Hi,

I’m Martin Gibbons the CEO at PeopleMaps and it’s great to welcome you here. PeopleMaps is very keen to share great content with its readers.  Are you a thought leader? Do you have an important message to share? Then let us share it. If you have something to say then we would like to hear it

A few things to know about PeopleMaps and a few good reasons to write a guest blog post for us;

• We have a PR5
• We have over 500,000 people on our email mailing list, all of which have completed the PeopleMaps personality questionnaire and had a report. We generally promote new blog posts to our list via email.
• Our audience could be described as having an interest in one or all of the following;
  personal development,
  career development,
  coaching
  starting their own business,
  psychology
  management
• PeopleMaps.com has been going since 2001

What can you write about?

Anything you write that fits with the list above is probably fine and relevant.

Inspirational stories are always welcome. Practical advice on how to do something is also good.

Do you have a free offer? Is there something you can give away?

Tone

Overt selling or promotion is not a good approach. Be helpful and informative. Our tone is pretty informal in general.

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Need at least 500 words. There is no maximum.

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Please specify the following;

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 I’m really keen to share thoughts and ideas with people so feel free to also talk to me about recording an interview over Skype. My general area of interest is personal development, business development and all with a psychology slant.

If you have something to say relating to what makes people tick or you can inspire people then lets chat.

I personally want to see more done in the field of people management and leadership. Human interaction in this area leaves a lot to be desired. There are huge opportunities for improvement so if you are helping line managers make a better job of it, then get in touch.

I thought we could look more closely a the various ways managers can apply personality tests to their every day.

Personality tests should not be restricted to recruitment. So while recruitment is one of the more obvious ways, it’s not the only way.

Ways Line Managers Can Apply Personality Tests

There are probably a lot more than just five ways that line managers can increase productivity and get better results by applying personality tests but let’s start with the big stuff for now.

The biggest challenge all line managers face is their ability to manage their people. Humans are complex and when you put two or more of them together, it gets really complex.

Have you ever encountered someone who you just didn’t get? Where they leave you scratching your head muttering “I don’t even begin to understand you.”? Well that’s most likely a personality issue.

Recruitment

Most of PeopleMaps clients started out by using personality reports for their recruitment process. There are some special things you should know about this however.

There is an entire library of around 40 topics dedicated specifically to recruitment. You get to design the report you want for your specific job role. This is unique to PeopleMaps. So instead of a one size fits nobody, you get exactly the report you want.

Each topic deals with a specific aspect. For instance you may have a job role where detail is really important. There is a topic that will tell you how naturally detailed an individual is. Some of us can be detailed for a short while but only a small percentage of us are naturally detailed and can sustain it for any length of time.

The report will also help you during an interview. It’s very easy for interviews to lose direction and talk about general stuff. The truth is talking to a candidate about their journey or about football doesn’t achieve very much. It rarely even puts them at ease. The reports will guide your conversations into the important areas which will probably suit you and the candidate. Let them talk about something they know about – themselves.

The reports will help you both be specific. Asking questions like “So tell me about yourself” is crushing to most candidates. You are not going to see them at their best.

Delegation

The very nature of being a manager means that we have people to delegate to. Whether these people are under our direct employ or whether they are outsourced workers is a bit academic. The key thing is that to be a successful manager you need to delegate successfully.

A personality report will describe for you in detail your delegation style. Most people do not understand their own style as we just act instinctively  However how we delegate is influenced by our personality. Use the delegation topic in the Recruitment Library to discover your own delegation style.

If you have staff then you will want to read their delegation topic from the Manager Library as it will tell you exactly how to delegate to them most effectively. As a manager you can adapt your own delegation style to get the best from your staff.

Communication

Effective communication is important in most job roles today however it is critical in management roles. As a manager you will want to be communicating effectively.

Again you will find the communication topic in the recruitment library will explain your own natural communication style.

You may look to the Manager Library to see how each of your staff need to be communicated with.

Team dynamics

Have you familiarized yourself with the PeopleMaps Map yet?

Its extremely powerful. One of the first applications of the Map you should consider is to look at your team dynamic. As a manager you should have the map in front of you and have all your team marked on the map.

This will give you a picture of your team dynamic. If you have large areas of the map with no one on it then you know you have a gap in your team.

