XC In Sight – Hiring

Hiring Case Study

At a major US pharmaceutical company, Eva Rio is looking for a sales account executive that can hit the ground running. Eva is a sales director and works closely with Dana Shepherd, a marketing manager responsible for their largest brand segment with many different products. Dana is responsible for the marketing budget. She provides the marketing brochures, samples, and other promotional materials to Eva for the sales force, often in connection with an extensive marketing campaign. Eva’s job is to make sure her salespeople focus on a specific product as marketing campaigns launch and get the projected sales return on the marketing investment.

Eva needs salespeople who can juggle working with multiple products and adapt quickly to switching product focus while learning new pitches and figuring out how to sell into many different customer environments. She needs salespeople who develop rapport with the gatekeepers in order to have an opportunity for face time with their customers, who happen to be very busy physicians. She needs sales people who are accustomed to being flexible, seizing the opportunity, making sure that they get floor time with the doctors. When they get the time, they will have a short window to establish rapport and pitch their products, so the salespeople have to communicate effectively, analyze a situation and come up with different solutions to a problem quickly, and gain buy-in. These salespeople have to be achievement oriented and goal focused. Working with physicians, they will need to exude confidence and relish the challenge of influencing these knowledgeable customers. Eva and others familiar with the job requirements completed the Job Profile for this position to identify the top competencies required by the job, the level of importance for the three areas of critical thinking, and which values will contribute most to a good job-candidate fit.

She has been screening candidates by reading resumes, conducting telephone interviews, and then a follow-up in-person interview. Lee Washington is one of her top candidate picks. His resume shows strong sales experience with a steady to moderately fast rise in the ranks and level of responsibility. In both the telephone and in person interviews, he demonstrated strong communication skills. He presented himself with confidence on the phone, and in person, he exuded confidence, one of her primary requirements. He impressed Eva with his assertiveness and competitiveness both in his answers to her questions and those he asked.

So Eva invited Lee to take the XC InSight Assessment. Before meeting with Lee again, she begins to review his results. First she looks at the Candidate Assessment Report which provides a thorough review of Lee’s results. Then she looks at the Candidate Summary Report, which gives her an easy way to collect the positive areas of fit between Lee and the position as well as to make notes of areas she will need to explore and consider further.

Summary of Results

The first section that Eva looks at is the results summary. The color coded graph gives her an instant picture of the job-candidate fit and the summarizing statements clearly interpret the graph for her.

Candidate Summary

• Competencies: 5 of the candidate’s top 7 competencies score as a high fit for the job.
• Critical thinking: 2 of the 3 areas (reasons numerically and reasons verbally) score in the average range and come out as a moderate fit. Reasons logically scores in the below average range and comes out as a low fit.
• Values: The top 2 scoring values of the job profile (Achievement and Power and Overt Influence) come out as a high fit for the job.

From this information, the candidate appears to have the competence to perform the job as five out of the seven competencies are strong and the seventh is still within an acceptable range. There seems to be a question, however, whether he has the requisite critical thinking skills. The report on his values and motivators confirm her impressions from her interviews that he is achievement motivated. She is concerned by the other two motivators, though and realizes she needs to know more about this candidate before determining whether he is the best candidate for the job.

So next she looks more closely at the Competency Profile.

Lee scores in the above average range for 7 out of the 12 competencies defined as most important for the job. In particular for selling into physicians, being able to seize an opportunity is crucial as are gaining buy-in and exuding confidence, which are Lee’s top three competencies. The following two tables show the candidate’s areas of strengths and areas for potential development.

Strengths:

• Seizes Opportunities: Taking initiative for success and anticipating obstacles.
• Demonstrate Flexibility/Resilience: Anticipating change and developing contingency plans.
• Builds Customer Loyalty & Develops and Maintains Relationships: Making customers a top priority and building and maintaining long term relationships with customers.
• Gains Buy-In: Looking for alternatives to find win-win solutions and then negotiating deliverables and schedules.
• Maintains Endurance: Establishing and maintaining a productive pace while working. Demonstrates persistence and refusal to give up when faced with obstacles and sets the pace.
• Communicates Articulately: Demonstrating an ability to speak clearly and concisely, and demonstrate skill in using expressiveness to convey important points in verbal communications.
• Exudes Confidence: Demonstrating adequate knowledge and confidence in his ability to perform the job.
• Manages Work: Setting priorities, monitoring work progress and following up to meet deadlines and keep projects on track.

