What Actually Predicts Sales Hiring Success
Most sales hiring decisions are made in the first 10 to 15 minutes of the first interview. The rest of the process is spent gathering evidence to support the feelings formed in those first few minutes.
That’s not a cynical take. It’s what the research shows. Chad Higgins from the University of Iowa and Timothy Judge from the University of Florida studied hiring decisions and concluded that employers are “often deluding themselves about how they make up their minds. In reality they are unconsciously swayed by a mysterious and powerful force.” [1]
The mysterious force, according to Higgins and Judge, is the candidate’s attitude, positivity, and rapport-building skills. The most important factor in the hiring outcome isn’t qualifications or work experience.
It’s easy to see how this happens. Most hiring managers have had little to no training in hiring sales talent, so they lean on the interview and collective opinion. Companies string together assessments, 90-day plans, and group feedback, and a few with deep pockets simply hire in bulk and cut the bottom half.
But underneath all of it, if the first impression is positive, it strengthens through the process, and the candidate’s pleasant traits get quietly linked to an assumed ability to perform.
Hireability Boils Down to One Simple Question
Is the candidate pleasant? [2]
Synonyms for pleasant: agreeable, fun, amiable, amusing, likable, polite, enjoyable, cool, congenial, charming, cheerful, and cordial.
Here’s the problem for sales hiring specifically: great salespeople work their entire careers to strengthen exactly these traits. Which means the question that decides your hire is the one question every sales candidate has already rehearsed.
I had a candidate who could get hired on any sales team in the country. His performance was average, and I mean truly middle of the pack, but sales leaders loved him. They really, really loved him. Interviewing was his best skill.
The ending is instructive. I placed him at a company where his people skills were the point: he was promoted into a leadership role, built a team, and thrived.
The charm that never moved his own quota was exactly what leading a team at this particular company required. But every sales leader who interviewed him along the way read it as proof he could sell, and his numbers were always middle of the pack
Likable, or Motivated to Do the Work?
First impressions and personality matter, especially in sales jobs. But likability has to be untethered from the motivation to do the job. Some candidates are driven enough to do the hard work that builds new business, and some have simply mastered exceptional people skills. An interview run on rapport can’t tell them apart.
Lou Adler puts it plainly in Hire with Your Head: “A large percentage of these mistakes are made by smart people who make quick simplistic judgments largely based on first impressions and personality. Not unexpectedly, their hiring results are random.” [3]
Which Selection Tools Best Predict Job Performance?
John Hunter from Michigan State and Frank Schmidt from the University of Iowa compiled 85 years of research on exactly this question. The strongest predictor of an employee’s success comes from combining general mental ability with one of these:
- Structured interviews (mean validity of .63)
- Work sample tests (mean validity of .63)
- Integrity tests (mean validity of .65) [4]
Most hiring managers would agree with all of this in principle, but when hiring time arrives, instincts and personality tend to take over. If you keep landing sales candidates who are more sizzle than steak, it’s a sign you’re overvaluing “pleasant,” and it’s time for a complete sales recruitment process.
The Interviewer Matters as Much as the Interview
Hiring is about making accurate predictions, and interviewers vary wildly at it. Pulakos, Schmitt, Whitney, and Smith found that an interviewer’s ability to predict an applicant’s job performance ranged from -.10 to .65, even using a structured interview methodology. [5]
As the researchers put it: “There appear to be vast differences in interviewer validity, which suggests the somewhat ironic (though obvious) point that those who do the selecting need to be carefully selected themselves.” [6]
What Should You Be Looking For? Past Performance.
According to Dr. Dave Barnett, sales hiring and leadership performance consultant:
“The best predictor of sales performance is past behavior, not the emotions projected by the salesperson.” [7]
Best-selling management author Dr. Stephen P. Robbins agrees:
“We tend to classify people by their traits. The best predictor of a person’s future behavior is his past behavior.” [8]
Next time you’re hiring for your sales team, take a long look into past behavior. You’re far more likely to identify the salespeople who initiate contact with prospects, follow up without being told, and hit their goals.
The Dollars and Cents of Hiring
Research continues to show wide variability in employee production. Some employees outproduce others by large amounts [4], which means the validity of your hiring methods can cost or make you millions over time. Careers have advanced and crumbled on hiring results.
The fix isn’t complicated, though it takes discipline: decide what you’re looking for before the interviews start, run a structured and repeatable process, weigh past performance over charm, and get your colleagues grading against the criteria instead of grading “pleasant.”
Every hire is also a chance to study your own habits, because the interviewer is part of the system too. Likability is real, and in sales it’s even part of the job.
Just don’t let it be the whole interview. Everything the research points to shows up in practice in a well-designed sales hiring process.
Sources
[1 & 2] 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot, Richard Wiseman, p. 44-45
[3] Hire with Your Head, Lou Adler, p. 5
[4] The American Psychological Association, Psychological Bulletin, 1998, Vol 124, No 2, 262-274. The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings
[5] The Employment Interview: A Review of Recent Research and Recommendations for Future Research, Timothy A. Judge, Chad Higgins, University of Iowa; Brian M. Cable, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
[6] The Employment Interview: A Review of Recent Research and Recommendations for Future Research, Timothy A. Judge, Chad Higgins, University of Iowa; Brian M. Cable, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
[7] Hire Performance: Recruiting a Winning Sales Team, Dr. Dave Barnett, p. 30
[8] The Truth About Managing People, Second Edition, Stephen P. Robbins, Ph.D., p. 2-3