Great teams have a good spread of representation, they are not all one sided. See what yours looks like today. You will find the map in all three of the libraries.

Leadership

Increasingly we are seeing that good management is not enough. Companies want to see leaders emerging. Interestingly, your staff probably look to you for leadership too.

If you want to step up into a leadership role you should understand your natural leadership style. This is not something you want to copy from someone else. It is so tied to your personality type that you need to find your own personal version of leadership.

This is why leaders comes in all shapes and sizes. There is no prescriptive formula for a great leader. It depends too much on your personality.

You will find topics about leadership in the Recruitment Library and the Managers Library.

Coaches Needed

Are you a coach? Would you like to help people implement a career development system that works?

PeopleMaps needs coaches who are trained in the application of its 3 Step System to Land Your Dream Job.

This Career Coach course is written for professional coaches, who want to help clients accelerate their career using this powerful system from PeopleMaps.

PeopleMaps has helped thousands of people accelerate their career over the last few years and has developed a unique, personality centric, approach.

There is a huge amount of psychology in the recruitment process and this is the bedrock for The 3 Step System To Land Your Dream Job.

Tried and Tested System

Through working closely with employers and recruitment agencies PeopleMaps developed a deep understanding of the recruitment process and the psychology involved. From this it developed an alternative to traditional job hunting, which quite frankly no longer works.

Traditional job hunting, where you batter off lots of CVs and applications to strangers, is a very ineffective way of job hunting. We call this CV based recruitment and from the feedback we have received from tens of thousands of users over the last few years, it’s pretty clear that CV based recruitment doesn’t work.

This is why you will find hardly a mention of CVs in any of the dozens of videos contained in the course. So if you are thinking this is another course showing you how to write a CV, then you will be disappointed. Consider this to be job hunting without a CV.

PeopleMaps set out to develop an alternative strategy to CV based recruitment, one that helps people discover what they should be doing with their working life. It then goes on to show them how to land interviews and get job offers.

Applied Psychology

PeopleMaps is the web’s leading provider of online personality profiling. Human behaviour is what we are passionate about. We studied the behaviour of job seekers and of employers.

Our 3 Step System taps into human behaviour; both the candidate’s and the employers.

We discovered that the recruitment process is deeply flawed. It is subject to prejudice of all sorts and certainly doesn’t see candidates hired on merit. If a candidate participates in the traditional recruitment process they are playing with dice loaded in the employers favour from the outset. The process isn’t fair and candidates can’t win. If it was a casino it would be closed down.

Coaches Needed

While PeopleMaps has provided online video training to thousands of job hunters it does not provide 1-2-1 coaching. Yet many of our users could also benefit from good 1-2-1 coaching.

This is why we have developed the Career Coach course for professional coaches. We are happy to show you our system, so that you can add it to your own skills and expertise to help people with their career development.

So many people need help with their careers. People need coaches.

Could You Coach?

And if you have ever considered a career in coaching then you should also look at this Career Coach course as it’s an ideal program to get you started.

How would you like to give your friends, family and clients a pay rise by being their personal career coach?

With the PeopleMaps Career Coaching Course you can help people find their ideal job.

PeopleMaps has now created this train the trainer program, so that you too can help people find their ideal job as their career coach.

The PeopleMaps Career Coach Course is open to everyone, whether you are an established life coach or someone who just wants to do it part-time to help your family and friends.

But before you throw yourself in at the deep end, why not sign up for the Free Mini Course and take it for a test drive. (Coming soon)

Who is This Career Coach Program For?

Established Coaches

If you are already coaching people then you will enjoy this new approach to job hunting and career development.  Even the most experience coaches will find some gems within this course.

Absolute beginners

You may simply want to be in a position to advise your children on their career. Perhaps you have family or friends that are looking for a new job or attending interviews.

This course is perfect for you and will put you in a position where you can really make a difference.

Help Your Own Career

And if you feel you just want to learn a better way to accelerate your own career, then feel free to sign up for the course and become your own coach.

Tried and Tested

The techniques I will show you in the PeopleMaps Career Coach Course are the same ones I have been using successfully with clients for the last five years.

Clients like Kal, who had been out of work for three years. As you know trying to get back into work after such a long break is an uphill struggle. Kal had been trying on her own for six months and getting nowhere.

