Anyone with
responsibility for hiring or promoting employees knows how aggravating it is
to select a candidate that seemed right only to discover later they weren’t
as good a fit for the job as you thought they'd be. Poor job fit results in lost productivity and excessive attrition -
both costly issues for today’s lean organizations.
Why do we so often hire the wrong
person for the job?
Often, the hiring manager isn't clear about what is required to perform the
job well. When there is lack of clarity concerning any aspect of the job or
the person needed for the job,managers
opt for candidates they like. Many times the candidate is like the
manager and we almost always ‘like’ people who match our styles. We also hire
candidates who seem to know people in the industry (have an extensive
rolodex). This is more common for sales people or very senior positions.
Another reason for hiring the wrong candidate is that they have prepared well
and have effectively sold themselves during the interview. And perhaps the
most intriguing reason for poor fit that I hear (too often), is that managers
sometimes know the candidate isn’t an ideal fit, but place them in the job
anyway. The rational I hear for this questionable logic includes ‘we just
weren’t attracting any really good candidates’ or ‘interviewing takes a lot of time and I don’t have a lot of time’.
How can you prevent hiring the wrong
candidate in your organization?
1. Define the ‘hard’ needs of the job including
experience required (and in what), knowledge of industry, training and
education, consistency of work history, willingness to travel, what they need
to be proficient at (like using Excel or driving a truck). A review of a
candidate’s experiences, references, education, skills and training tells us
WHAT they can do and whether it matches the needs of the job. At some point
you must have a background check performed - the higher the job, the more
extensive the check.
2. Develop a list of 3 – 6 key
accountabilities or goals that this job will ‘be held accountable for.
These are those things that must be done and that will impact the business.
Key Accountabilities are the reason the job exists. They must be measurable.
And these 3 – 6 key accountabilities should occupy about 80% of the employees
time. (Note: From my work with clients, this is the most important pre-hiring
activity and is the one most often neglected.)
3. Benchmark the job. We
find that those companies that effectively benchmark the soft skills required
for success in the job they are filling have the information they need to
look for the right candidate. And the information is objective (helping to
eliminate bias). Notice I did not say benchmark your top performers in the
job (such as sales). The reason is that your top performers may just be top
performers in your company. It is not unusual for a company to benchmark the
job and then assess their top performers and find this to be the reality. All
is not loss. Two opportunities present themselves:
a. Using the benchmark you can upgrade the talent in the position by
filling the position with a new person who is a better fit or helping the
current employee develop.
b. Using the benchmark and the reports generated from the assessment reports,
you will have great information with which to coach you current top
performers into even greater performance.
Also, using a
predetermined benchmark is fine for comparison sake, but use these with care.
The generalized benchmark may not be accurate for the specific job you are
filling or doing succession planning for.
4. Assess your top job
candidates (internal and external) versus the benchmark. Using effective hiring systems, assessing
candidates’ soft skills is easier today than ever before. You can have the
candidate complete our assessments from anywhere there is Internet access.
And you will have their reports within minutes. The candidate’s reports
should align with the benchmark which makes your analysis easy and quick. In
areas that are marginal, the candidate’s reports will guide you in asking
interviewing questions that target the soft skills that are most important to
success in the job.
Are soft skills really important in
jobs?
The answer is YES! We hire for skills and fire for attitudes (soft
skills). There was a time when it wasn’t very fashionable in business to
focus on soft skills. The trend was to focus on hard skills (Can they DO the
task required?). Today, though, we have matured and understand that soft
skills (sometimes called personal skills) usually have more to do with
success and failure in a job than hard skills. For example, I have heard more
than one client say “We can train them to do X, but if they aren’t good team
players, concrete thinkers or problem solvers (soft skill), they can’t be effective
in this job.” Conversely, I have heard most of my clients say “The reality of
how (name) is doing is not what I had hoped for when I hired them! I don’t
know why I didn’t see this when I was interviewing them.”
Soft skills comprise a person’s job attributes, their motivators and their
behaviors.
Attributes are a cognitive measure of how strongly a person values
certain competencies like customer service, leading others, quality
orientation, flexibility, internal self control or self management. The more
important the competency is to success in the job, the more important it
needs to be to the person hired for the job. Attributes and Competencies
often are the most important consideration when evaluating a candidate's
people skills.
Motivators tell us WHY a person
does what they do. There are six primary Motivators:
Theoretical,
Individualistic, Social, Utilitarian, Traditional and Aesthetic. Here’s an
example: Someone who is highly Utilitarian is motivated by results. They are
profit-driven and bottom line oriented. They are driven by competition,
challenges and economic incentives. The want to see results from anything
they do, spend or give (including time)If the job provides and rewards these
characteristics, the individual will be motivated.
Behaviors were once thought to be the key to success performance in a
job. While still seen as important, Attributes and Motivators are often more
important because it is easier to adapt behaviors to the situation. That
said, Behaviors can cause a person to fail in a job or feel a great deal of
stress because their style is not a good fit for the job. For example, if
someone is extremely outgoing and positive, putting them in a job that has
little people contact and high levels of skepticism will be very frustrating
for them. Someone in a position of authority who has difficulty making
decisions will have trouble leading. In addition, an understanding of one’s
behavioral style and that of others is key to effective interpersonal
communication.
The right assessments are the key to
successful hiring
The right assessments can help you objectively understand a candidate’s attributes, competencies, motivators and behaviours.
Comparing a
candidate’s assessment reports to the needs of the job (benchmark) will help
you understand how good – or poor – a fit the candidate will be for the job.
Assessments help you get under the resume and the candidate’s interviewing
persona. The right assessments will unearth a wonderfully rich body of
information which you can use to help you continue the interviewing process
and make your decision. The information you get from the right assessment
reports can even serve as coaching guides for those candidates you hire or
incumbents you are working to develop. One of my clients, who has been using
assessments for the past three years, says “I don’t know how we could
effectively make a hiring decision today without the information we get from
these (assessment) reports.” Another client says “These reports have saved
me, more than once, from making a terrible hiring mistake.”
Benefits of hiring employees who fit
their job
Managers who are clear about the requirements for success in a job -
including the ideal profile of personal attributes, motivators and behaviors
- will have high levels of success when they hire. Filling each of your job
openings with candidates who really fit is simply good business. It improves
productivity, morale, and ultimately, the success of your organization. It
reduces the burden on the manager because the employee will like their job.
It creates energy for those who work around someone who loves their job. It
creates loyalty (yep, there is still such a thing as loyalty). It inspires
creativity. And finally, it saves money and reduces disruptions to the
business which is the result of having to fire someone or having them quit
(whether they actually leave of not).
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