This new view of the worker has very important implications for both of those critical questions mentioned earlier. With respect to the question of who should be hired, this view means that the real objective of selection is to identify individuals who already have the right skills and behavioral capabilities, or at least have the capacity to develop those skills. Most of the time, prospective employees will not have all of the desired rental behaviors their very first day on the job. This means that organizations must make a very important decision before they begin a selection process.

That important decision is: What does an organization want to start with vs. what is it willing to develop on the job? There is no single right answer to these questions. Different organizations have different needs and will require different behavioral capabilities for success. Even different positions within an organization may have different requirements. However, it is very important for an organization to have clear answers to these questions for any given position. Otherwise, it is impossible to know which capabilities to look for in prospective employees. Obviously, if an organization doesn't know what it is looking for, it won't know when it is found. The starting point for effective selection is to identify which specific behaviors prospective employees should be able to exhibit before coming to the job.

A frequently asked question here is what are the right behaviors to look for in a prospective sales representative? Again, there is no single right answer. The general principle is that at hiring time you look for those desired rental behaviors that you don't want to, or can't afford to, develop. Not all organizations will look for the same things in hiring because not every organization is willing to develop the same things.

One way to approach the problem of deciding what to look for in a prospective salesperson comes from considering what this job entails.