Korean Manufacturer Case: Assessing Overseas Sales Staff and Future Leaders

In the age of AI, can outstanding past performance guarantee future success?

If even the competency standards for your most business-critical roles and your future leader candidates rest on experience alone, what basis do you have for developing those people systematically and selecting them accurately?

Company A, one of Korea’s leading manufacturers, was growing fast as it expanded into global markets. Along the way, its regional and product business units came to operate independently, which created two unexpected challenges: “there were no clear standards for its core roles,” and “it needed to assess the potential of its future leaders.”

Here is a detailed look at how Telta solved this complex problem.

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1. The Client’s Challenges and Needs

(1) No Standards for Talent Development

Because Company A’s regional and product business units ran independently, each unit came to require different expertise. Yet the company relied on experience without clear competency definitions that reflected these differences, and as a result it struggled to develop its people.

Overseas sales, one of Company A’s core roles, was a case in point. Even though the detailed competencies required clearly differed by product line, the role was managed under a single standard, so tailored development and placement weren’t happening. This risked frustration in the business units and declining trust in the HR system’s approach to talent development.
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(2) The Need to Strengthen the Leadership Pipeline

The corporate HR team faced an urgent, high-stakes task: developing the leader candidates who would drive future growth. But selecting future leaders based only on past performance or experience had clear limits. Outstanding past performance can prove someone’s competency as an individual contributor, but it can’t guarantee their potential to lead the organization through complex future situations.

To keep growing, Company A needed to predict scientifically which people had the potential to handle new market conditions and disruptive change the organization had never experienced, and to lead through them. Without a system to assess that ability objectively, the company was struggling to strengthen its leadership pipeline.

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2. Two Solutions from Telta

Telta delivered two solutions tailored to the two core challenges Company A faced, each rigorous in design while ensuring both speed and accuracy.

(1) Building a Competency Model and BEI for Overseas Sales

Defining a Competency Model Covering Hard Skills, Soft Skills, and Attitudes

The project’s core goal was to end the inefficiency of managing overseas sales as one undifferentiated role and to secure a competitive edge in the market. Telta first analyzed in detail the competencies overseas sales professionals need and Company A’s own role requirements. Through this process, it broke the single overseas sales role down by the competencies each product line requires.

Then, to help Company A win in each market, Telta combined its extensive global job database with industry benchmarks collected specifically for Company A to build a detailed role competency model covering hard skills, soft skills, and attitudes. These included market analysis, product knowledge, negotiation and proposal skills, stakeholder management, and a customer-oriented mindset.

Telta then broke each competency down into specific skills and defined clear criteria for each level, laying the foundation for individual assessments and development paths.

Designing an Assessment That Combines BEI and Multi-Rater Feedback

Building on this competency model, Telta designed an assessment system to measure whether these competencies actually show up on the job. It combined a behavioral event interview (BEI), which probes participants’ past experience in depth, with a multi-rater assessment that cross-checks self-perception against how others see them.

Telta then integrated the two sets of results into a detailed personalized report that lets each participant see their BEI-based competency results alongside their multi-rater results. The report also recommends training courses linked to each person’s development roadmap, so it works as a practical development tool.
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(2) A Custom In-Basket Assessment for Leader Candidates

Before formally developing the future leader candidates it had shortlisted, the corporate HR team wanted an in-depth assessment of their current competency levels. To fit Company A’s requirements and development goals, Telta proposed an in-basket assessment that presents complex future business situations, rather than a BEI based on past experience.

Modeling Key-Talent Competencies for Stronger Leadership and Business Perspective

To meet Company A’s need for leadership and a business perspective, Telta redefined the skills of its key talent based on the competencies used at consulting firms and big tech companies. To make predictions of future performance more accurate, Telta also designed the in-basket exercises using the past year of news coverage about Company A, securities analyst reports, investor relations materials, and annual business reports.

Assessing Latent Competencies Through Immersive Scenarios

To capture participants’ genuine competencies, the in-basket assessment was run, at Company A’s request, as an in-person workshop with all participants in the same room. Telta focused on supporting the assessment scenarios and the way the session was run so participants could become fully immersed in the simulated business scenarios even in an offline setting.

After the assessment, Telta used its AI technology to match participants’ responses against the scoring rubric and objectively determine the level at which each competency was demonstrated. Based on this analysis, Telta wrapped up the project by delivering tailored reports that help participants clearly understand their strengths and areas for improvement. These reports serve as a development guide for each participant and a coaching guide for their leaders.

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Related Reading

• Three Details That Make Telta’s Talent Assessment Report Credible to Employees
• Why Your 15-Page Competency Assessment Report Ends Up in a Drawer

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3. The Real Change Company A Experienced with Telta

What Company A valued most about Telta’s solutions was speed and accuracy. High-cost competency assessments that used to take months were delivered to a high standard in an average of three weeks per project.  
But Telta’s speed and accuracy did more than save time and money. They led to two defining experiences that showed Company A’s employees why Telta is different.

(1) Objective Reports Grounded in What Participants Actually Said

For the overseas sales role, Telta delivered reports that combined the evidence from the BEI with the multi-rater results, comparing how participants saw themselves with how others saw them.

These reports earned especially high satisfaction because they presented what participants had actually said during the assessment as clear evidence. Participants experiencing a BEI for the first time saw for themselves how objective it was: they were evaluated against a rubric based on what they had said, and the evidence behind each result was provided. The multi-rater results were also presented separately from the self and others’ perspectives, which surfaced practical coaching points that leaders could use as concrete evidence for coaching their team members.
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(2) Engagement and Discussion That Continued After the Session Ended

Engagement in the in-basket assessment for key talent exceeded expectations. Participants were so energized that many stayed after the session ended to keep debating instead of heading home.

This response shows that Telta’s assessment worked not as a box-ticking evaluation but as an experience people could immerse themselves in. And participants’ voluntary involvement and high engagement produced authentic data that captured their real competencies rather than rehearsed answers.

This was possible because, in designing simulated business scenarios tailored to Company A, Telta reflected the latest external trends as well as Company A’s own business direction.

How Telta Goes from Competency Definition to Assessment in Three Weeks
Telta achieves both speed and accuracy through collaboration between AI technology and HR experts with 20 years of experience.
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‍Telta uses AI to remove inefficiencies from the assessment process. For example, when a BEI interview ends, the lengthy recordings are immediately transcribed with speech-to-text (STT) technology and then checked a second time for accuracy. The transcripts are evaluated objectively against a predesigned rubric, and finally the scores and supporting evidence are processed into a custom report template agreed on with the client in advance.

PhD-level HR experts with more than 20 years of experience are involved throughout. They design the rubrics so the AI works accurately, plan the report templates, and review the final output. That is how Telta delivers both speed and accuracy.

The personalized reports Telta delivered did not end as a one-off assessment inside Company A. They gave each employee a roadmap for growth and gave leaders a scientific basis for coaching their teams.

Using the data from this project, Company A is now refining its key talent development strategy and making real progress toward a data-driven competency management system.

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