Ch12 Sales Force Recruitment.docx

MODULE 12 : SALES FORCE RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION ISSUES The following steps are involvement in the decision process for recruiting and selecting salespeople Establish policy concerning responsibility for recruitment and selection Who will participate in the process? Who has the authority to make hiring decisions? (ii) Analyse the job and determine selection criteria Conduct a job analysis Write a job destruction Develop a statement of job qualifications (iii) Find and attract a pool of applicants Internal sources External sources (iv) Develop and apply selection procedures to evaluate applicants Application blanks Interviews Reference checks Formal tests Who is Responsible for Recruiting and Selecting salespeople ? The way in which a company answers this question typically depends upon the size of the sales force and the kind of selling involved. In firms with small sales forces, the top-level sales manager commonly views the recruitment and selection of new people as a primary responsibility. In larger, multilevel sales forces, however, the job of attracting and choosing new recruits is usually too expensive and time consuming for a single executive. In such firms, authority for recruitment and selection is commonly delegated to lower-level sales managers or staff specialists. In companies where the sales job is not very difficult or complex, new recruits do not need any special qualifications, and turnover rates in the sales force are high – as in firms that sell consumer goods door to door – first level sales managers often have responsibility for hiring. When a firm must be more selective in choosing new recruits with certain in qualifications and abilities, however, a recruiting specialist may assist first-level managers in evaluating new recruits and making hiring decisions. In some firms, members of the personnel department – or outside personnel specialists – assist and advise sales managers in hiring new salespeople instead of assigning such duties to a member of the sales management staff. This approach helps reduce duplication of effort and avoids friction between sales and personnel departments. One disadvantage is that personnel specialists may not be as knowledgeable about the job to be filled and the qualifications necessary as a member of the sales management staff. When the personnel department or outside specialist is involved in sales recruiting and hiring, they usually help attract applicants and aid in evaluating them. The sales maager, however, typically has the final responsibility for deciding whom to hire. JOB ANALYSIS AND DETERMINATION OF SELECTION CRITERIA As different sales jobs require the performance of different activities and this suggests people with different personality traaits and abilities to be hired to fill them, the first activities in the selection process should be the following : Conduct a job analysis to determine what activities, tasks, responsibilities, and environmental influences are involved in the job to be filled. Write a job description that details the findings of the job analysis. Develop a statement of job qualifications that determines and describes the personal traits and abilities a person should have to perform that tasks and responsibilities involved in the job. Job Analysis and Description Most companies specially larger ones have written job descriptions for salesforce positions. However, often these job descriptions are out of date and do not accurately reflect the current scope and content of the positions. The responsibilities of a given sales job change as the customers, the firm’s account manaagement policies, the competition, and other environmental factors change. Firms often do not conduct new analysis and prepare updated descriptions to reflect these changes. Also, firms create new sales positions, and the tasks to be accomplished by people in these jobs may not be spelled out. Consequently, a critical first step in the hiring process is for management to make sure the job to be filled has been analysed recently and the findings have been written out in detail. Without such a detailed and up-to-date description, the sales manager will have more difficulty deciding what kind of a person is needed. Who conducts the Analysis and prepares the description? Regardless of who is responsible for analysing and describing the various selling positions within a company, it is important that person collects information about the job content from two sources : The current occupants of the job The sales managers who supervise the people in the job Job descriptions written to reflect a consensus between salespeople and their managers concerning what a job should entail can serve useful functions in addition to guiding the firm’s recruiting efforts. They can guide the design of a sales training programme that will provide new salespeople with the skills to do their job effectively and that will improve their understanding of how the job should be done. Similarly, detailed job descriptions can serve as standards for evaluating each salesperson’s job performance. Content of the Job Description Good descriptions of sales jobs typically cover the following dimensions and requirements : The nature of product or services to be sold The type of customers to be called on, including the policies concerning the frequency with which calls are to be made and the types of personnel within customer organisations who should be contacted The specific tasks and responsibilities to be carried out, including planning tasks, research and information