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Build Bench Strength through Personality Assessments

Written by: John Brennan

Article Overview: The value of any personality assessment comes in using the insights it provides along the entire continuum of a career. The test itself should decipher an employee's underlying needs with emphases on sales rep hiring, development, opportunities for growth, behavioral coaching, team building, conflict resolution, succession planning and diversity training.

Build Bench Strength through Personality Assessments

Below are seven ways to use personality testing in your workplace to help bring out the innate talent of your sales reps at every level of experience and responsibility.
1. Find out whom you are dealing with. Personality assessment shines an objective light on a job candidate’s ability to work in a team, to coach, to sell and to resolve problems. It also helps you make an informed decision about whether or not the candidate and job fit each other.
2. Determine if they are going to stick around. Making a bad hire is costly and time consuming. Hiring is usually based on the subjective decision of managers, influenced by their own personality and perceptions. Personality assessments improve employee retention by ensuring a good job fit, and help to determine why an employee might quit.
3. Help your sales reps be the best they can be. Personality assessments pinpoint an individual’s strengths and blind spots and guide your efforts to improve their performance.
4. Find out who your leaders are. Personality assessment helps identify and develop the interpersonal competencies required to help a succession candidate thrive in her new position.
5. Make your leaders stronger. Leadership development frequently means coaching for one or more leadership competencies, such as motivating teams and delegating authority.
6. Design teams that last. The difference between productive teams and ones that fall apart is how effectively a team can determine its individual and collective strengths and weaknesses. Personality assessment is critical to establishing this knowledge.
7. Place employees where they will be happiest. Personality assessment provides an objective opportunity to view workers’ interests and work styles. These instruments also identify desirable work environments and career-path preferences.

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Article Tags: assessments, hiring, leadership, personality, recruiting, selling, succession planning, team building



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