Hiring top salespeople is tough. It is not easy to find top-performing salespeople. The odds of hiring “A” salespeople are less than 25%. Many organizations have many more marginal, “C” salespeople. “C” salespeople do not have the right stuff and cannot win the customers your organization really wants. If your organization keeps its poor performing “C” salespeople, they are most certainly going to cost you millions in lost sales, profits, and lots of frustration. Failure to consistently hire top salespeople that are a fit for your [...]

Future of HR Here are some thoughts from some HR leaders on preparing for next year. It looks like all are saying that HR technology for finding, training, and retaining talents will be at the forefront of HR leadership in 23. What are HR’s top technology priorities for the year ahead? By Phil Albinus After a year of addressing the skills gap, quiet quitting, and the spread of hybrid work models, HR leaders need to remain focused on HR technology trends and employee demands in the coming year. After all, [...]

Cut Through the Data Debris From the DecisionWise Newsletter We live in a swirling sea of feedback. Most websites now ask for a brief survey inside a pop-up box that obscures what you are trying to view. It’s overwhelming. It’s everywhere. It’s a bit stifling. As a result of these ever-present surveys and comment boxes, we are now conditioned to believe that everyone wants our feedback. In addition, because so many places keep asking for our feedback, we think we are qualified to give an opinion on every [...]

By Roy Maurer August 31, 2022 Research from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) A significant portion of HR professionals value skills-based hiring assessments, and some would weigh them strongly as alternatives to traditional education and experience qualifications The survey of 1,688 SHRM members shows more than half of employers—56 percent—use pre-employment assessments to measure job applicants' knowledge, skills, and abilities. SHRM found that: 79 percent of HR professionals who use pre-hire assessments said that the skills evaluations are just as or more [...]

Having sat on both sides of the interview table during the past 30 years I feel I can speak to the issue with some clarity. If you think about it, most interviews can be categorized into several areas. The two that seem to be predominant are the let’s “just visit” interview and the interview where the job candidate is told and sold. Not much worthwhile is gleaned from the “just visit” interview. I have watched managers and interviewers conduct their interviews in a very [...]

Predictive Assessments vs. the Rest of the Field By Bill Schult CBA  What Does It Take to Predict Job Success?  The answer is a job-related and validated assessment.  There are plenty of assessments that are validated for other purposes. Many of these can be categorized as Style or Type assessments. This group of assessments are most often used for team building, identifying a person’s leadership style, behavioral style or type, communication style and perhaps his/her sales style. It is important to understand that while [...]

Successful companies and organizations have realized that when you attempt to teach a pig to sing, you become frustrated and it annoys the dickens out of the pig. If you want an animal to sing, the best animal to look for would be a songbird. They are infinitely more qualified than any other animal and will be happy doing it. The animal kingdom is a great place to compare what we’re talking about when it comes to selecting the right person for a specific [...]

When you are considering using assessments for selecting employees here are seven red flags that you should think about before making your decision. One shot artist? – Potential users of assessments should be concerned if the vendor is offering only one type of assessment. There may be a situation where it might be alright, but when the goal is predicting performance accurately, this typically necessitates the use of different types of assessments. So, if a vendor offers only one assessment and proposes that assessment [...]

Resumes are the Second Greatest Story Ever Told! Recruiting with resumes does not work. How many great resumes are thrown out because they don’t look pretty, or your team thinks they are on the wrong paper. Or that their degree was not what you were looking for or any other poor reason the resume wound up in file 13. Resumes don’t tell you anything about a candidate’s assessable abilities. They’re almost always embellished or exaggerated, making it impossible to objectively compare candidates to each [...]

Well, you are not alone! VP’s of Sales, Directors of Sales and Sales Managers all have that same fear of hiring a failure. They have good reason to fear hiring a poor performing salesperson. Your organization’s sales team is the driving engine that must fire on all cylinders if your organization is going to be successful in winning out over the competition. Hiring top performing employees at all levels of an organization is important, but let me emphasize, that without top performing salespeople all [...]