You Were Qualified for a Job But Not Hired. Why?
You can’t control every aspect of the hiring process. But you should influence these factors, if you can.
The applicant looked great on paper. A fresh college graduate, he had strong skills, a good attitude and the right education and experience.
But success in a sales job also requires a certain temperament. So the hiring manager asked him to take a brief personality test.
“One of the things we require is a lot of personal interaction,” says Tracie Sponenberg, senior vice president of human resources for The Granite Group, a plumbing supplies distributor. “From this behavioral assessment, we can tell how much personal interaction this person is comfortable with, and for this candidate, it would be not much.”
He didn’t get the job.
“I explained, ‘You could do it, but you’d be miserable,'” Sponenberg says. “I think in the back of his mind, it made sense.”