Within a couple of weeks of taking the course Kal landed some interviews and got a job offer.

Better still within a few months she was being asked to apply for various jobs and was effectively headhunted to a new job that paid her her highest salary every, doing something she was really excited about.

Why Train The Trainer?

There are so many people needing help with their career that we simply can’t deal with everyone directly. We hate to see people in jobs they hate working for crappy bosses. There is no reason that anyone, no matter at what level they are operating, should suffer a job they hate.

Look at your own immediate circle and you will be able to create a list of people who would dearly love to find a new job.

We felt that the best way to impact more lives in a positive way was to share what we have learned, so that you can take it and use it with the people you care about.

Can anyone apply this system?

This system works for people fresh out of college, looking for their first job and for senior executives. Whether you are looking for a promotion or a complete career change, this system works. When you are trained as a PeopleMaps Career Coach you will be able to help pretty much anyone you care to, no matter at what level they are working at.

PeopleMaps is constantly striving to create a real easy to use personality test. The design team have been very busy over the last few weeks and have just released a new version of the Control Room.

The Control Room is where everything happens.  It’s where you view all your users and read their reports. In this version we have added more functionality but also made it quick and easy to use.

The design team were aiming for a manual free, intuitive interface. Check it out and let me know if they have achieved this. You should be able to go into the system and use all the main functions without any training or support.

There are advanced features that would require some explanation but all the main functions such as designing a report and reading a users report, should be very obvious.

The Easy Personality Test

PeopleMaps has created a new “One Click Design” feature so you are literally one click away from having the report you want for your application.

You simply look at the report titles and descriptions and decide which report is most suitable to your needs.

There is no one size fits all personality report, so don’t settle for less than what you need. Pick the report you want and use that. These standard report designs meet the needs of most people and cover the most common job roles.

Custom personality report design

If you don’t see exactly what you need then you can simply design your own report by selecting around 5 topics from the library.

Just because something is sophisticated doesn’t mean it should be complicated. PeopleMaps has design a quick, easy to use personality test that anyone can use.

Look through the 40 or so topics and pick around 5 that relate to your situation. If you are hiring sales people for instance then select some of those topics.

If you are hiring a manager then you will want to select some of the management topics such as “Managing Others”.

PeopleMaps is the only system that lets you design your own reports and that is so easy to use.

Order Reports or Free trial credits

The Order Reports page has also been redesigned  This is where you can also request free trial credits. PeopleMaps gently insists you try the system out for yourself before you buy a thing and will give you free credits to prove the system to you.

No Training Required

Most professional profiling systems insist you take an expensive training course. Their reports are often full of jargon and make sense only to those who have been trained. However PeopleMaps has created a system that is so easy to use that you will be up and running within ten minutes.

From the minute you login to your Control Room, to you have a report in your hand takes about 5 minutes, and three of those minutes will be you filling in the questionnaire so that you can read your own report.

It’s a professional system. It’s extremely advanced in both its psychology and its technology, however as it was designed for the Internet since its inception, it is extremely quick and easy to use.

Most other systems were originally paper based systems and have not perhaps made as smooth a transition to the Internet. PeopleMaps is an Internet service and always has been.

This means you also get to enjoy Internet prices.

Fast Personality Test

The questionnaire comes in a 5Q version and a 10Q version, taking the user around 3 minutes or 7 minutes to complete respectively. Now you may think that such a short questionnaire cannot be so accurate but I urge you to try it for yourself. Because of the clever design, we can develop incredible accuracy with only a handful of statements. Try it and you be the judge.

Video Walk Through. How To Design  A Report

Here is a short video walking you through the new “Design a new report” feature. No sound is required so you can watch this in an open office.

And finally if you do get stuck with anything you can simply click on the “Help” button and PeopleMaps will do it all for you. Just tell us what you are trying to do and we will design a report that meets your needs and your budget.

This is part of a series where we will feature a specific personality topic and today we are going to look at Sales Style.

As you know at PeopleMaps you get to build your own report by assembling around 5 topics. There are three libraries each containing a bunch of personality topics.

The Recruitment Library has around 40 topics, each written specifically to help you make better hiring decisions.

PeopleMaps is unique in that id has designed topics specifically for recruitment. These are not general topics that you have to then figure out what they may mean when hiring someone. These topics are very explicit;

• They tell you what the candidate is like.
• They tell you what to ask.
• And the tell you what to look for in their answers.

