Transforming Your Sales Force for the 21st Century The book, written for sales managers and executives in the distribution industry, provides a blue print for executives to transform their sales forces into highly directable, effective, focused performers. more info
Reasons to use sales hiring tests and pre-employment assessments...
Two of three new hires will disappoint in the first year
Two of three employees would rather work somewhere else
Ninety-five of 100 applicants will "exaggerate" to get a job
Most hiring decisions are made in haste - during the first five minutes of an interview
One of three businesses will be sued this year over an employment issue
Turnover costs thousands of dollars for every departing employee
Eighty percent of employee turnover is avoidable
AND...
Assessments Can Improve Hiring Success Rate by 500%...
The standard combination of résumé and interviews has traditionally been how most hiring and promotion decisions are made. However, experience shows only a coincidental correlation between the ability to deliver well in an interview and to deliver well on the job: 14% -- one good employee in every seven hires.
Adding background checks improves the success rate to 26%, but that's still only one good hire in every four. Using this filtered glimpse of a person's past has proven to be an unreliable predictor of a person's future. Unfortunately, many employers have accepted these poor results and the high cost of excessive turnover as a business reality.
Assessing behavioral traits improved the hiring success rate to 38%. When both thinking abilities and behavioral traits are assessed, the right people are hired 54% of the time. When an assessment of occupational interests is added, successful results improve to 66%. The most impressive results are achieved, however, when an integrated assessment is used - one that measures behavioral traits, thinking, occupational interests, plus "Job Match."
Job Match outranks all other factors...
A well-documented study, published in Harvard Business Review concludes that "Job Match" is by far the most reliable predictor of effectiveness on the job. The study considered many factors including the age, sex, race, education and experience of approximately 300,000 subjects. It evaluated their job performance and found no significant statistical differences, except in the area of "Job Match." The conclusion:
The only reliable method for evaluating "Job Match" is with a properly designed assessment instrument, capable of measuring the essential job-related characteristics particular to each specific job. Profiles International has assessments designed for this purpose.
Profiles' integrated assessments employ cutting-edge technology and empirical data to assess the qualities of "The Total Person." In doing so, the individual qualities of candidates are compared to "benchmark" qualities of employees who are performing their duties in a superior manner. These 21st Century assessments successfully identify potentially excellent employees better than 75% of the time.
Hiring/Promotion decision based upon...
Success
Percentage
Résumé & Interview alone
14%
Add background checks
26%
Add assessment of behavioral traits
38%
Add assessment of thinking abilities
54%
Add assessment of occupational interests
66%
Profiles integrated "Job Match" system
75%+
"It's not experience that counts or college degrees or other accepted factors; success hinges on a fit with the job."
The Difference Between Sales Hiring Tests and Assessments...
Tests are graded, pass/fail measurements of what we already know. Assessments are an objective system used to understand:
How we think and learn
Why we think and learn differently
Who we are, based upon our attitudes, interests, likes and dislikes
Resumes, interviews , and background checks show us only a filtered glimpse into a person's past .
The addition of Assessments to your hiring process gives you insight into a person's latent potential, and their future, increasing your odds of a successful job match by over 500%!
Profiles International uses convenient, web-based assessments to cost-effectively solve the most common employee-related challenges. They are the most powerful, easy-to-understand, and infinitely-customizable business - management tools ever created.
Here's what our Clients have to say:
"I have always been skeptical of personality tests as a device for screening sales applicants but your Profiles system has made a believer out of me. My objection to prior tests that I have seen and taken is that they can be manipulated by the applicant to paint a personality that the employer wants to see, even if the "painting" does not actually reflect the real person. This system is very nearly impossible to manipulate and shows a very detailed picture of the applicant's personality as compared to our model. We will always use the Profiles system as part of our A.E. selection process.."
Randy Warwick, General Manager
Sales hiring testins are acceptable, even expected... A Molding Systems survey found that 92% of job applicants accept testing as part of the job qualification process. Only 3% resent it, while 5% were neutral.
Are you willing to accept these dismal statistics for your business? Several factors contribute to the failure of traditional hiring methods. Résumés often contain false claims of education and experience while omitting information that would help employers make better hiring decisions. Business references are of little value because most past-employers can be held liable for information beyond confirming dates of past employment.
Two of three new hires will disappoint in the first year
Two of three employees would rather work somewhere else
Ninety-five of 100 applicants will "exaggerate" to get a job
Most hiring decisions are made in haste - during the first 5 minutes of an interview
One of three businesses will be sued this year over an employment issue
Turnover costs thousands of dollars for every departing employee
Eighty percent of employee turnover is avoidable
You want employees who are dependable... In 1998, absenteeism cost employers $757 per employee, according to a report in USA TODAY. This was the direct cost reported by a survey of human resource professionals and does not include the cost of hiring others or paying overtime to perform the work of absent employees.
