Here is a link to an outstanding article by social scientist Adam Grant in The Atlantic:
People Don’t Actually Know Themselves Very Well
Based on 16 rigorous studies of thousands of people, this article by Adam Grant very nicely explains how we humans almost all share weak self-awareness.
The findings he reports in this article should give pause to those who rely too much on interviews. Every manager who has been tasked with hiring sales-people, has stories about being fooled in interviews. Here at SalesTestOnline.com we have always thought of it as ‘playing the role’. This assumes a level of self-awareness in candidates that the author’s findings would seem to contradict.
Whether sales candidates fool you because they are consciously playing a role or they ‘believe’ through lack of self-awareness that they possess the strengths they use to describe themselves, the bottom line is the same. Interviews are a very poor predictor of sales success.
All the more reason to use a sales test!