They are only to be used when recruiting new staff.

When interviewing candidates we are trying to discover who they are. We are looking for answers to everything that their CV and application form will never tell you.

Hiring Sales Staff

Where PeopleMaps would argue that personality matters in all job roles, the one area where pretty much everyone is agreement is when it comes to sales roles. Sales is all about personality.

However what may be contentious is that PeopleMaps does not believe that sales people are born, not made. Instead we believe that there is a huge diversity of sales roles. It’s a spectrum and therefore the question isn’t as simple as “Does this person have the personality to be a sales person?”.

No, the question has to be refined. “Does this person have the personality for this particular sales role?”.

From the time we were babies we have been trying to exert our influence and get what we want – all of of us do this. As adults we do the same. Exerting influence and trying to get what you want can also be described as sales.

We are all selling all of the time. What we sell and how we sell it may vary but it’s in human nature to sell.

Figuring out the Sales Style You Need

If you have never sat down and thought about the type of sales role you need then now is the time. You need to have a deep understanding of your sales role if you are to hire the right person for it.

• What length of sales cycles do you deal with?
• Is it repeat sales or once and gone?
• Is it face to face or on the phone?
• Does it depend upon relationships being built up over time?
• What are the customers like?
• Do the customers need and expect a lot of detail?
• Do they need it to be quick?
• Do they like it to be friendly and fun?
• Is it an honest sale or are you hoodwinking clients?

There are many factors to consider, these are just a few.  Depending on the answers you come up with will determine which sales style is most likely to work for you.

If you have a role with long sales cycles and a complex, detailed product presentation, then it probably rules out most people on the east coast of the personality map. Some will become bored and frustrated with the long lead times. Others will become bored with the typical customer they are dealing with.

What about training?

Can you train a particular sales style? The short answer is “no”.

Once you know what sales environment you need, you need to spend your time finding someone with a sales style that is compatible with your environment.

Even if they do not have the relevant experience or training, you will not be long in training them. And you will know that your training will not be wasted.

Most people when hiring sales people look at the previous sales experience but this is a very poor method. Get the personality right and then apply sales training. If you have the right training and background but the wrong personality, then their sales style will never work out in the long run.

Your Sales Style Topic

The topic will tell you all you need to know about their sales style. It provides you with questions to ask that will get you very quickly to the heart of the matter. Make sure you know your environment and ask questions about that.

The topic will also provide you with consultants comments and development advice.

Armed with this topic you will be able to get to know candidates very quickly and make better informed hiring decisions. Hiring sales people is one of the most challenging of all roles so you need all the help you can get. This topic is written specifically to help you hire the right sales person.

In this FREE Psychometric Test you will discover your Management Style

Psychometric Test

Embed this free report in your website

PeopleMaps has developed some clever widget technology that lets you embed the above personality test in your website and give all your visitors a free personality report without them ever having to leave your web page.

Copy and paste the following code and a the entire experience – the questionnaire and the report – will appear in a small box 300 x 320 on your web page.

<span id=”pmapsPwInfo”><a title=”Psychometric Test” href=”http://www.peoplemaps.com/”>Psychometric Test</a></span>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.peoplemaps.com/widgets/power-widget.php?aid=10959&amp;sid=905″></script>

What can a psychometric test tell you about your management style?

We are all a little blind to our own management style. We live with it every day so we don’t really see it. We do it automatically. This free psychometric test will help you see some aspects of your management style that you may have been oblivious to.

This is not a judgmental report. It will not tell you if you are a good or a bad manager as that is beyond the remit of any psychometric test.

Instead it will tell you about your management style. It will reveal some aspects of it and provide you with an objective view, based on the answers you provide in the questionnaire.

How long does this free psychometric test take?

The unique PeopleMaps questionnaire design takes less than three minutes to complete but delivers incredibly accurate reports.

This is due in part to the very clever psychology being applied. This goes way beyond a simple A / B test.

We can get away with using the low resolution 5Q version of the questionnaire because the users have no interest in “gaming the system”. We can rely upon straight answers.

Naturally the PeopleMaps 10Q version is better and delivers even more accurate results however as a free psychometric test the 5Q is still “spookily accurate”.

