Use of comprehensive psychodiagnostics of applicants for the position of sales manager

Penzina Nella ORCID: 0000-0003-4069-6172 PhD in Economics Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Moscow Financial and Industrial University "Synergy" 129090, Russia, Moscow, Meshchanskaya str., 9/14 p. 1 nella@list.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction. In most companies that operate in the Russian market, one of the key success factors is human capital. Therefore, successful and careful selection of personnel at the initial stage makes the process of working with the human capital of the organization more efficient and reduces the number of tasks for employees of the HR department. Over the past 5 years, the need for primary psychodiagnostics of potential employees has been increasing. Many companies are consolidating their business and expanding their areas of activity, and new staff is being recruited. Companies often hire a psychologist on a permanent basis if the number of staff exceeds one hundred people. The request for the selection of a competent and effective sales manager is becoming especially relevant now. This article provides an overview of psychodiagnostic techniques that can be used to diagnose a sales manager, including projective techniques ^[1].

Results and discussions. Sales managers most of all bring profit to the company, so a lot of time and training is given to the competent selection of these employees. Before starting any psychodiagnostic testing, it is always necessary to explain to the applicant why he is performing the testing, and what conclusions this check will help the employer to draw. A potential candidate should be positively motivated and express willingness to undergo psychodiagnostic techniques. If the candidate expresses dissatisfaction or does not want to undergo a psychodiagnostic procedure, then a forced check will not bring the necessary results. Especially on the results of projective drawing techniques such as "Drawing a non-existent animal" ^[2], "House-tree-man" ^[3], etc.

 What difficulties may arise when conducting a psychodiagnosis of a potential sales manager?

1. According to the research of the author of this article, it was revealed that there is no one universal methodology that would allow us to determine how suitable a potential candidate is for an organization. It depends on the specifics and industry of the company, the requests of the owner and manager of the organization, the competencies of an HR specialist (or psychologist) and a number of other factors. Therefore, the toolkit is determined based on the needs of a particular company, the head and based on the psychodiagnostic tools owned by an HR department specialist (psychologist).

2. If an HR department specialist (psychologist) selects random techniques and does not know the technique of performing projective techniques, the effectiveness of the examination decreases and is practically reduced to zero.

3. Potential applicants for the position of sales manager can give socially desirable answers to many tests and scale methods, therefore it is recommended to use additional psychodiagnostic tools.

4. Professional skills and abilities should be checked only by a competent specialist. As a rule, an HR department specialist (psychologist) has no sales experience and does not have in-depth knowledge of the product/service offered. A sales specialist/department head must be connected to this check.

 How to choose the right methods for conducting a comprehensive psychodiagnosis of a sales manager?

1. You should start with a questionnaire that must be filled out by the initiator of the process (the head of the sales department or the owner of the company). In this questionnaire, it is necessary to specify 6-10 basic qualities and properties that are necessary (in their opinion) for a sales manager.

2. Further, after the owner / head of the department and other interested parties determine what is most important to them in the sales manager, it is proposed to select the main 6-10 properties and qualities.

3. A specialist in the personnel department (psychologist) then selects psychodiagnostic techniques for this request. At the same time, the psychologist must be aware of the limits of his own competence and not take for psychodiagnostics those techniques that he will not be able to correctly interpret.

4. If it is not possible to select the appropriate psychodiagnostic tools for the diagnosis of certain qualities or properties of a sales manager, it is proposed to select additional tools in the form of a business game, art therapy techniques, etc. to diagnose this property or quality ^[4].

The study was conducted in a private company with 350 employees. The data were systematized and the following are the methods and qualities that the company's management considered the most important for sales managers. A psychologist has selected psychodiagnostic tools. The summary data is presented in table 1.

Table 1

Summary of the most important properties and qualities of the applicant for the company and the proposed diagnostic method

Let's take a closer look at point 1 of Table 1: a business game or a case solution when selecting a sales manager. The business game is usually held in a face-to-face format. During the game, professional negotiation skills and the ability to sell are evaluated, the results are analyzed and feedback is given to the applicant. For example, you are given a task to sell a company's product in two ways: by phone and in person.

You can also look at a number of other features and qualities of an employee that will have an impact on the workflow directly or indirectly. For example, problematic relationships in the subject's family will help predict the possibility of teamwork, the level of conflict of the subject ^[5] and will be able to give a probabilistic assessment of how much problems in the family will distract the subject from important work tasks ^[6]. The summary data is presented in Table 2.

Table 2

Summary of additional properties and qualities of the applicant and the proposed diagnostic method

     Conclusions. In this article, the practice of using various psychodiagnostic tools for complex diagnostics of a sales manager was considered. The study was conducted in a private company with 350 employees. The data were systematized by the author of the article in Tables 1 and 2. The main conclusions of the study are: a list of difficulties was compiled when conducting psychodiagnostics of an applicant for the position of sales manager; step-by-step instructions are given on how to correctly classify the main qualities and properties of a sales manager, taking into account the specifics of the company's work, a request from the owner or manager of the company and taking into account the knowledge and skills of a psychologist who is engaged in psychodiagnostics in this field companies. A special contribution of the author to the research of the topic is the systematization of the most demanded qualities and properties of a sales manager and the offer of psychodiagnostic and other practical tools for conducting diagnostics.

This article expands the knowledge base on the use of various diagnostic tools for the comprehensive diagnosis of sales managers and projective techniques for the purpose of diagnosing employees, helps to identify the personal characteristics of employees in the private and public sectors.