collection activities, specific selling tasks, other promotional duties, customer servicing activities, and clerical and reporting duties. The relationships between the job occupant and other positions within the organisation. The mental and physical demands of the job, including the amount of technical knowledge the salesperson should have concerning the company’s products, other necessary skills, and the amount of travel involved. The environmental pressures and constraints that might influence performance of the job, such as market trends, the strengths and weaknesses of the competition, the company’s reputation among customers, and resource and supply problems. Determining Job Qualifications and Selection Criteria The sales manager – perhaps with the assistance from a manpower planning specialist or a vocational psychologist – should consider the relative importance of all the personal traits and characteristics already discussed. These include physical attributes, mental abilities and experience, and personality traits. As nearly all these characteristics are of at least some importance in choosing new salespeople, sales managers decide which traits and abilities are most important in qualifying an individual for a particular job and which are less critical. Methods for deciding upon selection criteria Decisions about the qualifications that should be looked for in selecting new employees can often be made simply by examining the job description. Most larger firms go one step further and evaluate the personal histories of their existing salespeople to determine what characteristics differentiate between good and poor performers. This analysis seldom produces consistent results across different jobs and different companies. It can produce useful insight, however, when applied to a single type of sales job within a single firm. Current sales people may be classified as high performers and low performers based on their performance. The characteristics of the two groups can be compared on the basis of information from job application forms, records of personal interviews, and intelligence, aptitude, and personality test scores. Alternatively, statistical techniques might be used to look after significant correlations between variations in the personal characteristics of salespeople and variations in their job performance. In either case, management attempts to identify personal attributes that differ significantly between high-performing and low-performing salespeople. The assumption is that there may be a cause-and-effect relationship between such attributes and job performance. If new employees are selected who have attributes similar to those of people who are currently performing the job successfully, they also may be successful. A personal history analysis not only improves the management’s ability to specify relevant criteria in selecting new salespeople, but also, such an analysis is necessary to validate the selection criteria the firm is using, as required by government regulations on equal opportunity in hiring. Management must also try to analyse the unique characteristics of the employees who have failed people who either quit or were fired. The following characteristics were found in salespeople who quit : Instability of residence Failure in business within the past two years Unexplained gaps in the person’s employment record Recent divorce or marital problems Excessive personal indebtedness The firm might attempt to identify such characteristics among its own sales failures by conducting exit interviews with all salespeople who quit or are fired. However, this may not work in practice as salespeople who quit are often reluctant to discuss the real reasons for leaving a job, and people who are fired are not likely to cooperate in any research that will be valuable to their former employer. On the basis of these kinds of information, a written statement of job qualifications should be prepared that is specific enough to guide the selection of new salespeople. These qualifications can then be reflected in the forms and tests used in the selection process. RECRUITING APPLICANTS Some firms do not actively recruit salespeople. They simply choose new employees from applicants who come to ask them for work. People with no selling experience often have negative attitudes towards sales jobs, may not have qualifications a firm is looking for and thus the firm may have to evaluate many applicants to find one qualified salesperson. Firms attempt to hold down recruiting costs on the assumption that a good training programme can convert marginal recruits into solid sales performers. However, some of the determinants of sales success, such as aptitude and personal characteristics, are difficult or impossible to change through training or experience. Therefore, rather than recruiting at random, spending the time and effort to find a well-qualified candidate can be a profitable investment. The primary objective of the recruiting process should not be to maximise the total number of job applicants but on finding a fgew good ones. Thus, the recruiting process should be designed to be the first step in the selection process. Self-selection by the prospective employees is the most effective means of selection. The recruiting effort should be implemented in such a way that discourages unqualified people from applying. To accomplish this, recruiting communications should point out both the attractive and unattractive aspects of the job to be filled, spell out the qualifications, and state the likely compensation. This will help ensure that only qualified