Recruiting and Selecting Employees

Transcription

1 Planning Planning is the first stage in the hiring process, and examining turnover is one of the first steps in planning. Turnover refers to the average percentage of the sales force that leaves a sales organization in a given time period. Managers try to minimize turnover because hiring and training costs can be expensive. There are many reasons for turnover, such as poor working conditions, inferior supervision, and dissatisfaction with the job itself. Others leave because of real or perceived low compensation or because they are offered a better position elsewhere. Of course, not all turnover is bad; poor performers may be encouraged to leave the organization or be terminated. Turnover is inevitable, and management must have procedures in place for replacing lost personnel. The process of replacing lost personnel begins with identifying the primary hiring objective: Replace leaving salespeople as quickly as possible. Usually, managers use just-in-time hiring. In this type of hiring, they hire only when a territory becomes available. The opposite of just-in-time hiring is stockpiling. Stockpiling refers to hiring recruits before a territory opens with the assumption that a territory will become available in the near future. A strategic position analysis is a systematic procedure that describes the way a sales job is performed and the skills and abilities sales personnel need to perform that job. The analysis contains the following five steps: 1. Identify the end results required of the job and the performance measures that are needed to achieve results. This is often expressed as a quota. 2. Analyze the key activities of the job and appropriate time that is spent on each activity. 3. Determine the performance dimensions that are needed to perform the job activities. This can include knowledge, leadership skills, communication skills, and occupational knowledge. 4. Examine employee histories and identify ineffective, average, and exemplary performers. Then, management identifies critical incidents in which individuals perform a key job task and exhibit one or more of the activities in the performance dimension. The activities of the individuals, how they perform, and the results of the performance are all compared and classified. 1

2 5. Build assessment tools in the hiring of new sales personnel. In the planning phase, managers need to determine job qualifications for each position. Job qualifications include the aptitudes, skills, knowledge, and personality traits that are necessary to perform the job successfully. These qualifications can be determined from the strategic position analysis. The job description includes the job qualifications along with other information, such as job title and major job duties in a written document. Job descriptions are designed to help applicants determine if the company and the job are what they are looking for. Also, it helps recruiters focus on the appropriate applicants. Recruiting and Selecting Once you have completed the planning phase, you can begin recruiting. The goal of recruiting is to find and attract the best pool of qualified applicants to be considered for sales positions. There are two primary sources of recruits: internal and external. Internal recruits are found within the organization. Most sales managers are hired from within the organization. Internal recruits have two main advantages: The positions can be filled quickly, and group morale can be positively influenced. There are three basic sources of internal recruits as follows: Lateral or upward moves, which involve promotions or moving to another area within the organizations. Interns and co-ops, who are students who are working at the organization as a component of their education. Employee referral programs, which are incentive programs designed to reward existing personnel for finding and recommending applicants who are subsequently hired. External sources are hired from outside the organization. Most salespeople are hired this way. There are a number of external sources. The following are examples: Other industry organizations: Experienced personnel can be found in the ranks of the competition, suppliers, and customers. 2

3 Educational institutions: College recruiting continues to be among the best sources for new hires. Advertising: Classified advertising brings in large numbers of potential applicants, but a large percentage of them are unqualified and need to be screened out. Employment agencies: Employment agencies charge a fee to help match a sales organization with potential sales recruits. Walk-ins: Walk-ins include unsolicited resumes that are mailed to the organizations, and recruits who walk in off the street. Networking: From the perspective of the recruit, the best method of landing a job is to have established a very strong network of contacts that can help you get your foot in the door. Once the organization has recruited potential new hires, the selection process begins. The selection process includes two primary steps: evaluating recruited candidates and selecting and inducing the best candidates to join the organization. The first step, evaluation, can be tedious and potentially expensive. There are several tools that are used to evaluate candidates, and they are collectively called selection tools. Some common selection tools include application blanks, resumes, cover letters, interviews, testing, references, background checks, and physical examinations. Choosing from the remaining candidates is the culmination of the selection phase. Most hiring decisions are made by using judgment models to rank the candidates in order. Using this approach, the top candidate will be given an offer, while the second and third candidates will be put on hold until the top candidate accepts or rejects the offer. The offer is typically made orally, but it should be followed up with a written contract. Assessing Training Needs Once the sales manager has decided who to hire, training should begin. Sales training can be described as the systematic attempt to identify, understand, and transfer good selling practices to sales personnel. Before beginning training, a sales manager must assess training needs. 3