You can be held liable for employees' behavior on and off the job... You must know the nature of the people you hire because their criminal behavior could cost your business millions of dollars. Every time you hire without practicing due diligence, you may be accepting liability for their actions - even when they are "off the clock."
You can be sued for illegal discrimination... In the absence of objective data, how can you demonstrate a hiring/promotion decision was made objectively, without discrimination because of gender, race, religion, etc.
Résumé writers write great fiction... In a survey of recent college graduates, 95% said they would be willing to make a false statement in their résumés in order to get a job. Forty-one percent admitted they had already done so, according to a report in Nation's Business (May, 1999).
Sales hiring tests are acceptable, even expected... As reported in Molding Systems (May, 1999, v57 i5 p56(1)), a survey found that 92% of job applicants accept testing as part of the job qualification process. Only 3% resent it, while 5% were neutral.
Assessments offer a solution... Historically, employers depend upon résumés, references and interviews as sources of information for making hiring decisions. In practice, these sources have proved inadequate for consistently selecting good employees.
When training employees, a "one size fits all" approach has failed to provide the desired results.
When selecting people for promotion, otherwise excellent employees have too often been miscast into roles they could not perform satisfactorily.
Clearly, an essential ingredient for making "people decisions" has been missing from the formula.
The use of assessments has become essential to employers who
want to put the right people into jobs;
provide employees with effective training;
help their managers to become more effective; and
promote people into positions where they will succeed.
The use of assessments has resulted in extraordinary increases in productivity while reducing employee relations problems, employee turnover, stress, tension, conflict and overall human resources expenses.
Several factors contribute to the failure of traditional hiring methods. Résumés often contain false claims of education and experience while omitting information that would help employers make better hiring decisions.
Business references are of little value because most past-employers will tell you nothing but "name, rank and serial number."
These realities are the reason interviews have become the most influential factor in hiring and promotion decisions. However, experience shows only a coincidental correlation between the ability to deliver well in an interview and to deliver well on the job. Studies peg this correlation at 14% -- one good employee in every seven hires. Even background checks don't help much. The success rate becomes 26%, but that's only one good hire in every four. Unfortunately, many employers have accepted these poor results and the high cost of excessive turnover as a business reality. They have flown the white flag of surrender.
"We expected good to great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats - and then they figured out where to drive it. The old adage that 'people are your most important asset' turns out to be wrong. The right people are."
U.S. Department of Labor on Assessment... The U.S. Department of Labor's "Testing and Assessment: An Employers Guide to Good Practices" says that... "appropriate use of professionally developed assessments tools on average enable organizations to make more effective employment related decisions..." The document goes on to detail a rather strict set of requirements that assessments must meet to be considered "professionally developed". These requirements include standards for both reliability and validity including standards for construct validity. Our assessments meet all of these requirements and when used for the purposes for which they are intended, will strengthen both the effectiveness and defensibility of your hiring process.
The conclusion:"It's not experience that counts or college degrees or other accepted factors; success hinges on a fit with the job."
Plug the Biggest Hidden Financial Drain in Your Business! Your company will profit vastly when you plug the dollar "drip, drip, drip" that employee turnover steals from your bottom line. Too often, executives look the other way and accept employee turnover as a nuisance, but necessary fact of business life. The cost of employee turnover does not show up on a P&L statement making it easy to overlook when analyzing expenses. However, if your business has a revolving door in the HR department, you could increase profits by thirty percent just by better implementing hiring practices and by reassigning employees to jobs for which they are better suited. One place to plug the leak is to stop hiring the wrong people. Some HR professionals expect to hire two to four people in order to find one who stays six months or more. Anticipating new employee failure, companies have adopted 90-day probationary periods.... [Read more]
Which Test Should we Use? by Jeff Schroer
Psychometric assessment products exist in great variety and quantity. Many businesses have employed assessments to support their recruitment, retention, development, and succession planning strategies. However, few are aware of the U.S. Department of Labor's position regarding the use of tests and assessments in areas of employment. They provide 13 basic principles that employers should follow when considering and/or designing an assessment initiative.... [Read more]
"When an employee leaves you, ...you're going to lose 2½ times
the person's annual salary, whether they're entry-level or senior
management." Dr. Pierre Mornell, as quoted in Nations Business
What does it cost you to make a hiring mistake? You can use
this simple Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet to calculate the cost.
To get a copy of the spreadsheet simply put your name and
email address where noted below and press the "Send Now"
button. Within a few minutes you will receive the spreadsheet
via email auto-responder as an attachment.