Are there other free psychometric tests I can embed in my website?

Yes. PeopleMaps is the largest provider of professional, free psychometric tests on the web. There is a Free Psychometric Test For Recruiters which is there to help line managers who find themselves recruiting and interviewing staff.

There is also the Free Personality Test for Job Hunting which is there to help people discover their ideal job.

Thousands of companies and over 1.4 million individuals have used PeopleMaps since 2001.

The free reports contain no up-sell or sales pitch. We have deliberately focused on delivering excellent content.

As a webmaster and website publisher we know how important it is to deliver fresh excellent content to your readers. One way of doing this is to provide them with this free psychometric test, with no strings attached.

The psychology is robust and been used professionally by some household names. Try it for yourself and make sure you are happy with it before you embed it in your own site.

It is very easy to embed as we have created a special widget code to contain the entire experience within a small box (300 x 320) on your page. Your visitors get to enjoy great content without ever leaving your page.

Simply copy and paste the code provided at the top of the page and the box will appear. No coding required. You may simply create a new blog post and insert it.

Google is paying more attention to the time people spend on sites these days so by having your visitors spend three to five minutes completing the questionnaire and reading their report, you will significantly increase your average time spent on site, which will delight Google.

If you want to reduce the risks in your recruitment then this post will explain exactly how to use personality type in recruitment.

Recruitment is always difficult. When there is low unemployment you struggle to get enough applicants. When there is high unemployment you get plenty of applicants but still struggle to find great candidates.

The days of relying on “gut feel” and “experience” are long gone. If you want to hire better candidates than your competitors then you need to use better tools. Without using modern tools you leave yourself at a serious disadvantage.

It’s like the traditional lumberjack who continues to walk into the forests with his trusty old ax over his shoulder. Only to discover his competitor has just bought a chainsaw.

In this post we will look specifically at personality testing in recruitment and you will discover 5 keys to using psychometric tests in recruitment. Owning a chainsaw is not enough, you need to know how to operate it safely and effectively.

1- Know the personality type of the environment you offer

Regardless of a candidate’s skills or experience, the environment you offer will suit some candidates more than it suits others.

Why is this significant? If you want high performing staff then you need to place them in an environment that is compatible with their core personality. The trouble is that we are unaware of the personality type of the environment we are offering and therefore oblivious if it is compatible with the candidate.

Have a look through the job adverts and read the descriptions that companies place there about the job. You will see that they generally mention the following;

• Something about the company
• Something about the person
• Something about the role – Objectives, Responsibilities

Here is an example

Business Manager – Overview
As a key member of the Customer Service Leadership Team, the Business Manager will contribute to the achievement of financial and customer service objectives through the creation and implementation of processes designed to enhance the customer experience. 

Business Manager – The Role
The Business Manager reports to the Head of Service and is responsible for the effective operation of their customer sector, specifically the achievement of financial and customer service objectives and ensuring best practice is identified and implemented. The Business Manager is responsible for the controls and governance of existing and new processes and will seek to identify and exploit opportunities to improve customer service delivery through the implementation and management of business process change. 

Business Manager – The Person

• The Business Manager will be a strong Operational Leader with extensive experience of building and motivating high performance teams
• Ability to influence and challenge at all levels
• Effective net worker with an ability to forge lasting working relationships
• Strong analytical skills
• High level of commercial acumen and demonstrate strategic thinking

However there is nothing that reveals what kind of environment we are dealing with.

Environment is very important to humans and its a very personal thing. An environment that works for one person, may not work at all for another.

In a sales role for instance, environmental factors may include;

1. The length of the sales cycle.
2. The amount of cold calling.
3. The amount of autonomy afforded
4. The support systems in place

Some personality types absolutely need a short sales cycle. They are unlikely to stick with you if they feel the sales cycle is too long.

Some people cope with cold calling better than others. So where it is fair to say that all sales roles may require cold calling, the degree to which it is required varies.

Certain personality types need to feel they have autonomy to be happy in their work. If you do not offer any then you probably should not offer the job to people who need it as they will not stick it.

If you have excellent support systems in place then there are certain personality types that will really value this. Other’s may not care. You may use your good support systems as an incentive when recruiting however to attract certain personality types.