4 Assessing training needs begins with the training audit. The training audit is an analysis of the organization s resources, abilities, needs, and current directions. A training audit should focus on three dimensions, as follows: The organization: The organizational assessment is a detailed analysis of organizational resources, philosophy, and leadership. The tasks: The task assessment examines the overall sales job as well as the individual activities performed on the job. The personnel: The personnel assessment is an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the current organizational personnel. There are four types of training and development programs that management must consider when developing a needs assessment. They are indoctrination, refresher, salesperson development, and executive development. Indoctrination training is defined as the training of new personnel in the way to do the job. In this type of training, the organization teaches the new hires the products, the organizational way to sell the products, the company history and philosophy, and teamwork. Refresher training keeps salespeople up-to-date on new trends and changes in the product or industry, as well as to revitalize the individual. Salesperson development programs develop added skills, professionalism, goals, and habits for the salesperson beyond those needed for the present job. The purpose of salesperson development programs is to help the entire business grow and prosper. Executive development programs work like salesperson development programs, but they are tailored to executives. This kind of program allows executives to expand their skills and continue their upward path. Once the need for training has been assessed, the next step is to determine the objectives of the training. There are a number of variables that can determine what type of training an organization will choose to implement, and these variables will be different for every company. 4

5 Training Topics Although the potential topics for training are endless, those topics can fit into four categories, as follows: Socialization Sales techniques Knowledge Proficiencies Socialization is the first category, and it is the process in which an individual comes to appreciate the values, abilities, expected behaviors, and social knowledge that are essential for participating as an organizational member. Successful socialization makes the new hire comfortable in the new environment and provides important information about the day-to-day operations. Another category of training involves providing or enhancing basic sales techniques. Even if trainees have previous sales experience, they will typically be required to learn the organization s selling philosophy. Most sales techniques training covers topics like prospecting, account management, professionalism, presentation skills, and ethics. Knowledge dissemination is another category of training. This can be knowledge about a company, its products, competition, markets, and customers. Proficiency training allows new trainees to become proficient in general skills such as time management or creative thinking. These often take the form of seminars and workshops. Other Training Topics Now that you have learned how to assess your training options and examined types of training programs, you will look at other training issues, including the following: Training formats Training locations Training personnel On-the-job training 5

6 Assessing the results Formal classroom training can be categorized into four formats, as follows: Lecture or discussion is good for knowledge-oriented content. Cases and videos are effective for refresher training. Behavioral simulations use interactive training to allow trainees to learn by doing. Absorption training gives written materials to trainees to absorb on their own. The location of training can be centralized or decentralized. In a centralized training approach, all personnel are trained in the same location. This can occur at a training center (which are most frequently used for new-hire and refresher training) or at a satellite center (which is a smaller version of a training center). Decentralized training occurs at multiple locations. Oftentimes, decentralized training occurs at local offices, but a second option is to train new hires at a noncompany location, such as a consultant s facilities. Another decentralized training option is to have salespeople serve in a customer internship program to teach the salesperson to think like the customer. The last component in establishing a training program is determining who the training personnel should be. Different trainers are appropriate for different types of jobs. For example, a staff trainer is appropriate for situations that involve training classes that would be sufficiently large to warrant the expense. Staff trainers have the advantage of being able to focus solely on training and being able to use multiple methods of training. Sales managers often serve as trainers in smaller organizations, and independent consultants provided training expertise on an as-needed basis. Using independent consultants as trainers provides the organization with some flexibility because the consultant can provide either specific types of training or conduct the entire training process. 6