Scanning for the right talent in the sales team

Despite its formidable presence in the electronic surveillance products segment, the organization grappled with the challenge of human resource management and understanding the latest developments in HR technology systems. The company’s nationwide presence, with 40 service centers and 24 collection centers, attested to its rapid growth. The organization, however, was yet to address its need for adequate human resources and faced an acute shortage of talented professionals for sales-oriented profiles across India.

Amid unprecedented growth in business, expanding the sales team across India was a major challenge for the company. CP Plus’ requirements ranged from capability building to leveraging the right skills, personalities, and industry expertise, among others. As the sales department is the most pivotal driver of the company’s growth, CP Plus wanted to do away with traditional approaches to hiring.

The three critical business requirements for addressing the company’s concerns were:

• A Scalable Hiring Process

The company’s senior leadership believed that there were serious repercussions, financial and otherwise, of failing to keep up with the company’s nationwide growth trajectory. Hence, it required a scalable means of raising the quality of recruitment with every new hire, given the lack of effective tools or software to support the company in achieving its aspirations.

• Addressing Frequent Job Changes 

CP PLUS wanted to avert a scenario where hiring negotiations reached a stalemate, as several candidates were choosing to opt-out, despite having cleared the interview round. The company wanted a one-stop solution as continual hiring was a difficult and resource-intensive process. Even after rolling out offer letters, there was uncertainty on whether the candidates were going to join the organization. These bottlenecks were hampering the organizational productivity.

• Increased Attrition Rates 

Attrition in the sales department is usually high and bringing the right candidates into the company’s fold has been an ongoing problem for HR managers. The hiring managers at CP PLUS were facing a similar situation and wanted a solution to the problem of high attrition rates to ensure continued growth prospects for the company.

• Seeking a holistic recruitment solution

Even though CP PLUS had subscribed to various popular tools available in the market, all of them lacked in either one or the other aspect. Structured and customizable assessments focussed on technical and behavioral skills were needed urgently. As the company was on an imminent growth trajectory, it required a suitable mechanism for cultural fit hiring. And the evaluation system employed, thus far, was unable to keep up with the organizational needs. Improving the quality of hires was crucial to the organization’s long-term success, and scaling up the workforce was a time-consuming process. The company’s CHRO addressed the limitations of existing assessments highlighting that those tests were not aligned with the company’s competency frameworks.

The company was expanding rapidly, creating a pole-position in an extremely competitive marketplace. This exemplary growth, however, was not without constraints. It needed systematic and dynamic sales teams to carry forward the company’s mandate.

In the absence of an alternative, it was difficult for the company to match its expansion with its aspiration. That available tools, processes, and methods were simply inadequate in addressing the existing challenges were further compounding the organization’s problems.

Mercer | Mettl was roped in to solve these existing pain-points. The company conducted several detailed rounds of consultation to minutely analyze the problem areas, its scope, dimensions, and unique prospects before addressing them.

Mercer | Mettl identified the following problems:

• The unavailability of secure and effective platform to find the right employees
• No specific tools and resources to assess hands-on skills
• Lack of quality reporting system to back a hiring decision
• Limited tools to target focused hiring in a reasonable time-frame
• Inadequate means to hire in large volumes while ensuring the quality of hires
• Prevailing methods of hiring were time-consuming and highly cost-inefficient
• Outdated assessments that were not aligned with industrial benchmarks
• Pre-existing assessments could not be customized as per the company’s competency frameworks
• Insufficient tools to make data-backed hiring decisions, and the need for integration with the company’s applicant tracking system

Solutions were created after understanding the precise nature of the challenges. And the impact was readily assessed after the solutions were put in place. With its battery of reliable and scientifically-backed assessments, company specific solutions were designed by Mercer | Mettl. As the company was operating in a niche segment, it required a much customized intervention.

• Culturally-fit Candidates and High Employee Satisfaction

Mettl Personality Inventory (MPI), an innovative and evidence-based assessment, was useful in evaluating critical personality traits deemed desirable for sales roles. It measured and predicted behavioral competencies, which, in turn, ensured that candidates with the right cultural fit for the company were onboarded.

Consequently, CP PLUS effectively filtered out those candidates during the initial screening process and handpicked the most suitable candidates from a diverse talent pool. The tool enabled the organization to gain access to the necessary information about a job applicant or an employee, which assisted the concerned managers in gaining better insight into the employee’s behavior at work.

• Reduced Employee Attrition

The problem of attrition and bad hires resulted from the absence of any quantifiable way to assess the critical competencies at the beginning of the hiring process. The need to understand the candidate’s mindset to analyze his/her emotional stability and intellectual prowess resulted in the use of the Mettl Personality Profiler test. The tool measured candidates’ strengths and growth opportunities based on their personality traits, preferences, and predispositions, which enabled CP PLUS to make fair and transparent human resource decisions. It could also be used in combination with other tools in gaining all possible information on each employee and candidate in consideration.

• Identified and assessed critical sales competencies for hiring sales professionals

Based on Mercer | Mettl’s recommendations, CP PLUS adopted the proprietary tool named ‘Mettl Sales Profiler,’ which provided a competency-based framework to build an effective sales team. The tool enabled CP Plus to conduct assessments to identify critical behavioral and cognitive competencies, specific to the organizational requirements.

The assessment tools enabled the company to make better recruiting decisions with data-backed insights. Thus, it lent unparalleled ease in evaluating every candidate’s professional aptitude for sales-centric roles.

• A holistic online platform for a scalable measurement of talent

Mercer | Mettl’s online platform, with advanced features, significantly improved the company’s hiring process. With its vast array of validated assessments, customizable and scalable solutions, and comprehensive reports, the platform weeded out the usual hassles in a standard hiring process.

That CP PLUS chose Mercer | Mettl’s platform, over numerous other available options in the market, bears testimony to the platform’s authenticity, safety, and security. The company successfully scaled up its hiring process for the sales department without compromising on the quality of hires.

• Tailored competency solutions for tackling recruitment challenges 

The Mettl team understood the core competencies, functions, proficiencies, and levels that the company’s recruiters wanted to bring into focus. The assessments were designed, not only after understanding the workforce’s requirements but also after critically analyzing the way the organization conducted its business.

Secondly, Mettl’s Psychometric team conducted detailed discussions with various stakeholders in the organization to understand their precise requirements. The solution was charted after a thorough deliberation on the problem.

• A remarkable difference was observed after using Mettl’s suite of scientifically-validated assessments. A significant reduction of up to 50% was observed in the attrition rate.
• Before using the Mercer | Mettl platform and solutions, the assessments exhibited elements of subjectivity. The tests now were extremely elaborate and objective.
• CP PLUS was able to build new teams and improve team efficiency in a short time-frame, which improved its overall organizational productivity.
• The painstaking effort involved in hiring excellent employees was reduced by more than 75 percent, which was a noteworthy feat.
• The quality of hires for the sales department, along with those being hired for customer-facing roles, was significantly improved.
• There was a noteworthy difference in the productivity of the newly hired employees as compared to the past.

Summing up

Mercer | Mettl’s suite of products has enabled CP PLUS to boost its recruitment process. The organization’s belief in Mercer | Mettl’s comprehensive suite of products has resulted in an ongoing association with the company to acquire the best candidates for customer-facing roles.