2 – Use Personality type to ensure you use the right bait

Attracting the right candidates is difficult in any economic climate. In order to attract the right candidates you need to know what appeals to them.

Sure you can write the usual dull advert and job description like the above example and hope that the right person sees it. Or you can know the exact words that will attract the candidate you are specifically after.

Again this has little to do with their skills or qualifications and it has everything to do with their personality type.

3 – Promote personality and subordinate skills

Skills are over-rated. Did you ever fire anyone because they didn’t have the skills? No, you fire people because they are not fitting in or they do not get along with you or their colleagues or their customers.

If someone lacks a skill we can train them. However if their personality is a poor fit for the environment you provide, then there is very little you can do about it. In fact the only thing you can do is change the environment.

We tend to rely on skills when recruiting because we can measure it. It’s a big easy box we can tick. But lets not kid ourselves, a lack of skill is usually the least of your problems.

When you are interviewing someone what is it your are trying to assess? In a nut shell it’s everything other than skills and qualifications. You are trying to assess all the stuff that the application form doesn’t tell you. You are trying to figure out the human stuff. In a word, you are trying to figure out personality issues.

4 – Put the right personality in the job

At risk of stating the obvious, make sure you place the right personality type in the job role you offer.

Key 1 was to ensure you understand what environment you have. Key 4 is to make the decision to actually match the personality of the candidate with the environment.

For over fifty years companies have known that when you place a person in an environment that suits them, you see an increase in productivity and performance.

The right person in the right job is mostly about personality matching, not skills. I’m not saying you ignore skills but you do need to put them in perspective. You have to go way beyond skills and look at personality if you are to put the right person in the right job.

5 – Manage in accordance with their personality type

If you are to retain your staff and if you are to get the most from them, you need to manage them in accordance with their personality type.

If they need a lot of autonomy make sure you give it to them. If they feel excellent support systems are important, then make sure you provide them.

If they need plenty of notice and hate surprises then don’t dump work on them without notice. Give them the heads up well in advance.

Delegate and communicate with them in accordance with their personality type.

This is how you reduce staff turnover and increase productivity. Be aware of the personality types you are working with and adjust your own management style to accommodate their needs.

In this post you will discover just how clever the PeopleMaps Personality Questionnaire really is.

It took years of refinement to get it to the format you see today. Many iterations were gone through since 2001.

7 Reasons The PeopleMaps Personality Questionnaire Is More Advanced

There are other questionnaires out there but we are going to explore what makes the PeopleMaps personality questionnaire so special.

No 1 – A Personality questionnaire designed for the Internet from Day 1

PeopleMaps dragged personality profiling into the 21st century. Unlike any other professional profiling system out there the PeopleMaps personality questionnaire was designed for the Internet from the outset.

There never was a paper based version of the PeopleMaps personality questionnaire. This questionnaire was not cobbled together and forced to fit online. It was designed for the online age. PeopleMaps pioneered online personality profiling. When the old guard were saying “It can’t be done” or “it shouldn’t be done”, PeopleMaps was doing it.

The coding works better. It loads fast. It works every time. It doesn’t crash. These are just some of the benefits of designing the questionnaire from the outset.

No 2 – It’s incredibly fast

Where thirty or forty minutes is perfectly acceptable in a classroom scenario where the candidate is sitting with a pen and a paper based questionnaire, it’s simply unacceptable when you move online.

Ten minutes is too long in Internet time.

PeopleMaps offers two versions of its personality questionnaire; the 5Q which takes about 3 minutes to complete and the 10Q which takes about 7 minutes.

For recruitment applications we recommend the 10Q. But in some instance the very quick 5Q is adequate.

PeopleMaps is the fastest professional personality questionnaire on the market.

Being quick matters. If you take too long then candidates get bored, which affects their results. Or worse still they get bored and don’t other finishing it.

No 3 - It uses simple language

The PeopleMaps Questionnaire was designed so that 12 year olds would cope with it. In a recent survey of over 100 job applicants more than 90% responded that they understood 95% of the words or more.

No 4 – It requires no explanation

If you have to explain it then you are already doomed. People do not read instructions even if you provide them. Questionnaires need to be intuitive. It has to be so obvious that people simply complete it without having to scratch their head.

PeopleMaps designed the questionnaire to be very step by step and therefore simple to follow. It only flows in one direction. People can only take one step at a time.

