This Salesperson Was a Great Employee But We Wouldn't Hire Him Again

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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
When Objective Management Group assesses a sales candidate for a client, we also provide an automated reference check.  Prior employers answer 11 questions, aren't identified by name and the information is reported aggregately.

A recent assessment produced a recommendation to hire a candidate and the reference report that followed came back with a response from a single previous employer, who provided positive answers to 10 of the questions. However, the prior employer said he wouldn't hire this salesperson again.  What is the likely reason for such a response?

There are several reasons why a company would not hire a former salesperson again, even when they answered yes to all of the other questions. The first thing you can take from this is that this employer is being honest – which means that the answers to the other 10 questions, including those about performance, are also likely to be honest. The most obvious reasons for not rehiring a successful salesperson could be: 
    personality conflict; 
    betrayal (he may have left for the competition) over the exit; 
    internal conflicts;
    company policy to not rehire former employees;
    he was behavior challenged (a jerk);
    he was dishonest;

I’d ask the candidate, during the job interview, what would cause a previous employers to say they would not rehire him.  You may get the answer you seek directly from your candidate.

Posted by Dave Kurlan on Wed, May 02, 2007 @ 10:48 PM