and interested people apply for the job. Also, recruiting efforts should be focused only on sources of potential applicants where fully qualified applicants are likely to be found. Internal sources consist of other people already employed in other departments within the firm and External sources include people in other firms (who are often identified by current members of the sales force), educational institutions, advertisements and employment agencies. Each source is likely to produce candidates with different background and characteristics. Therefore, while most firms seek recruits from more than one source, a company’s recruiting efforts should be concentrated on sources that are most likely to produce the kind of people needed. When the job involves missionary or trade selling, firms rely heavily on a variety of external sources, such as advertisements, employment agencies, and educational institutions. When the job involves technical selling requiring substantial product knowledge and industry experience, firms focus heacily on employees in other departments within the company and on personal referrals of people working for other firms in the industry. Internal Sources – people within the company People in nonsales departments within the firm, such as manufacturing, maintenance and engineering, or the office staff, sometimes have latent sales talent and are a common source of sales recruits. Recruiting current employees for the sales force has the foll. advantages:- Company employees have established performance records, and they are more of a known quantity than outsiders Recruits from inside the firm should require less orientation and training because they are already familiar with the company’s products, policies, and operations. Recruiting from within can bolster company morale as employees become aware that opportunities for advancement as available outside their own department or divisions. Disadvantages of Internal Recruiting: People in nonsales departments seldom have much previous selling experience Can cause animosity within the firm if supervisors of other departments think their best employees are being pirated by the salesforce. External Sources Referral of People in other firms Current salespersons are in a good position to provide their superiors with leads to new recruits. They know the requirements of the job, they often have contacts with other salespeople who may be willing to change jobs, and they can do much to help sell an available job to potential recruits. Customers can also be a source of sales recruits. Sometimes, a customer’s employees have the kinds of knowledge that make them attractive as salespeople. Customers with whom a firm has really good relations may also provide leads concerning potential recruits who are working for other firms, particularly competitors. The question of whether a firm should recruit salespeople fromits competitors, however, is controversial. Such people are knowledgeable about the industry from their experience and might alos be expected to bring along some of their current customers when they switch companies. This does not happen frequently, as customers are usually more loyal to a supplier than to the individual salesperson who represents the supplier. It is sometimes difficult to get salespeople who have worked for a competing firm to unlearn old practices and to conform to their new employer’s account management policies. Also, some managers think recruiting a competitor’s personnel is unethical. Advertisements This is a less selective means of attracting job applicants. When a technically qualified or experienced person is needed, an ad might be placed in an industry trade or technical journal. More commonly, advertisements are placed in the personnel or marketplace sections of local newspapers to attract applicants for less demanding sales jobs where special qualifications are not required. If a firm does use newspaper ads in recruiting, it must decide how much information about the job should be included in these advertisements. Many sales managers argue that open advertisements which disclose the firm’s name, product to be sold, compensation, and specific job duties, generate a more select pool of high-quality applicants, lower selection costs, and decreased turnover rates than advertisements without such information. Open advertisements also avoid any ethical questions concerning possible deception. However, for less attractive sales jobs such as door-to-door selling, some sales managers prefer blind advertisements, which carry only minimal information, sometimes only a phone number. These maximise the number of applicants and give the manager an opportunity to explain the attractive features of the job in a personal meeting with the applicant. When the firm’s ads attract a large number of applicants who are either unqualified or marginally interested, the firm must engage in costly screening to separate the right candidates. Employment Agencies Employment agencied are used to find new recruits usually for more routine sales jobs such as retail and door-to-door sales. When the firm carefully selects an agency with a good reputation, establishes a long-term relationship, and provides detailed descriptions of job qualifications, the agency can provide a valuable service. It locates and screens job applicants and reduces the amount of time and effort the company’s sales managers must devote to recruiting. Educational Institutions College and university offices are a common source of recruits for firms that require salespeople with sound mental abilities or technical