Again in a recent survey of 100 people we discovered that most people didn’t read the instructions and > 95% understood exactly what they had to do.

No 5 – It can be embedded in your own site

Internet technology is amazing and it gives you the opportunity to try things that you could never do on an old fashioned questionnaire.

One of the features of the PeopleMaps personality questionnaire is that you may embed it in your own website.

You are provided with a small string of code that you simply copy and paste. Wherever you paste it, the questionnaire appears in a small box of 300 x 320.

No 6 –  It’s incredibly accurate

So by now you may be thinking if it’s so fast, it can’t be as accurate. Well the opposite is true. The reports are incredibly accurate. This is why we gently insist every one try it for themselves before buying anything. You will be astounded by how accurate the reports are.

Paul Kline release a report a few years ago that indicated long questionnaires introduce candidate fatigue and this seriously affects the results.

But it’s the clever design of the questionnaire that lets us gather a lot of data from each click that lets us produce such accurate reports. It is much more sophisticated than an A/B test.

Most systems provide pairs of statements and ask you to pick A or B. To get accuracy from this approach you need a lot of statement pairs. PeopleMaps is much more sophisticated than this.

No 7 – The answers are not obvious

Professionals refer to this as face validation. However what we are talking about here is how obvious the statements are.

Ideally you should present statements that make the user think but that contain no blatantly obvious “wrong answers”. or blatantly obvious “correct answers”. This is extremely difficult to do. However PeopleMaps has succeeded with this and all feedback and user experiences bares this out.

One spin off is that the questionnaire is very difficult to cheat. To cheat a questionnaire you need to know what the recipient is looking for and you need to know how to engineer your answers in order to give them what they want.

With the PeopleMaps questionnaire it is unlikely that they could achieve step one, never mind step two.

Special Discount Packages for Recruitment Agencies

As an agency you have very specific needs. You require a lot of reports every month so you need them to be cheap.

How would you like to enjoy professional personality reports for FREE?

PeopleMaps has created a special Package for Recruitment Agencies. Please register for your FREE account as usual and then contact PeopleMaps about your special offer.

Here are just some of the reasons Recruitment Agencies use PeopleMaps

The Price

Free reports is difficult to beat.

With your special offer package you get all the reports you need for free. Contact PeopleMaps for details once you have created your free account.

As soon as you decide what report designs you want and roughly how many you need in a month, PeopleMaps will prepare a special package price for you.

Example

For example lets say you regularly put between 10 and 20 candidates forward per month for sales roles.

PeopleMaps would give you a license for up to 20 reports per month. You pay a small fixed fee per month by standing order for the license and enjoy massive savings. There is no cheaper way to buy personality reports.

The license fee depends upon;

1. The number of report designs (Usually one per job role, though you can have a single generic design)
2. The complexity of the report designs (a three topic report costs less than a ten topic report)
3. The maximum number of reports required in a month (It doesn’t need to be precise)

As soon as you know what you want, PeopleMaps will be delighted to give you a quote. You will be delighted at the savings you make. PeopleMaps rewards regular monthly customers. Remember you are paying for the license / service, NOT the reports.

Easy to use

As an agent you don’t have time to go on courses. You certainly don’t have time to send every consultant on a training course.

This is another reason busy recruitment agents love PeopleMaps.

The PeopleMaps system has been designed to be extremely easy to use. Ten minutes and you are live. No training courses to attend.

Your clients don’t need to go on a course either. They can read the report you give to them and understand exactly what it means.

Reports are written in plain English.

They can walk into an interview with the report in their hand and put it to immediate use.

Brand as Your Own

You may also embed the personality questionnaire in your own website and brand it as your own. You can copy and paste the reports into your own documents if you like too.

And you may upload and add your logo to the front cover of the report PDFs. This lets you simply save the PDFs and then forward them directly to your clients along with the candidate’s CV if you like. Your branding dominates the report PDF.

Quick Questionnaire

PeopleMaps is the fastest professional personality questionnaire on the web, taking as little as 3 minutes to complete.

Your candidates will not get bored or be put off when you ask them to complete it.

There is a short 5Q version which takes three minutes and a longer 10Q which takes about 7 minutes. Obviously the 10Q returns better results but it’s up to you as to which one you use.

