Why Psychometric Assessments are important for Sales Success?
Why would a sales hiring process ever need psychometric assessments? What skills are considered mandatory for a sales position? Communication, product knowledge, listening skills, accountability, resilience? How would these skills be judged in an interview duration of 30-40 mins? In a conventional hiring process, interviews are the most relied on while hiring any potential candidates. In a limited amount of time the hiring manager has to conclude whether the candidate is the right fit for the role or not. In this there is a big room for bias and wrong decisions, because candidates have the right to manipulate answers till the time they're being interviewed. It doesn't guarantee whether they have the required skills and abilities or not. Due to wrong decisions companies, face attrition and loss on time & money invested.
How can all of this be curbed? This comes to the first question asked, why would a sales hiring process need psychometric testing? Psychometric assessments are a standard and scientific method used to measure person's mental capabilities & behavioral styles. Basically, a person's personality is measured through the information collected in the assessment. These aspects are difficult to extract through a conventional interview. The prime objective of this assessment is to know at an early stage about the candidates who can fulfil the requirements of the job, helping to narrow down applications.
Psychometric assessments can help sales managers judge candidate's strengths and help them even perform better in their role once hired. These assessments help in testing the capabilities which are out of the boundary of a normal face-to-face interview. The competencies measured include
These competencies are required to know that whether a candidate can face challenges, take responsibility for his work and is open to learn through new opportunities. If a candidate has a good combination of the stated traits, then he'd be able to trust himself and other's abilities & skills. The psychometric assessments enable managers to spend their time & attention on candidates who are most likely to succeed in the role. Psychometric assessments for sales recruitment involve verbal & numeric reasoning with personality profiling which offer a detailed insight on the candidate's abilities. Once the candidate with the right skills is on-boarded, it simultaneously boosts employee productivity & organization's growth.
To keep in mind human behavior is influenced by simultaneous physiological & environmental factors, hence these assessments do give an edge to get insights on candidate's personality but the decision should be taken on a comprehensive input by validating from other sources. While using psychometric assessments one should know a clear difference between skills & traits. Traits are innate capabilities of a person while skills are those which can be improved through training. The organization has limited control on a person's traits. It is very important to understand that the salespeople with the right mix of strengths and traits will perform better than salespeople with nominal skills & limited strengths.
The psychometric assessments that you want to put to use must measure whether the skills can be demonstrated by candidates while performing on the job and not solely those skills that they already possess. Many sales managers put in their time & resources on training people who are not performing to the best of their capability even after the investment. Psychometric assessments help in preventing this costly mistake. The predictive validity & proven results of these assessments can help you better your employee retention and save on your training costs which otherwise get played in blind faith.