backgrounds. They are used particularly when a sales job is viewed as a first step towards a career in management. College graduates are often more socially poised than people of the same age without college training, and good grades are at least some evidence the person can think logically, budget time efficiently, and communicate reasonably well. However, college graduates sledom have some selling experience, and are likely to require more extensive orientation and training in the basics of salesmanship. Also, college-educated sales recruits have a reputation for job hopping, unless their jobs are challenging and promotions are rapid. When recruiters paint an unrealistic picture of the job demands and rewards of the position and recruit people who are overqualified for the job, high turnover is often the result. Junior colleges and vocational schools are another source of sales recruits. Firms that recruit the graduates of such programmes do not have to contend with the attitudes towards selling that they sometimes encounter in four-year college graduates beacuse many such colleges have programmes explicitly designed to prepare people for selling careers. SELECTION PROCEDURES To gain the information necessary to evaluate each prospective employee, firms typically use some combination of the following selection tools and procedures : Application blanks Personal interviews Reference checks Physical examinations Psychological tests Intelligence tests Personality Aptitude/skills Composites of psychological test scores have the greatest predictive validity for evaluating a prospective employees’ future job performance, whereas evaluations based on personal interviews have the lowest. Application Blanks Many personnel experts believe a standard company application form makes it easier to assess applicants. A well-designed application blank helps ensure that the same information is obtained in the same form from all candidates. The primary purpose of the application form is to collect information about the recruit’s physical characteristics and personal history. Forms typically ask for facts about the candidate’s physical condition, family status, education, business interests and activities. This information can be reviewed to determine whether the applicant is qualified for the job on such dimensions as education and experience. A second function of the application form is to help managers prepare for personal interviews with job candidates. Often recruits’ responses to items on the application form raises questions that should be explored during the interview. Personal Interviews In addition to probing deeper into the applicant’s history, personal interviews enable managers to gain insight into the applicant’s mental abilities and personality. An interview provides the opportunity to assess a candidate’s communication skills, intelligence, sociability, aggressiveness, empathy, ambition, and other traits related to the qualifications necessary for the job. Different managers use many different interviewing approaches to accomplish these objectives. These methods of conducting personal interviews can be classified as either structured or unstructured. In Structured Interviews, each applicant is asked the same predetermined questions. This approach is particularly good when the interviewer is inexperienced at evaluating candidates. The standard question helps guide the interview and ensure that all factors relevant to the candidate’s qualifications are covered. Also, asking the same questions to all the candidates makes it easier to compare their strengths and weaknesses. To facilitate such comparisons, many firms use each applicant’s response to each question together with their overall impressions of the candidate. One potential weakness of structured interviews is that the interviewer may rigidly stick to the prepared questions and fail to identify or probe the unique qualities or flaws of each candidate. However, in practice, structured interviews are not so inflexible as the criticism implies. As a manager gains interviewing experience, he or she often learns to ask additional questions when an applicant’s response is inadequate, without disturbing the flow of the interview. Unstructured interviews seek to get the applicant talking freely on a variety of subjects. The interviewer asks only a few questions to direct the conversation to topics of interest, such as the application’s work experiences, career objectives, and outside activities. The rationale for this approach is that significant insights into the applicants’ character and motivations can be gained by allowing the applicant to talk freely with a minimum of direction. Also, the interviewer is free to spend more time on topics where the applicants’ responses are interesting or unusual. Successful, unstructured interviewing requires interviewers with experience and interpretative skills. As there is no predetermined set of questions, there is always the danger that the interviewer will neglect some relevant topics. It is also difficult to compare the responses of two or more applicants. Consequently, since most firms’ sales managers have relatively little experience as interviewers, structured interviews are much more common in selecting new salespeople than unstructured ones. Within the interview itself, particularly those that are relatively unstructured, some sales managers use additional techniques to learn as much as possible about the applicant’s character and aptitude. One such technique is the STRESS TECHNIQUE. In the stress technique, the interviewer puts the applicant under stress in