Give yourself an edge

When competing against other agencies personality reports can help give you the edge over other agencies. Add value to your service and win more clients by offering personality reports along with CVs.

Sign up for your FREE account

Try it for yourself. Sign up for a free account today and you be the judge.

If you are hiring sales staff then this post will explain in detail how to use a personality test for hiring sales staff.

I will take you through my own step by step process and give you a formula you can use again and again.

Hiring sales staff is one of the most crucial and most difficult recruitment jobs you face. Hire the right sales person and your business can flourish. Hiring the wrong sales person and your business may never recover.

A friend of mine had a small but successful business and decided to hire a new sales person to let him spend less time selling and more time running the business.

It took him three months to notice it wasn’t working. It took another three months to get rid of the person and it took another six months to repair the damage the person had done. The whole experience nearly put him out of business and wasted a year of his life.

A personality test would have saved him a lot of trouble and reduced the risk.

So how do you use a personality test for hiring sales staff?

STEP 1 – DESIGN A PERSONALITY TEST REPORT FOR THE JOB

There are ten sales topics to choose from. I recommend you pick about four or five.

When designing your personality test report, pick topics that are most relevant to your job role.

In addition select the topic called

Map – The PeopleMaps Personality Map – essential for benchmarking

It’s located in the General section. I’ll explain why in a minute.

STEP 2 – FIGURE OUT WHAT KIND OF SALES PERSON YOU NEED

Your environment will suit one sales style more than another. You need to understand what kind of environment you actually have.

Contrary to popular belief, sales people come in all shapes and sizes (in terms of personality type). There is no definitive “sales personality” that works for every situation.

I had a client in London who ran a field sales team of 120 people. He had staff turnover issues and was trying to identify candidates who could stick out the job and deliver sales.

We decided to first look at his staff turnover problem. Quite quickly it became apparent that the people he was hiring were being placed into a sales environment that was unsuitable for their personality type.

In short, they would sell well the first couple of months, then sales would drop, then they would leave.

High staff turnover was costing the company a fortune.  Only the most senior staff were involved in training, so it was a huge waste of time and money if the new staff left after only three months. They had to stop the leak before doing anything else.

The client was not prepared or able to change the sales environment, so we had to figure out the personality type that would be most compatible with the sales environment he offered.

To help you identify the sales environment you have, go into your PeopleMaps Control Room and select

>>Tools >> Benchmark

Create a new benchmark by completing the questionnaire. It asks you questions about the specific job role, so make sure you are intimate with the job role.

At the end you will have to pick a report design. Select the one you designed as per Step 1 above.

The Map gives you an indication of the personality type you are looking for. In this example the benchmark is in the North East of the Map.

This tells us that candidates located in the North East are most likely to work out in your particular sales environment, based on the answers you gave in the Benchmark Questionnaire.

They don’t need to be precisely in the same spot. Anywhere in the North East is close enough.

Important : The benchmark is specific to your job role in your company. A benchmark from another company may be misleading. Just because the job title is the same, it doesn’t mean the environment will be the same.

The line manager plays a large part in the resulting environment. This is why we recommend the line manager complete the benchmark questionnaire.

STEP 3 – USING THE PERSONALITY TEST REPORT IN THE INTERVIEW

The personality test report really comes into its own in the interview. If you included the “Sales Style” topic then it will tell you exactly how the candidate approaches sales. From this you can judge if it is compatible with your sales environment.

For instance some sales cycle are long and detailed. They require a lot of patience. Other sales cycles are short and the deal is done usually in one visit or phone call. These are two very different sales environments and the type of sales person will vary considerably.

Use the Sales Style report to determine if the candidate will suit your particular sales environment.

Other topics that will help you are “Cold Calling”. If your sales role has a lot of cold calling then you want to know how the candidate will cope. It’s not enough to just expect them to put up with it. Some people are more able to do a lot of cold calling than others. The topic will tell you how each candidate fairs with cold calling.

Summary

Hiring sales staff is very risky and very difficult. Don’t presume because someone sold well in a previous job that they will sell well in yours. You may have a different sales environment.

If you need more help identifying your sales environment then please let PeopleMaps help. Login to your Control Room and click on “Design a new report” and select option 3 and complete the “Done For You” request form. There you may tell us as much about the sales job as possible and we will make a recommendation.