Behavioural assessment for job fit analysis

Overview

A new general manager had been recruited by a retail chain to improve the performance of one of their flagship outlets. His initial findings were that, whereas sales assistants were, in the main, aggressive in their pursuit of new sales business with in-store customers, their after sales service was not to the level that the organisation required. Having tried different training methods he found that some of the longer serving assistants tended to revert to their old ways.

The general manager had a competency based interview process available to him but was not comfortable with the process or the results it produced from interviews

He was pushed for time and needed to maximise his results from the recruitment process and be able to justify his decisions to his Board of Directors.

Need

• To introduce more service oriented staff to the shop floor and increase the overall performance of the store
• To heighten the customers experience of the chain
• To have a time/results efficient interview process
• To have a system that scores candidates objectively against their soft skills and provides simple scoring report to indicate who is the best candidate and why they are the best fit for a role
• To have an interview system that can be used again and again without any ongoing training costs

Solution

• A behavioural profile was produced that defined what candidates' behaviours would need to be exposed during an interview; particular emphasis was placed upon customer service, responsibility, persuasion and relationship traits
• Questions were formulated and tailored to expose the required behavioural evidence
• A scoring system was developed for each position
• Training was conducted during live interviews.

Outcome

The interview process has become dramatically more productive, with all of the relevant behavioural traits being identified within a 35 minute interview. Once the interviews were completed, what would have been difficult decisions became obvious, which the general manager was able to justify easily to his board of directors.

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