There is perhaps nothing as painful to any organisation as employing a representative with the hope that in a shortwhile the sales figures posted in a particular region the ‘rep’ is assigned to will improve gradually, only to get a letter or an email from this new intake who has barely spent four months or less in the company of his plans to move to another company. This is just at the time the company expects to start seeing traction in sales after so much investment in the representative.
I know that the question that many pharma companies may want to ask is, how do we know the representative that is not likely to resign early? How do we know the rep that would do well in sales? How do we know the one that is resilient?
One uniqueness of graphology (handwriting analysis) is that it has the capacity to identify traits in the handwriting of people, which other psychological testing tools cannot reveal. In fact, most of these traits cannot even be seen or identified during an interview session with the prospective employee or med rep.
Since the handwriting is like the graph of a persons behavior on paper, there is a need for employers and especially human resource managers to pay attention to this tool in order to have a productive recruitment process in line with global standards. There is still what needs to be done before you employ that representative.
Having the right attitude to work is a lot different from a great aptitude. Such attitudinal issues, if not identified early enough, would still affect productivity eventually. The common mistake made is that employers assume that whoever has scored the highest in the aptitude test would naturally be the best sales person. Here, I will mention a couple of traits which can be found in the handwriting and their importance.
Reliability: This is one of the “success traits” which many employers acknowledge as being valuable to any establishment. The reliable person stands by his word, fulfills promises and finishes any task he starts. Such people are needed in any organisation.
There are a lot of ways of assessing reliability in a handwriting; and for the benefit of readers of this column, a simple way to of checking that is to examine the baseline of the handwriting sample of the prospective sales or medical representative with you. If the baseline is wavy or erratic, you have before you someone who will find it so challenging to meet up with deadlines – report deadlines, for instance. They have to go the extra mile to maintain focus and discipline. They get tired and discouraged easily too.
On the other hand, if the baseline of the writing is like “ruler writing”, that is, very straight in appearance, you have before you a perfectionist. The ideal decision here is for you to strike a balance – which requires skill and some measure of training. It may be helpful to engage the services of a handwriting expert.
Please note that the handwriting sample that is acceptable for this kind of analysis is the one written on a plain A4 paper, not a paper with ruled lines.
(Continues next edition) By MacJob O.E (@dipomacjob) diptoy20m@yahoo.com 07062456737 (Text)
