提高营销人员招聘成效外文文献翻译Word文件下载.docx

1、 29-38.原文Improving Salesperson Recruitment: Examining Practices of Screening Candidates for Potential Success versus Potential FailureBrehmer A, Lilly B, Tippins M JSalesperson recruitment efforts largely target identifying candidates who appear to possess sales success traits. However, success trai

2、ts may differ from failure traits. Theory and practice both devote low attention to understanding the unsuccessful salesperson, and how to incorporate sales failure into the recruitment process. This paper reports the results of an exploratory study that examines salesperson recruitment, tests the n

3、otion that recruiters overlook failure issues, and develops variables that should motivate failure probing, which should be useful for theory and practice. INTRODUCTION One of the most important tasks facing sales managers is hiring the right people. Personnel selection receives significant interest

4、 in the academic sales literature, with studies examining antecedents and consequences of hiring decisions （e.g., Ganesan, Weitz and John 1993）, trends in recruitment practices （e.g., Cron et al. 2005）, hiring for contexts that involve international sales efforts （Honeycutt, Ford and Kurtzman 1996）,

5、 and individual characteristics that signal potential fit （e.g., Maxwell et al. 2005）. Personnel selection also receives attention in practitioner literature, reflected in the Good to Great key finding that getting the right people on the bus is critical （Collins 2001）, and in managerially oriented

6、articles that provide experience-based insights and suggestions related to hiring. The research reported in this paper investigates two intriguing sales recruitment insights reported in a recent practitioner oriented article （HR Chally Group 2007）. This project explores and extends the insights in a

7、 manner useful to the academic community, furthering the ideas for both theory and practice. Notably, many marketing undergraduate students start their careers in sales, and thus we view the project as having potential benefit to marketing professors who help companies recruit their students. The tw

8、o insights examined in this study are stated as mistakes commonly made when hiring salespeople. One mistake was referred to as Using successful people as models, and refers to the notion of hiring people who possess characteristics common to top sales performers, without recognizing that these same

9、characteristics may be common among bottom performers. Thus, screening tools used to recruit salespeople may be ineffective because they may identify the wrong top candidates, as these candidates share characteristics of both top and bottom performers. The second mistake was referred to as Not resea

10、rching the reasons that people fail, and refers to the notion that hiring managers have a biased perspective when hiring, correctly placing effort in understanding what makes salespeople succeed, but failing to ascertain why salespeople have failed. This mistake, which has been studied much less in

11、the literature as demonstrated in Appendix 1, may lead a hiring manager to recruit a person who is poised to perform well on some aspects of the job, but who is also poised to fail on other aspects of the job. Both mistakes deal with performance failures, and involve neglecting failure issues in the

12、 personnel selection process. Given the insights above, the purpose of this paper is to examine the assertion of these mistakes. We seek to assess the importance of the two common mistakes, and measure the degree to which these problems occur. Further, if the assertions appear to be important and pr

13、evalent, then we seek to develop recommendations for research and practice that would lead to corresponding improvements in hiring processes. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. We discuss the importance of these issues; why including failure issues in screening may or may not be cr

14、itical to managers hiring salespeople. We then discuss Study 1, which was qualitative, and which led to some validation of the assertions above and development of hypotheses to test quantitatively. We then discuss Study 2, which entailed a survey-based quantitative test, and provided further validat

15、ion and resulted in pinpointing very specific areas where mistakes occur. Finally, we present conclusions and recommendations. IMPORTANCE OF INCLUDING FAILURE ISSUES IN SCREENING The importance of focusing on failure during a screening process may be questioned for three reasons, each discussed belo

16、w. Questioning the importance of excluding failure in the screening process is important, because if excluding failure is unimportant, then the exclusion is appropriate rather than mistaken. First, in sales settings are failures rare or low in cost? We consider a failure to be an employee who fails

17、to achieve minimum work related goals, or who decides to leave the company so the cost of the recruitment effort is insufficiently recovered. If virtually all recruited salespeople were later deemed as non-failures, then spending time identifying potential failures would be wasteful, as their likeli

18、hood of occurring would be very low. Also, if the cost of recruitment is low, then again spending time with failure issues would be wasteful, as a hire that results in failure could be replaced inexpensively with another hire. For this are failures rare or low in cost question, we note research indi

19、cates failure rates in sales positions are high both in absolute sense and relative to other types of positions （Richardson 1999）, and that costs of replacing failing employees have long been assessed as high （Rosenberg, Gibson and Epley 1981）. Further, we note a company could have an employee they

20、consider to be failing and yet retain the employee; in this case the cost is also high, as work related goals are not achieved. Thus, failures in sales settings are not rare, and are costly. Second, does screening candidates for success essentially accomplish the same objective as screening candidat

21、es for potential failure? If so, then failure issues are addressed through efforts that focus on success. In response to this second question, we note success typically is equated to in-role achievements, such as sales productivity. On the other hand, as recognized in the OCB literature, extra-role

22、behaviors often correlate significantly with managers evaluations of salesperson performance, and yet may not be consciously thought of as success elements （MacKenzie, Podsakoff and Fetter 1993）. Thus, performance in some dimensions may distinguish success from lack of success, whereas performance i

23、n other dimensions may distinguish failure from lack of failure. This notion has been applied frequently in the study of satisfaction with product performance via the Kano model （Vargo et al. 2007）, which is analogous to satisfaction with employee performance. Ultimately, we expect a salesperson cou

24、ld be classified as successful in both sales productivity and various extra-role dimensions, classified as successful in sales productivity and yet failed in extra-role dimensions （or vice versa）, or may be classified as failed in both sales productivity and extra-role dimensions. In fact, even if a

25、 salesperson is viewed as succeeding on both sales productivity and extra-role dimensions, a failure could exist because the salesperson decided to leave the company before the company sufficiently recovers the cost of the recruitment effort. Thus, screening for success may focus on a subset of crit

26、ical dimensions, insufficiently protecting against hiring a person who ends up failing on other important dimensions. Third, are signals of failure obvious to sales managers, or even potential salespeople? In this case, putting low overt effort into screening for failure would make sense, as screeni

27、ng would occur without much effort or notice. However, research results indicate sales managers often have mistaken impressions of why failures occur among salespeople （Lilly and Porter 2003）, and are unable to anticipate who would be the worst salesperson at a rate higher than chance （Emery and Han

28、dell 2007）. Further, even salespeople themselves are often uncertain about what factors have contributed to their performance （Dixon, Forbes and Schertzer 2005）, and we expect signals of failure would be even less obvious to potential salespeople. Thus, we conclude that failure signals are not simpl

29、y obvious, and that effortful screening for failure is important. Based on the issues above, our overall assessment is that: 1） salesperson failure is costly and frequent, 2） screening for potential success may insufficiently guard against hiring a person who fails, and 3） effort spent screening for

30、 failure is likely to be helpful, as causes of failure are often non-obvious. To some extent, the oft-repeated adage from Winston Churchill applies, specifically that those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it. In the context of salesperson recruitment, some inclusion of failure in the

31、screening process seems very important. STUDY 1: QUALITATIVE ASSESSMENT We had four primary objectives for Study-1 which parallel four questions. First, from the perspective of professionals involved in salesperson recruitment, do recruitment efforts generally lack a component of looking for issues

32、that signal potential failure? Second, if recruitment efforts really do omit efforts to probe for potential failure, do practitioners view the omission as a case of failure being overlooked, or is the omission intended for reasons beyond the three issues discussed above? Third, are post-mortems commonly conducted after salesperson failures occur, in a manner where resulting knowledge could be easily used in