How to Effectively Plan and Execute a Competency-Based Interview

Competency interviewing is a highly potent tool to add to any recruitment process. 

 The main three reasons are:

1. It helps to take the 'halo and horns effect', or unconscious bias, out of a recruitment process;
   
   
2. It helps make better and considered recruitment decisions based upon logic rather than ‘gut feel’;
   
   
3. And most importantly, it takes the emotion out of the recruitment decision-making process.

We’ve been eulogising about the benefits of competency interviewing for years and introduced hundreds of hiring managers to this reasonably simple interview technique.

Guide to Competency Based Interviews

So, we’ve put together a comprehensive guide to competency interviewing, which includes:

• An overview and a guide to choosing hiring competencies.
  
  
• How to plan competency-based questions with the follow-on questions.
  
  
• Using the STAR (or STARR) interviewing technique to help guide your questions.
  
  
• The outcome and benefits of competency interviewing
  
  
• A full battery of competency-based interview questions.
  
  
• An example competency interviewing template for a Sales Manager with competencies for leadership.
  
  
• Details of how to build an adequate competency interviewing scoring system
  
  
• A system of involving colleagues in the interview scoring and decision-making process.

The guide finishes with ‘Golden Rules’ when designing and implementing a competency interview process into your business.

It is free to view and download (not even an email signup is required). We hope that you find it useful and that competency interviewing helps improve your future hiring decisions.

Rob Scott's Recommended Books on Sales

The Psychology of Achievement on cassette!

I was fortunate to have a brilliant first Sales Manager, Mark Bailey. He introduced me to Brian Tracy (still right up there as one of the best) on cassette.  As you can see in the picture, I still own it today, even though I've got nothing to play it on!.  

Since then, late 1991 I reckon, I've read or listened to about two hundred books on sales and marketing.

I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to sales and love both the science and theatre of selling. Clients and contacts that know me well often ask me what books I'd recommend for staff at different levels.  With most stuff being a bit too repetitive and American for me, my 'go to' authors tend to be British authors like Jeremy Cassell and Tom Bird, Phil M. Jones, Sean McPheat and Grant Leboff. 

However, this list also includes some of the American greats and what seems to be the hot property of the 2020's 'The Challenger Sale'.

I hope that Sales Managers and Sales Directors may find some gems in here for their teams, so here goes! Rob's recommended books on sales and marketing

How to Onboard Remote Working Sales Staff

Getting new sales staff up to speed

In the digital, and in particular the post-pandemic age, remote onboarding has become of significant importance to teams worldwide. While human interaction and face-to-face meetings used to be integral when showing someone the ropes, onboarding can now be completed effectively remotely.

However, there are challenges in getting new sales staff 'up to speed' so we have put together a short 'one-pager' to help you provide new sales staff with the very best first impression possible.

The article covers:

1. The cost of getting induction wrong
2. The importance of getting the onboarding process right
3. Three unique challenges associated with remote onboarding
4. Recognising the signs of staff feeling isolated
5. How to build a good 'team ethic' on a remote basis
6. Common challenges and how to overcome them

The article can be read here: Remote onboarding new sales staff

What is an Employee Value Proposition?

Supposedly, 2022 is meant to be the 'Year of the Great Resignation', and I say 'supposedly', as we are yet to see this come to fruition.  Anecdotally, all of my ex-colleagues across multiple sectors of the recruitment industry would also concur.

Nevertheless, recruiting and keeping your top talent remains the primary function of any manager. With this in mind, we have written a short article on introducing an employee value proposition into your business. 

This one-page article covers:

1. Why your company needs an Employee Value Proposition (EVP)
   
   
2. The critical elements of an EVP
   
   
3. How to implement an EVP into your business
   
   
4. Why an EVP is important

The article can be viewed here: What is an employee value proposition? And, why does your company need one?

Top Tips for Managing Remote Sales Teams

Keeping teams engaged & motivated

With data from YouGov suggesting that approximately 50% of workers are now working from home at least some of the time, ensuring you are managing hybrid or fully remote workers effectively is crucial to the success of your business. 

With this in mind, Aaron Wallis Sales Recruitment has collated some essential tips for managing a remote sales team:  https://www.aaronwallis.co.uk/employer/advice/managing-sales-teams/managing-remote-sales-marketing-teams/
The main focus is within the last section with tips on keeping your staff fully engaged with each other and your business.

These include the benefits and challenges of managing hybrid or fully remote sales teams together with the importance of CRM software.

Lessons from the Apprentice. 2022 – Episode One

For me, it's gherkins.  I don't like them, but shoved under my nose (or a burger lid), I will eat them, mildly grimace, and continue eating them anyway.  

That's how I feel about The Apprentice in 2022. I have disliked it for about five series yet watched them all. I vowed to never watch it again, yet kind of missed it last year. And, within the first 'durhh, durhh, durhh's' and LorSugar's smirk of pride with his new pandemic-themed one-liners, I knew I would be handing my Thursday nights to BBC1. 

The UK is desperate for a new business programme.  In the early years you could learn something from The Apprentice and Dragon's Den, but they are now firmly in the 'light entertainment' genre.  

While it won't get 6M+ viewers, I believe an 'Apprentice-style' programme, following teams of aspirational entrepreneurs with some seed funding over a series of weeks would work.  Over the series you could watch them create ideas, breathe life into them, generate the brand, do market research, and then pitch for investment. 

Yes, I agree it's BBC2 stuff and not so much fun.  However, mentored by credible and critical expertise that help the contestants and perhaps other viewing budding entrepreneurs, it could genuinely help people 'go their own way'.  Just a thought.

I guess the BBC needed to hit hard to get the ratings for Episode One, but I think the fan favourite, ‘The marketing task', was wasted.  The result was a symphony of noise as the clash of egos shouted over each other, while scoring points on the camera to use in the boardroom. 

Both teams were poor, as they always are in the first five episodes.  There was zero influencing, negotiation, and collaboration…. I'm convinced they're edited to be this way. 

Just a sideline; if the contestants consider themselves to be the greatest emerging business brains in the country, why didn't they begin formalising ideas in the limo on the two-hour drive down to Portsmouth?  They'd already been briefed that it was 'the marketing task'. And, it was on a cruise ship. Surely, they could have nailed the concept, name and some brand ideas before reaching the Hampshire border?

So, what did we learn:

·      “No = next opportunity”.  Absolute camembert, but I rather liked it!

·         "I've got seeds, so let's grow a tree from it".  Is this the "run something up the flagpole" for the 2020’s?  If so, I'm out.

·         Don't make a logo without relevant colours or the company name

·         Don't wear a green dress to a green screen

·         One from LorSugar, and, mildly paraphrased: "The theory of advertising/marketing is presenting something to someone so that they buy from you"

My biggest takeaway was that formal business attire was back!  Wasn't it great to see the blokes in smart suits, shirts and ties and the ladies in a single-colour business attire? 

In the last twenty-one months, I can count on two hands the people I've met both in person and online that have dressed this way.  Hurrah, is it the end of the grey sweatshirts!  However, it's also worth noting that I'm outside of the 25 to 45 demographic and didn't know the meaning of 'bouji'!

And, then there were fifteen.  Adios.