How Many Sales Candidate Assessments Does it Take?

  • February 9, 2012
  • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
  • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

Today, I was asked how many sales candidate assessments are required in order to hire one salesperson.

Great question.

Let’s make an assumption that your postings on various job sites draw 200 resumes and 34% of those candidates take the assessment.  So you have 68 assessments completed and of those, somewhere between 25% and 50% of those candidates are recommended, giving us a pool of 17-34 candidates.  You talk to those candidates by phone and invite the 6 best candidates for interviews.  You like 2 of them, offer one a job and he accepts.  68 Assessments.

But what happens if, for one reason or another, you don’t like any of the best candidates?  What happens if the candidates, whom you like don’t, accept your job offer?  What happens if your requirements are such that significantly fewer than 25% of the candidates are recommended post assessment?

You begin the process a second time and may have to assess an additional 68 candidates.

The ratios are different for everyone, depending on geography, requirements, compensation, travel and experience.  But the bottom line is that if you are using the assessment properly, as your primary filter in the first step of the sales recruiting process, you will assess a great number of candidates before you settle on the one.  And of course, if you are hiring 10 or 100 or 1000, you’ll need to assess an appropriately larger number of candidates along the way.

Why wouldn’t you just wait until the end of the process to assess the candidates?  Three reasons:

  1. You would be out of EEOC compliance.  If you use an assessment, all candidates must be assessed.
  2. The best sales candidates would not make it to the end of a process which didn’t begin with assessments.  You would have disqualified them for not having a pretty resume, not coming from your industry, not having certain experiences or some other irrelevant reasons.
  3. You would have wasted an incredible amount of time and money talking with, interviewing and assessing the wrong candidates.
Clients learn a solid, time-tested, proven, proprietary process called STAR and it works brilliantly every time.  Combine that with the Gold Medal winner for best Sales Assessment Tool and you have a turnkey solution that identifies winning salespeople like the Dominican Republic turns out baseball players.  Best practices exist for a reason.  The challenge is to use them, even when your tendency is to do what you have always done.