Like the real thing: insurers are testing the mettle of prospective agents and producers by putting them through evaluation simulations.

Chest heaving, legs shaking and shirt soaked with perspiration, the trainee pilot staggers out of the cockpit after a terrifying engine flameout--thankful that if was just a simulation, hOt for real. Yet she's got a battered, one-sided grin on her face, because she knows that she "landed" the simulator perfectly.

The airline's pilot assessors are pleased, too. The simulator has shown them that this prospective hire can perform well in a real-life work situation.

Flight simulators provide a harrowingly realistic experience of flight, and have become a central part of the assessment and training program for airline pilots. Now, insurance companies are beginning to put prospective agents and producers through realistic simulations of the work they will be asked to do.

Hiring good sales people has always been important, but today, it is absolutely critical. Consider the effects of two of the major issues facing the insurance sector today: agent turnover and heightened competition. These two factors are closely related. Customers simply can't distinguish between the merits of competing companies, and will quickly switch their coverage to one with a perceived "better" offer. In turn, this triggers another kind of turnover. Agents have trouble building a sizable book of business, and tend to move out of the industry into a field that is not as competitive.

Success goes to companies that can identify and develop top producers better than their competition can. The strategic resource is the skilled professional who can uncover needs, structure the message and build a successful sale.

Paradoxically, the industry continues to use the same traditional hiring approach that is based mainly on tenure. Companies rarely evaluate candidates' selling skills before hiring them.

Most companies rely on a combination of the following tools, each of which provides a glimpse into the candidate's suitability for the job, but also has limitations.

* References and resumes: Past performance indicates future performance to some extent. However, many factors may be responsible for one's success or failure, and the new environment may be completely different from the previous situation. Moreover, previous employers are increasingly reluctant to go beyond confirming dates of employment and title, for fear of lawsuits. Resumes often contain errors and falsehoods--a recent survey from Avert Inc., a firm specializing in background checks, said 44% of all resumes contain at least some lies.

* Interviews: Employers relying on interviews as their only basis for a hirIng decision should understand the limitations of this approach. While interviews can effectively weed out the bottom 20% of applicants who don't have decent interpersonal skills, interviews are notoriously poor at separating top performers from merely average performers. Statistically, there is little correlation between a good interview and success on the job.

* Personality profiles: Information provided by personality profiles can be useful for making hiring decisions, particularly for identifying potential danger zones. However, as in the case of interviews, personality profiles cannot accurately distinguish between top performers and mediocre producers.

Considering the difficulty of the existing screening approaches to identify top performers, a great deal of interest has been focused recently on the newest tool in employee assessment: computer simulations. Candidates are presented with realistic job situations in the form of a computer-generated video, such as calling on a potential client. On the screen, candidates see the actors play out the situation and are then asked to indicate the most effective and/or the least effective course of action.

Just as in real life, candidates must"read" the actors' body language, tone and words. If becomes, in effect, a conversation. The best candidate-evaluation simulations are as gripping, in their own way, as the flight simulators used to test aircraft pilots. To evaluate skill levels, the software compares candidates' responses to those of top performers in the database. This generates an accurate and objective snapshot of their level. From the scientific perspective, tools such as the Sales Simulator have been shown to be four to five times more accurate than traditional interviews.

Success will go to those companies that are most effective at hiring and developing outstanding agents and producers. The bottom line: simulations are effective tools for making sound hiring decisions.

Igor Kotlyar and Kim Ades work for Upward Motion, a Toronto-based firm that provides technology for assessment and training. They can be reached at insight@ bestreview.com.