Mandatory and Desirable Criteria

When you’re actively looking for a new salesperson, not everyone who passes over your electronic threshold is a prime candidate for the job of sales professional. To eliminate obvious misfits from the pile of responses you hope to get from your recruiting efforts, you need to have a filter through which you will pass the resumes and applications. You do this by developing a set of mandatory and desirable criteria.

Some general categories of criteria are:

• Education
• Past applicable work experience
• Previous training (non-sales)
• Special skills
• Hobbies or interests
• Socio-economic level
• Personality traits
• Stability
• Sales training
• Organizational skills

Take the time to build a filter for a sales position in your company. Look at the categories above and decide which factors are “must-have” (mandatory) and which are “nice-to-have” (desirable) and build your list.

Beware of establishing requirements that are too stringent and therefore may eliminate a good candidate. For example, a university degree may be nice to have (desirable) but don’t make it a mandatory requirement unless it really is mandatory.

Rank your “desirables” as to what is most desirable, next most desirable, etc. This will help you select between candidates who may have many of the required criteria for the position. Now it’s a matter of selecting the most desirable.

Using a mandatory/desirable criteria filter will help eliminate wasted interview time and help you find a better-quality candidate.