Over the years we’ve had thousands of job candidates complete our Hire-IntelligenceAT behavioral assessment. Though many have passed through our portal we are always interested in which behavioral questions will pop up in the candidate’s interview guide produced by the system after the candidate completes the AT.
“When you have a customer convinced how do you close the deal?”
This question was suggested by the assessment, and subsequently used by the interviewer, when a candidate tested as being more accommodating than assertive. These traits rest on opposite ends of the Hire-IntelligenceAT profile scale. Now, in some roles having a high level of accommodation is a very good thing while being overly assertive is a negative. Many roles, however, such as sales, require the individual to have greater assertiveness to achieve success.
An accommodating sales person who has struggled most of their career with pressing for an order might trip on this question. At the very least they may reveal their hand by stumbling out of the gate with a few too many “umms” as they search their brain for best how to answer. The reason being is that accommodating individuals, though helpful in many situations, might be too much of a “push over” when it comes to sales. Stated more bluntly, they allow the customer to walk all over them.
The assertive sales person on the other hand who has spent their career kicking down doors and going for the proverbial jugular might show a little too much aggression in their response. This would trigger a different interview question in the assessment.
Perhaps you are an accommodating person who fancies themselves as being assertive. If so the question above may exploit your shortcomings. Maybe you are already aware of your assertive limitations but have enough interviewing experience to fool the inexperienced interviewer. No matter how many canned responses you have, odds are you may be unprepared for this sort of question.
The best thing to do is just be yourself, answer honestly and bring up past experiences where you have achieved success. Answering how you think the hiring manager wants you to answer is risky. You just never know how the hiring manager may roll.