Predicting retail sales productivity using pre-employment interview data

This study attempts to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the characteristics that influence salesperson productivity in a retail department store setting. The purpose is to identify those factors which singularly or collectively are predictive of sales productivity. The analysis is restricted to those characteristics which can be measured in a pre-employment interview.

The determinant variables investigated in the study include the personality dimensions of extroversion-introversion, thinking-feeling, intuition-sensing, and perception-judgement; measures of interest, experience and skill associated with selected sales tasks; experience in retailing and other fields; an honesty test score; a math test score; biographical data of years of school and grade point average; and an interviewer's evaluation. The sales productivity criterion or dependent variable is sales per hour.

Data used in this research is obtained by means of a series of instruments completed in a pre-employment interview by 148 salespeople who are hired for the Christmas season to work in one of seven branches of a South Central United States department store.

Correlations indicate no systematic or very low correlations between all of the determinant variables and sales productivity.

An equations is generated using stepwise regression techniques, with the independent variables being the 14 determinant variables and the dependent variable being sales productivity measured by sales per hour. Departmental average sales is also used as a variable to adjust for any initial differences which might have been present because of the salesperson's placement. The Statistical Analysis System Maximum R² routine was use to generate the best one variable through best 15 variable model. The best three variable model in which all of the variables are significant at the .05 level includes departmental average sales, honesty test scores, and math test scores, and accounts for 36.5 percent of the variance. The majority of the variance, 31.9 percent, is accounted for by the department average sales leaving very little of the variance to be accounted for by the honesty test scores and the math test scores.

The results of the data analysis using correlation, multiple correlation and regression, and factor analysis indicate little evidence of significant relationships between the determinant variables and sales productivity. It may be concluded that, for this sample, honesty test scores and math test scores show significant relationships to sales productivity. However, the measured relationships are not strong and the regression equation cannot be considered a strong predictor.

The findings suggest some intriguing avenues for additional research particularly in the area of honesty testing. Additionally, the study results are consistent with a number of other studies in concluding that a lot of what retailers do in pre-employment testing contributes little to an ability to pre-select productive employees.