one of many ways, ranging from silence or rudeness on the part of the interviewer to constant, aggressive probing and questioning. The rationale for this technique is that the interviewer may learn how the applicant may respond to an deal with the stress encountered in selling situations. Another approach is for the interviewer to ask the applicant to sell something. Techniques like this can be useful to assess a candidate’s character and selling skills, but they should be used as only one part of the interview. However, sales managers should not become so obsessed with finding the one best way that they let interviewing gimmics to get in the way of real communication. After all, another purpose of job interviews is to provide candidates with information about the job and the company so they will be interested in taking the job. One real danger with gimmicky interviewing techniques is that the applicant will be “turned off” and lose interest in working for the firm. Regardless of what kind of interviewing techniques are used, more managers rely on interviews as a means of evaluating sales candidates than any other selection tool. Interviews are a more valid selection tool when the job to be filled requires skills and behaviours similar to those that are on display in a personal interview setting, as is often the case with sales jobs. Interviews are most useful when several different people interview the candidate and then compare their evaluations, and when at least some of those interviewers have a detailed knowledge of the requirements of the job to be filled. Thus, sales managers play an important role in selecting salespeople rather than relying on employment agencies or members of the personnel department to do all the interviewing. The manager should employ interviewing techniques that require the candidate to display product and industry knowledge and selling skills – techniques such as asking the candidate to sell something. When these guidelines are followed, personal interviews provide as valid an indication of a candidate’s future success as any other slecetion tool. Reference Checks If an applicant passes the face-to-face interview, a reference check is often the next step. Some sales managers question the value of references as they always say nice things. Checking references can ensure the accuracy of factual data about the applicant. It is naïve to assume that everything that a candidate has written on a resume or application form is true. Facts about previous job experiences and college degrees should be checked. The discovery of false data on a candidate’s application raises a question about the basic honesty as well as about what the candidate is trying to hide. References can supply additional information and opinions about a prospect’s aptitude and performance. Although it is important to respect the candidate’s requests to prejudice their position with the current employer, useful information can be obtained from previous employees and supervisors. Even though most applicants try to provide only good references, a resourceful interviewer can probe beyond the references’ positive biases with questions such as “If you were hiring this individual today, what quality would you think it most important to develop?” Also, some firms require applicants to supply as many as six or seven references on the theory that it is unlikely so many people will all have strong personal biases in favour of the applicant. Calling a large number of references and probing them in depth can be costly and time consuming but it can also produce worthwhile information and protect against expensive hiring mistakes. Physical Examinations Sales jobs often require a great deal of stamina and the physical ability to withstand lots of stress. Consequently, even though physical examinations are relatively expensive compared with other selection tools, many sales managers see them as valuable aids for evaluating candidates. However, managers should be very careful in requiring medical examination, including specific tests for such things as drug use or the HIV virus, for prospective employees. If used, the physical examination should focus only on attributes directly related to the requirements of the job to be filled. Under the law’s guidelines, a physical examination should be performed only after a job has been extended. And the job cannot be made conditional upon the results of the physical exam unless all hirees for a position are subjected to the same physical exam and the results of the exam are treated as confidential medical records. Tests These tests are aimed at measuring an applicant’s mental abilities and personality traits. The most commonly used tests can be grouped into three types : Intelligence Aptitude Personality tests (a) Intelligence Tests Intelligence tests are used for determining whether an applicant has sufficient mental ability to perform a job successfully. Sales managers tend to believe that these are the most useful of all tests commonly used in selecting salespeople. General intelligence tests are designed to measure an applicant’s overall mental abilities by examining how well the applicant comprehends, reasons and learns. When the job to be filled requires special competence in one or few areas of mental ability, a specialised intelligence test might be used to evaluate candidates. Tests are available for measuring such things as speed of learning, number facility, memory, logical reasoning and verbal ability. (b) Aptitude Tests Aptitude tests are designed to determine whether an applicant has an interest in or the ability to