Assess Systems Australia

Author Archives: Rob McKay

Tips on proactive recruiting

By Rob McKay | Published: November 8, 2007

Over the past years I have given dozens of seminars and speeches on the selection process. It doesn’t matter if I am in Invercargill, Auckland, Napier, Sydney, or Singapore, I always hear the same complaint: “Rob our area is different, there is a great shortage of talent here, we just can’t find good people”. Yes, [...]

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What motivates salespeople

By Rob McKay | Published: August 28, 2007

If you think sales people are motivated by money, think again. Recently, the team at Assess Systems dived into the SalesMax database and crunched the numbers from the motivations scale. Of the eight motivators measured, the number one motivator ranked more than twice that of the number two motivator. What do you think it was?

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The interview is not a conversation

By Rob McKay | Published: August 2, 2007

When hiring new employees, many managers think they can play the role of a psychologist. They believe they can “read” behind interviewees’ responses and know what they are really saying. Years of research have taught us that we are poor at “reading” people. This leads to the danger of the hiring manager believing he/she can assess the candidate’s personality fit with the role and the organisation, the old “I can pick ‘em when I see ‘em” approach.

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Poor sales performers kill your revenue

By Rob McKay | Published: July 4, 2007

We all know about the 80-20 rule. You know: 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your salespeople, 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers, and so on. The official name of this rule (yes there is one, this wasn’t made up by the sales manager) is the Pareto Principle, also called the Law of the Vital Few and the principle of Factor Sparsity. In a nutshell, it says 80% of the consequences stem from 20% of the causes.

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The psychology of interviewing

By Rob McKay | Published: June 6, 2007

Selecting employees based solely on an interview is, at best, a ‘toss of the coin’; in other words, there is about a 50/50 chance that you will make the right decision.

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