Are you sick of having to follow unintuitive processes, which you don't really understand, when making recruitment decisions? Why not let your own knowledge, skills, and experiences help you find the right person for the job? Let Targeted Selection express your recruitment intuition.
When it comes to employing staff for sales based roles, too much emphasis is given to testing for certain personality traits, or getting a certain score in psychometric testing. Recruitment has moved away from a more intuitive, commonsense approach, and now relies too heavily on poorly validated and inaccurate tools and models.
Recruiters are over complicating the process in the false hope that the perfect employee exists out there somewhere and that they will find them. Costs, time and training are all factors that must be considered in the wider recruitment context. However the costs associated with making a poor recruitment decision based on assessment tools that lack validity are far greater.
It is widely accepted that sales techniques can be nurtured, meaning therefore, that the candidate selection decision is the most crucial. Frame your recruitment process around a targeted selection model which uses behavioural interview techniques to tap into the attitudes, behaviours and organisational fit of applicants. This is done on the premise that past performance and behaviours, will predict future performance. Use this in conjunction with other testing methods (as appropriate).
Targeted selection requires employers to focus on every role recruited for and identify those key characteristics and attributes candidates require to be successful. The following four areas are vital to making the process a success:
- Planning – Be very clear about what you want i.e. what is the job in detail (position description means it needs to be written down), what type of person are you after and why.
- Priorities – Recruitment needs time and commitment as the cost of getting it wrong is high, not just in dollar terms, but in the potential impact on the people within the business, as well as customers and your reputation. Recruitment processes should start the day someone resigns and not the day the person leaves (some even advocate before someone resigns). Interviews need to be timed as soon as a candidate is available and not delayed because the manager is ‘too busy’.
- Process and Tools – a combination of interviews, testing and referencing are critical for the best chance of getting it right. It's important to target the type of competencies required for each individual position. Sensor check suitability of candidate by interviewing more than once with more than one person. The values and culture within the business need to match the kind of person applying for the job. Targeted selection helps unearth these factors and taps into an individual’s motivation and level of commitment.
- Decision - once you have spent the time checking and eliminating candidates through the process, review what your 'gut instinct' is telling you. It's at about this point where you (as their likely manager) need to make a decision as to whether or not you can actually work with this person you have been interviewing. If you are experienced as a hiring manager, and have learnt from previous mistakes, then your instinct should serve you well at this point.
Targeted selection is an intuitive process that allows experienced leaders to cut through carefully constructed interview responses offered by so many candidates nowadays. Organisational and role fit are key considerations. Values and attitudes need to make up a large part of the dialogue exchange. The best leaders are masters of discerning fit.
As with any recruitment process, the goal is to find the best possible candidate with the least amount of disruption and cost to both you and your customers business. Recruitment via targeted selection is only constrained by the hirer's drive to get the job completed. Targeted selection hones the interviewer in on those skills and competencies most relevant for the role available. This approach forces both the recruiter and candidate to focus on the role in detail. This automatically gains buy in from both parties and ensures follow up post recruitment is front of mind.
This is a practical and commonsense approach to recruitment. Knowledge and skills are simply the price of admission for an interview - targeted selection goes beyond those aspects and explores the necessary behaviours that make a role a success.
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