Article for the IRS Employment Review (December 2003) Louis Wustemann.

A stylish profile: engineering a selection process for the Mini

To recruit the best showroom sales staff for the new Mini, BMW experimented with a psychometric profile based on high-street women’s fashion retailing.

“It was a challenge,” says Gillian Hyde of Psychological Consultants Ltd (PCL). “We were being asked to profile a job that didn’t exist.”

PCL is a firm of business psychologists specialising in personality assessment for selection and development. The company has adapted, and publishes, the UK version of the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), a psychometric assessment tool developed in the US that profiles individuals based on their ratings on seven scales. These include “ambition”, “agreeability” and “intellectance” (a tendency to be analytical and interested by ideas). The results are intended to predict occupational success.

The consultancy had first become involved with BMW in the mid 1990s, evaluating the aptitude tests used to select the manufacturer’s apprentice technicians. Subsequently, it was asked to profile the firm’s UK sales executives. At the time, sales staff were recruited for the company’s regional dealerships via national assessment centres. But BMW was searching for a more cost-efficient method of screening candidates that would not need potential recruits to travel to a single place and take part in a centre.

“They were looking for something that could be administered online,” explains Gillian Hyde, “And in 1999 the HPI was one of the first in the country [to be web-enabled].”

PCL began by building personality profiles for BMW’s highest-performing sales staff and for a sample of average performers, and identifying the differences between these two groups. This allowed the consultants to create a model profile with scales tailored to reflect the traits of the successful sales staff. “We looked at what was working already, and enshrined that in a template that would help perpetuate it,” says Gillian Hyde’s colleague Geoff Trickey who also worked on the project.

BMW’s independent recruitment agent KHA has since used the profile for the initial screening of applicants for sales posts in the BMW dealerships, assessing the individual via a questionnaire completed locally and scored online.

But in 1999 when BMW was gearing up for the introduction of the revamped Mini, a new profile was needed for a different breed of sales executive. “It’s a lifestyle product,” explains Adrian Davies, career strategies manager at BMW of the Mini. “The customer profile would be very different to a BMW.”

The car would be aimed at younger buyers, male or female, interested primarily in the style of the car. In contrast to the numerous variations in engine specification in the BMW range, there would only be two models, Mini One and Mini Cooper – since joined by a third, the Mini Cooper S – both of which shared the same engine, albeit modified for the Mini Cooper.

The variety would come in the range of colours and trim options that allow customers to tailor their own car’s appearance. In contrast to campaigns for the BMW marque, which stress the quality and innovative nature of the engineering, the “Mini adventures” advertising campaign would contain no technical details about the car.

BMW wanted the sales staff handling the expected influx of enquiries at BMW showrooms to reflect these brand qualities, and believed that the existing BMW executives did not fit the bill.

PCL’s research into BMW’s top sales executives found they scored highly on the Hogan “intellectance” and “scholarship” scales, suggesting they were interested in information and knowledge management. “They are highly technically aware and interested in knowing the details of the engines, which is what the average BMW customer wants,” explains Gillian Hyde. “They were not ‘salesy’ in the traditional sense of dashing up and pumping your hand and being persuasive,” adds Geoff Trickey. “They were more knowledge-focused in their outlook.”

These cerebral, conventional types, though atypical of sales staff in the car industry, were not what was needed for the new Mini. But for PCL to model the characteristics of successful Mini executives, its consultants would have to overcome the problem that there were no incumbents “It was a job that didn’t yet exist,” as Gillian Hyde points out.

So she and Geoff Trickey built up the new profile using PCL’s archival data of employee assessments using the HPI, focusing on individuals working in lifestyle retailing, such as holiday companies and apparel, taking elements from one high-street women’s fashion retailer in particular.

They then tested the finished profile against the test results of real individuals from lifestyle retailers. “If you are not careful,” Geoff Trickey explains, “You can set up a profile that only 1% of population 30% to 40% to come through.”

The Mini sales profile contrasted strongly with that of the BMW sales people (see boxes 1 and 2).“They would be more outgoing, engaging and sociable, perhaps younger,” he explains. “More light-hearted, more frivolous, less prudent, more impulsive.”

To recruit the Mini sales executives in time for the summer 2001 launch, BMW recruitment organised roadshows at 12 locations around the UK preceded by national press advertising. Candidates attended a half-day assessment session that included the new personality assessment. Details of those who met the specifications were passed to the dealerships.

BMW recruitment is administered by an independent agency, KHA, which provides services to the company’s regional network. Dealerships do not have to use its services (and therefore the HPI assessments), but most had become familiar with the method from its use in recruiting existing types of sales staff. “You might think that car dealerships would think psychometric testing was a waste of time,” says Gillian Hyde, “But, in fact, they have been incredibly positive about it and the take-up has been tremendous.”

KHA’s managing director Alan Kerby estimates that 50% of the 300 mini sales staff currently in post were recruited using the HPI assessment. Now, dealerships can ask KHA to run a local assessment centre for shortlisted candidates that will include the HPI assessment. Or, dealers can ask their preferred applicants to complete the questionnaire online, have it assessed against the new salesperson model and a report prepared on their suitability.

PCL is currently looking at ways of tuning the Mini sales profile. “It’s a matter of continual fine-tuning,” says Geoff Trickey. “You set up something that is quite conservative in the first place. So, you set a range of scores on the scales that is quite wide, then go back and tighten it up.”

BMW also plans some research into the comparative performance of Mini sales staff recruited using the HPI assessments and those who were hired without it. But Alan Kerby says the feedback has been positive. “We have had a number of dealers asking whether they should take a person on and we tell them the individual doesn’t match the profile, but they have taken them on anyway,” he says. “Then they have come back later and said ‘you were right, we shouldn’t have recruited them.’”

According to Adrian Davies at BMW UK, the project has been justified by the overall sales of the new car. “Sales have been well ahead of target,” he notes and, in the year to September 2003, they are up 30% on the same period last year.

LEARNING POINTS
Launching new products and services can demand different attitudes and skills, and this may have implications for selection criteria. BMW’s launch of the new Mini led it to develop a profile of successful sales staff that was based on studying relevant service sector jobs. An online personality questionnaire was developed to assess applicants. Informal feedback indicates that their sales performance exceeds those recruited in traditional ways.

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