Predicting Sales Representative Performance

In 2010, Hogan partnered with a nation-wide food retailer to establish a long-term research plan for developing and validating personality-based screening guidelines for their Sales Representatives. We first conducted a Validity Generalization study, leveraging over 30 years of archival research to identify Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) scales most predictive of Sales Representative performance. The company began using this profile to screen in applicants who are stress tolerant, driven, friendly, and dependable.

Although the company received fit recommendations based on this initial profile, they continued to hire low fit, moderate fit, and high fit applicants for over two years. This gave us the opportunity to not only examine differences between all three groups based on our initial recommendations, but to determine if we could improve the profile using sales and turnover data collected during this time.