Potential Development Areas

• Strives for Success: May place greater emphasis on the customer relationship than goal achievement.
• Builds Rapport: May occasionally find it challenging to establish quick rapport with some individuals.
• Listens Actively: May need to ask more open-ended questions, listen more intently and be more sensitized to the non-verbal cues during conversations.

When Eva reads the areas of potential development, she sees the low score in for the competency “Strives for Success.” That is worrisome to her as is the moderate score for building rapport. It becomes more apparent to Eva why this candidate scores as a moderate fit for the job based on his overall competency scores.

Competency Profile Summary

Competency Profile Summary

• Overall competency performance: Percentile score of 74.
• People-Oriented Competency Performance: Percentile score of 76.
• Task-Oriented Competency Performance: Percentile score of 70.

The competency profile summary shows that this candidate’s scores ranked in the top 74% of all sales performers. Looking at the Critical Thinking Profile raises more concerns.

Values and Motives Profile

The top two values of the job profile scores highest for this candidate.

• He will be motivated by achieving challenging goals (high Achievement).
• He will also be motivated by recognition, authority and his ability to influence others (high Power and Overt Influence).

From Lee’s values she can see why Lee impressed her during the interview as someone who is achievement and goal oriented. She will have to determine whether the low competency score in Strives for Success means he isn’t experienced enough to live into his values. That means he could develop skills in the area of goal setting.

While the behaviors are not a measure of how well Lee will perform on the job, Eva looks at that section next because it will tell her how he will fit into her overall organization and how she must prepare to manage him.

Lee scored high in impacting (I) which indicates he will focus on people.  Building relationships will be important to him.  Because he is so people focused, he will be a verbal communicator.  He will prefer to communicate verbally as opposed to writing.  His high impacting (I) and high driving (D) scores indicates that he will move very quickly.  He will prefer quick responses and will not favor long detailed report or presentations.  His low score in supporting  (S) indicates that he prefers variety and change.  His low score in contemplating indicates that he does not like a lot of structure and prefers to work independently.  Eva will need to make sure that she helps Lee to concentrate not only on the end result but the details and the process.

DISC Summary

Characteristics:

This style is typically seen as persuasive, independent, and action oriented. He tends to be competitive, decisive, energetic and tenacious. Tends to be fast paced, urgent, and determined to push for results.

Overextensions:

This style has a high sense of urgency so he can become impatient if others do not move at his pace. He thrives on change and variety so he may take on too many projects or tasks in a short period of time. He may not convey adequate detail when communicating and can be a situational listener. While he is comfortable in a crisis, he may be too reactive in situations that call for a more well thought out, detailed plan.

Ideal Work Setting:

An environment that allows him to be efficient and results focused where he can use his people skills to influence and drive toward goals is ideal. Challenging assignments are important as this style gets bored quickly with routine tasks. He prefers freedom from excessive detail and supervision.

What can we say about how he would be to manage for Eva and the pharmaceutical industry?

Having the candidate profile gives Eva some crucial information that she might not otherwise have gleaned from his resume or the interviews.

From the Candidate Assessment Report, she has questions for her next interview with Lee to figure out what kind of support he will need to develop his competency in Strives for Support.

• Give an example of an important goal you set for yourself. How did you go about reaching this goal? Did you achieve it to your satisfaction?
• Cite an example of a time you took on a particularly challenging project. What was the outcome of the project?
• Describe a time when you set out to learn more about a topic of personal interest.  How did you gather that information?
• Give me a time when you felt that your knowledge, skills, or abilities were out-of-date.  How, if at all, did you change this?
• Describe a time when you came up with a creative approach to solve a problem.  How was this approach creative?  What was the outcome?