perform certain tasks and activities. This can determine whether the applicants’ interests are similar to those of people who are successful in a variety of different occupations, including selling. Other tests measure skills or abilities that might be related to success in particular selling jobs, such as mechanical or mathematical aptitude. One problem with at least some aptitude tests is that instead of measuring a person’s native abilities, they measure the current level of skill at certain tasks. At least some skills necessary for successful selling can be taught or improved, through a well-designed training programme. Therefore, rejecting applicants because they currently do not have necessary skills can mean losing people who can be trained to be successful salespeople. © Personality Tests Such tests measure various traits of the candidate’s personality. Such tests, however, contain many questions, require substantial time to complete, and gather information about some traits that mey be irrelevant for evaluating future salespeople. Consequently, more limited personality tests have been developed in recent years that concentrate only on a few traits thought to be directly relevant to a person’s future success in sales. Concerns about the Use of Tests Despite the evidence that tests have relatively high predictive validity on average, some managers continue to doubt that tests are valid for predicting the future success of salespeople in their specific firm. Specific traits that measure such abilities and traits may be valid for selecting salespeople for some jobs, but invalid for others. Tests for measuring specific abilities and characteristics of applicants do not always produce consistent scores. Some commercially available tests have not been developed according to the most scientific measurement procedures; as a result, their reliability and validity are questionable. Some creative and talented people may be rejected only because their personalities do not conform to the test norms. Many sales jobs require creative people, particularly when those people are being groomed for future management responsibilities. Yet these people seldom fit an average personality because an average person is not particularly creative. Another concern about testing involves the possible reactions of the people who are tested. A reasonably intelligent, test-wise person can fudge the results of many tests by selecting answers that the applicant thinks management will want. The answers may not accurately reflect the person’s actual feelings and behaviour. Also, many prospective employees view extensive testing as a burden and perhaps as an invasion of privacy. Therefore, some managers fear that requiring a large battery of tests may turn off a candidate and reduce the likelihood of accepting a job with the firm. Finally, a given test may discriminate between people of different races or sexes, and the use of such tests is illegal. Consequently, some firms have abandoned the use of tests rather than risk getting into trouble with the government. Guidelines for the Appropriate use of Tests To avoid, or at least minimise the preceding testing problems, managers should keep the following guidelines in mind : Test scores should be considered only one input to the selection decision. Managers should not rely on them to do the work of other parts of the selection process – such as interviewing and checking references. Applicants should be tested only on those abilities and traits that management, on the basis of a thorough job analysis, has determined to be relevant for the specific job. Broad tests that evaluate a large number of traits not relevant to a specific job are probably inaccurate. When possible, tests with in-built “internal consistency checks” should be used. Then the person who analyses the test results can determine whether the applicant responded honestly or was faking some answers. Many recently designed tests ask similar questions with slightly different wording several times throughout the test. If respondents are answering honestly, they should always give the same response to similar questions. A firm should conduct empirical studies to ensure the tests are valid for predicting an applicants’ future performance on the job. This kind of hard evidence of test validity is particularly important in view of the governments’ equal employment opportunity requirements. EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY REQUIREMENTS IN SELECTING SALESPEOPLE Requirements for Tests There are some restrictions in designing tests specifically “designed, intended or used to discriminate because of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin.” In case an employer uses innocently a test that does discriminate in that a larger proportion of men than women or a larger percentage of whites than blacks, receive passing scores, then the examiner must prove the test scores are valid predictors of successful performance on the job in question. In other words, it is legal for a firm to hire more men than women for a job if it can be proven that men possess more of some trait or ability that will enable them to do the job better. This requires that the employer have empirical evidence showing a significant relationship between scores on the test and actual job performance. Requirements of Interviews and Application Forms Because it is illegal for a firm to discriminate in hiring on the basis of race, sex, religion, age, and national origin, there is no reason for a firm to ask for such information on its job application forms or during personal interviews.