What if you could measure a candidate’s soft skills before you hired them?  Imagine knowing a sales manager’s coaching ability, leadership and personal effectiveness.  Or a salesperson’s creativity, flexibility and written communication.  These skills, along with many others, can be measured in candidates before you hire them.  We now offer a “DNA” assessment for salespeople that incorporate these 23 soft skills – measurements that are unique from our other assessments.

The 23 soft skills are:

Analytical Problem Solving: Anticipating, analyzing, diagnosing, and resolving problems.

Conflict Management: Addressing and resolving conflict constructively.

Continuous Learning: Taking initiative in learning and implementing new concepts, technologies and/or methods.

Creativity/Innovation: Adapting traditional or devising new approaches, concepts, methods, models, designs, processes, technologies and/or systems.

Customer Service: Anticipating, meeting and/or exceeding customer needs, wants and expectations.

Decision Making: Utilizing effective processes to make decisions.

Diplomacy: Effectively handling difficult or sensitive issues by utilizing tact, diplomacy and an understanding of organizational culture, climate and/or politics.

Empathy: Identifying with and caring about others.

Employee Development/Coaching: Facilitating and supporting the professional growth of others.

Flexibility: Agility in adapting to change.

Futuristic Thinking: Imagining, envisioning, projecting and/or predicting what has not yet been realized.

Goal Orientation: Energetically focusing efforts on meeting a goal, mission or objective.

Interpersonal Skills: Effectively communicating, building rapport and relating well to all kinds of people.

Leadership: Achieving extraordinary business results through people.

Management: Achieving extraordinary results through effective management of resources, systems and processes.

Negotiation: Facilitating agreements between two or more parties.

Personal Effectiveness: Demonstrating initiative, self-confidence, resiliency and a willingness to take responsibility for personal actions.

Persuasion: Convincing others to change the way they think, believe or behave.

Planning/Organizing: Utilizing logical, systematic and orderly procedures to meet objectives.

Presenting: Communicating effectively to groups.

Self-Management (Time and Priorities): Demonstrating self control and an ability to manage time and priorities.

Teamwork: Working effectively and productively with others.

Written Communication: Writing clearly, succinctly and understandably.

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The measurement goes deeper than just a single sentence definition.  As an example, let’s look at Creativity/Innovation in its entirety:

• Notices unique patterns, variables, processes, systems or relationships.
• Expresses non-traditional perspectives and/or novel approaches.
• Synthesizes and/or simplifies data, ideas, models, processes or systems.
• Challenges established theories, methods and/or protocols.
• Encourages and promotes creativity and innovation.
• Modifies existing concepts, methods, models, designs, processes, technologies and systems.
• Develops and tests new theories to explain or resolve complex issues.
• Applies unorthodox theories and/or methods.
• Imagines new or revolutionary concepts, methods, models, designs, processes, technology, systems, products, services or industries.

You can see that the depth of the measurement provides you with insight beyond what the most advanced interviewer could achieve on an objective, repeatable basis.  Before you move forward on your next sales hire, contact us to measure their internal DNA.