Turnover Decreased Due to Competency-Based Hiring Methodology
Challenge
A leading designer and manufacturer of high-end women’s clothing needed to determine the root cause, and quickly solve, what it considered to be an “unacceptably high attrition” among its Sales Managers and Sales Representatives.
Action
St. Charles Consulting initially worked with the company’s leaders to identify the most effective Sales professionals, and then interviewed this group to determine what they did to maintain this efficacy. This assessment effort resulted a “Success Profile” that was then used as a benchmark for evaluating prospective new sales representatives. St. Charles used the new Sales Competency Framework to design and develop a new interview protocol and candidate selection process; create tools for communicating both inside and outside the company on what it takes to be successful in these important sales roles; and then implemented a program to train regional and district-level recruiters on what to look for when assessing the candidates.
St. Charles based the recruiter program on a train-the-trainer approach to enable the Regional Directors to deliver the content within their areas. As part of the program, St. Charles also included an eLearning component to provide for flexible deployment to its virtual workforce.
Impact
Not only was turnover reduced, the streamlined recruiting process created a clear distinction of responsibilities for sourcing, qualifying, assessing and selecting candidates that resulted in more effective use of leaders’ time. Efficiencies gained not only resulted in quicker, better decisions, but also the speed-to-competency factor was dramatically shortened since the new recruits’ developmental needs were identified as part of the hiring process.
