True Test

If the perfect sales hire is out there waiting for your company, there’s only one really good way to find out. Administer the right test for your particular needs. And let the chips fall.

Companies increasingly subject potential sales recruits to formal tests, and more and more of these tests are being given over the Internet. The major benefit of online testing is that it streamlines the hiring process, according to David Pearce, president of Sales Test Online.

With an online test, you can test candidates before bringing them in for interviews. Interviewers, who are often valuable sales execs, thus spend their time more productively. Interviewers are also armed with reports from the online test that zero in on red-flag areas. The interview itself should be more productive.

But Pearce says that you must already know, well before the test, exactly what traits you are looking for in the candidate. Sales jobs are not the same. Managers must know the specific roles they are trying to fill.

And Pearce cautions that testing is only one selection tool, not the selection tool. You may even want to use several tests. For example, Sales Test Online tests for personality, temperament, and motivation. If you need to screen for intelligence, sales skills, and knowledge of specific products and an industry, you may need additional tests.

Education and work experience may also be important in selecting the right candidates. Background checks and licensing are important in some sales assignments. Interviews are almost always important. Pearce advises managers to weigh all the relevant pieces before making a decision.

Online tests generally make it possible to test a large number of potential candidates very early in the hiring cycle. For example, Sales Test Online is priced to make testing many candidates for each position very economical. So another advantage of the online approach is that you can cast a very wide net before narrowing your field for interviews.

Online testing makes it easy and affordable for the candidates as well. Traditional paper-and-pencil tests, usually given at the hiring site, are more expensive, in the candidates’ time, travel, and expense, as well as in expenses for the hiring company. Often paper tests can only be given after a short list of candidates has been selected. They are thus usually given later in the hiring cycle.

But there may not be much real benefit in waiting until you are serious about a candidate before you test him or her, apart from saving money. With online tests, early testing of all or almost all candidates may be very inexpensive and thus quite feasible. And these test results will be available to aid in all further screening, by phone or by in-person interview.

Short online tests impose the least time burden on candidates and are thus likely to be taken by the largest number of potential recruits. Sales Test Online’s test, for example, takes only 10 minutes to complete. No one should mind taking that brief a test online. Longer online tests may take up to 45 minutes or an hour. Some people might be reluctant to take a long test. On the other hand, if a candidate is serious about the position, he should be willing to spend the time. And a company may want only candidates who are seriously interested in high-value sales positions.

For all tests, whether paper or online, you start with validating the test by giving it to your top performers and other salespeople, then looking for the differences in their test results. Sales Test Online tests the current salesforce and looks for what distinguishes the top performers. These traits are called “the target profile.” It is then the test’s job to find candidates who match this target profile.

Of course, for this validation step to work, you must track the performance of your current salesforce accurately. That means that any performance effects that are the result of better territories or more time on the accounts are already filtered out of the performance measures.

Pearce urges his clients to consider updating the validation and target profiles periodically as their companies grow and change. The ideal recruit may change if a company goes into new markets, if its sales process changes, or if its industry changes. A young firm may need mostly hungry hunters. A couple of years later, conscientious farmers could be more in demand.

Against these many advantages of online testing, the validity of online tests, taken without supervision, must be considered. But very few candidates try to have someone else take the test, according to Pearce. Sale Test Online has found only a handful of cases in thousands of evaluations each year where a candidate drafted a friend to take the test.

Suppose a candidate does not hire a friend to take the test, but tries to cheat on or deceive the test himself. Pearce says there are validity checks built into the test itself. Moreover, inconsistencies between test results and true personalities can usually be picked up in interviews.

All personality tests, paper or online, describe individuals’ strengths, weaknesses, suitability for particular jobs, and types of motivation and training that should work best for them. After hiring, managers can use test results to help guide the career development and training of new recruits. Testers like Sales Test Online strongly urge clients to exploit the full potential of their tests for these post-hiring purposes, especially for their middle performers, the reps who might become better salespeople.

Howard Stevens, CEO of The HR Chally Group, argues that an extensive test of sales candidates online can help boost sales performance substantially. The full Chally test includes 366 items and takes from 45 minutes to an hour to complete, depending on the applicant’s speed. Stevens says this test can reduce turnover in the salesforce by 30 percent and increase the average sales productivity of new hires by 35 percent. These gains are measured against traditional selection processes, such as interviews, resume checks, and much briefer tests.

Stevens explains these gains by noting that techniques for improving organizational performance are often based on identifying and eliminating errors. Recruiting, testing, and selection for sales should generally work the same way. Managers are not just aiming to find the future top performers. They should also be seeking to avoid hiring the weakest performers. If management could move everyone on the salesforce up to just the average for current sales productivity, there would be a dramatic improvement in sales revenue. “In sales as in sports, championship teams are often just the ones with no superstars, but no weak links either,” Stevens notes.

