IBM > Case Studies > Leading jewelry retailer: Making smarter recruitment decisions with deep insight into the keys for sales success

Leading jewelry retailer: Making smarter recruitment decisions with deep insight into the keys for sales success

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

IBM Kenexa Behavioral Assessment on Cloud

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Revenue Growth

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics

Applicable Industries

Retail

Applicable Functions

Human Resources
Sales & Marketing

Use Cases

Predictive Quality Analytics

Services

Data Science Services

About The Customer

The customer is a leading jewelry retailer operating hundreds of stores across the United States. The company is focused on driving sales and business growth, which is largely dependent on attracting and retaining skilled and motivated people. The retailer was seeking to refine its approach to sales associate recruitment, aiming to find a more accurate way to assess new applicants and determine whether they had the qualities needed to develop successfully in their roles and contribute to the company’s continued growth.

The Challenge

The jewelry retailer operates hundreds of stores across the United States and was facing a challenge in attracting and retaining skilled and motivated people to drive sales and business growth. The company wanted to refine its approach to sales associate recruitment and sought a more accurate way to assess new applicants and determine whether they had the qualities needed to develop successfully in their roles and contribute to the company’s continued growth. The challenge was to find a way to ensure that an applicant has the right skills for the job, and that they fit in with a company’s culture and ways of working.

The Solution

The retailer turned to IBM to help it develop a customized sales associate assessment, using IBM Kenexa Behavioral Assessment on Cloud. The company held focus groups with senior executives, subject matter experts and high-performing associates to identify and rank the traits that these individuals considered as key to successful performance. Using the results, the company created a shortlist of the top traits associated with sales associate success. The retailer then conducted a series of trial tests among a wide array of existing sales associates, with a range of performance rankings, to identify correlations between certain traits and sales performance. It then refined the assessment, creating a final version that is as short as possible while still covering all key requirements. The assessment sorts participants into three groups based on how they score against the criteria: not recommended, proceed with caution, and recommended.

Operational Impact

The retailer conducted a follow up study to explore the correlation between the assessment rankings and participants’ actual sales performance after their first full year of employment.
The retailer has discovered that associates who score highly on their assessments are more likely to go on to win promotions.
With unprecedented insight into the indicators that predict higher sales performance, the retailer can make more informed decisions when it comes to hiring new associates—helping it build a strong sales team and drive continued commercial success

Quantitative Benefit

Associates with top assessment scores reported 36 percent higher sales compared to their colleagues and averaged USD26 more in sales per hour—the equivalent of USD52,000 more sales annually.
In total, top-ranked associates achieved some USD6.6 million more in sales than their counterparts.
The results also showed that top performers were seven times more likely to hit their sales targets and 75 percent more likely to reach their up-sell opportunity targets.
Associates who were promoted to managerial positions achieved approximately 10 percent higher assessment scores on average.