- Kinaxis Chooses Sales Reps With Personality Kinacis Is A Software Company Headquartered In Ottawa Ontario That Sells T 1 (48.62 KiB) Viewed 43 times
- Kinaxis Chooses Sales Reps With Personality Kinacis Is A Software Company Headquartered In Ottawa Ontario That Sells T 2 (54.48 KiB) Viewed 43 times
Kinaxis Chooses Sales Reps with Personality Kinacis is a software
company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, that sells to clients around the world. Its specialty is software for supply chain management all the processes and relativeslips through which companies obtain supplies as needed and get their products to castomers on time and at minimal cost. This is a sophisticated type of produkt, tailored to a
company's specific needs. Therefore, Kinaxis depends on salespeople who understand how businesses work, who listen carefully to identify neccs, and who peenide excellent customer service to maintain long-term business relationhips. Recently, Bob Dolan, vice president for sales at Kinaxis, needed to have a sales team to ne clients in North America. The
company had just one salesperson sering the continent, and Delan wanted to add for more. He received about 100 rewames and wanted to select from these. He started by viewing the resumnes against job requirements and selected 20 candidates for a first round employee selection and testing Dolan decided his text step would be personality testing. He hired a firm called Opus Productivity
Solutions to administer a tot called PDP ProScan to the remaining 10 candidates In addition, Dolan bumself took the text and had his current sales representative do the same The existing salopen was doing an excellent job, so the result of his test could help Dilan and Opus pinpoint the characteristics of someone likely to succeed in sales at Kinasis. Based an analysis of all the results, Opus errated a benchmark of traits asuxiated with access in the job. Representatives from Opus also discussed the test results with each cartilate, giving each one a chance to disagree with the cores. No one did. Dolan observed that all the candidates scored high in assertiveness and extroversion not surprising for people in sales. In addition, two of them scored above the benchmark in conformity and below the benchmark in dominance. Those results suggested to Dolan that there candidates might be so cager to please that they would be quick to give in to whatever customers requested a pattem that could become cently for the
company, Dolan eliminated those two candidates That meant Dolan still had eight candidates to fill four positions. He asked each one to give him the names of majos accounts he or she had signed up in the previous two years. Fonet candidates were able to come up with three or four targe clients. These were the candidates Dolan hired.
Since then, Dolan says his experience with personality testing has only reinforced his belief that this selection method helps Kinaxis identify the best candidates. For example, one sales rep had scored low on “pace," indicating that the individual might lack the patience needed for the slow cycles required to close a sale of a complex software system. Dolan hoped the issue could be overcome if he provided enough coaching, but in fact, the sales rep sometimes behaved impatiently, annoying prospects. After three years of trying to help him grow into the job, Dolan laid him ofl. The
company's commitment to careful selection is expressed on its website: "As a growing and determined
company, we're always looking for people eager to push the limits each day of what's possible." Kinaxis was recently named one of Canada's top employers for young people.
Questions 1. What were the advantages to Kinaxis of using personality tests to help select sales representatives? What were the disadvantages? [2 marks] 2. Given the information gathered from the selection methods, what improvements can you recommend to this process for decisions to hire sales reps in the future? Can you specifically name one additional selection method to improve the selection process? [2 marks]