Keeping the test fresh and relevant is essential. At the end of each year, Chally receives performance data from clients on new hires. This data enables Chally to adjust the scoring criteria it uses for the test to reflect the best and most recent sales experience.

The online approach just makes it easier to do the best selection job much more economically and quickly. For example, to help narrow the number of applicants and avoid any charges of discrimination, it may help to give a very short prescreen test that asks questions that are definitely related to the position managers are trying to fill. Stevens notes that some sales jobs simply require a driver’s license, regardless of other qualities. And background checks must be run in some jobs. These checks are all verifiable by nontest means.

Stevens acknowledges the concerns about the validity of online tests that are not monitored. He says there are several validity risks in giving unsupervised tests. First, individuals may try to get help from someone else in taking the test. But, like Pearce, Stevens says the great majority of applicants simply do not seek to cheat in this fashion.

“To frustrate applicants who may want to deceive the test themselves, you do not want to have ‘face-valid’ questions,” Stevens emphasizes. That is, even a clever applicant should not be able to tell what a good answer is. If it would be obvious, or at least guessable, which answers would signal a good sales personality, the test may be manipulated. That is inviting people to mis-portray themselves.

“You do not want false impressions,” Stevens says. “Some people think top salespeople necessarily exaggerate their strengths. But hundreds of validity studies show that applicants who fake answers seldom tend to be very good salespeople.”

So validity tests should be built into any personality test, whether it is online or paper. All Chally tests determine how each applicant approaches the test along three dimensions. The first is simple candor. Second, how well does the applicant understand the issues raised by the questions? The third validity measure is of any self-deception, or ‘blind spots’ the candidate has toward himself.

Another risk in online testing is that a candidate can consult background materials. Cheating is easier online if a test is a test of knowledge, either of products or of sales in general. For example, if a test asks how a candidate would respond to a certain sales situation, it can be easy to look up the right answer in sales books and other available resources. The Chally tests do not look for such specific knowledge and thus do not afford opportunity for this kind of deception.

Stevens notes that another issue is possible discrimination or suspected discrimination against applicants. Candidates from less privileged backgrounds may be less comfortable with, or skilled at, test taking, especially over the Internet. Giving the test, either online or on paper, in a supportive office environment may provide moral support to the applicant, without giving away answers.

Especially for large organizations that must recruit and hire in large volumes, Stevens says online testing offers another powerful advantage. These tests and their results can be easily and automatically integrated with other systems for managing recruitment, including systems for tracking the hiring process itself.

Some firms are very skilled at testing, but do not have the information technology experience to do this integration well. Other firms are very good at information technology, but do not have the testing expertise. Chally and a few other firms have robust capabilities of both kinds of task–testing and integrating the results into an overall recruitment management system.

For example, Chally has a sophisticated online interface that allows clients to enter applicant names, emails, and relevant positions on a customized Website. Test reports are available within a couple of minutes of testing by emails to managers or through postings on their own customized Websites.

The Chally tests can be easily linked to the major Internet job-seeking sites. Applicants are quickly taken to the client site, take a prescreen test and, if successful, are then given a personal password to take the full test. Results and resumes then go to the client. Access to this information is restricted to just the managers who need to know about each applicant, an important consideration for security and privacy.

Stevens says the automation of all these steps can cut the time required for the hiring cycle by 85 percent. That is another major gain from doing things the online way.

HR Chally’s ability to integrate online candidate testing with the rest of the recruitment process raises another important point. If you are exploiting the Internet to test sales candidates, it may also make sense to use the Net to recruit, screen, and select candidates. Online job sites continue to refine the tools employers can use to cast a wide net and catch just the right fish for sales.

At HotJobs, companies can search the huge database of job seekers by keywords in resumes, experience levels, job preferences, salaries desired, and more criteria. HotJobs’ automatic search agents identify candidates who meet these criteria and email the relevant files to employers.

To help manage, correspond, and track candidates, HotJobs provides letter templates, notes, and resume sharing. A dedicated HotJobs account manager can train and assist sales managers or human resources staff to get the most out of all HotJobs features. HotJobs also partners with firms that offer specialized services to make recruiting and selection more effective. One partner, AIRS, offers online recruitment training. Another, Bullhorn, provides Internet-based staffing and recruiting software.

CareerBuilder.com has integrated its acquisition of Headhunter to enhance its services to hiring companies. Hundreds of partners, including online job sites in Europe, Asia, and Australia, enable recruiters to tap a global market of sales candidates.

CareerBuilder can refine recruiter searches with special tools, such as a diversity channel for hiring from a variety of backgrounds and special vertical channels, including one especially covering sales. One CareerBuilder affiliate, RightFish, promises to reduce recruitment costs while increasing speed. RightFish helps companies advertise their open positions, does preliminary interviews to screen candidates, and delivers a report on the 10 best candidates for each sales position. – Henry Canaday