has told the company what he thinks that they wanted to hear. He probably did the same thing during the interview with the sales manager, as well as his resume. Anytime you see a high distortion score, it should raise a red flag in your mind telling you to dig deeper on the reference checks and discount the resume for exaggerations.
Is there a personality dimension that measures job satisfaction?
Most employers realize that employment is a two way street and it takes a commitment from both parties for the arrangement to work smoothly. Not only does the company have to be happy with the employee, the employee has to be happy with the employer. The closer that the candidate matches the hiring profile, the more productive and happier he will be on the job.
I believe that part of the magic of the system is that the employer realizes up front each candidate’s potential benefits and problems. It’s kind of like looking into a crystal ball. The employer makes a conscious decision that he can live with both the strengths and the weaknesses of the candidate or he continues with the recruiting process. The employer has a pretty good idea about the level of job satisfaction that the candidate will have before he makes the hiring decision.
I definitely believe in the saying that you don’t always get what you want out of life, but you usually end up with exactly what you expect. That holds especially true regarding the people you hire.
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