Hiring Without the Guesswork

Tweet

Here's how to get over that hurdle: Assume there are no bad or good workers. There are, however, a lot of people in the wrong job. Consider the supervisor of a sophisticated inventory of 50,000 parts who can't stand detail or repetitive tasks, for example. Is he a happy man? No. And no sane manager would have put him there if she'd known about his preferences. The best personality tests don't produce answers; they produce a profile of leading indicators about someone. And the best use of the profile is to supplement or confirm what you have already learned.

Koether doesn't use the interest analysis until he's already sure the person has the capacity -- or "can-do," in his terminology -- to do the job. Further interviewing and the analysis provide a glimpse into an applicant's "will-do" -- his or her inclination to do the job successfully. Koether says that when he discusses the results of interest analysis with candidates, "9 times out of 10 they say, 'Yeah, that's me.' "

If you accurately assess a person's soft skills, the payoff is enormous. You've not only landed a productive employee but freed the employee's manager to do constructive, rather than remedial, coaching. "The first mistake that anybody in management makes is to assume that through training, incentives, or disciplinary action, you can change people who are not doing the job right. People can change, but in the end, we think, most people won't," Koether says.

To implement testing in your company, decide whether you want to create your own or buy an established test. Either way, be judicious; a test must be technically sound, be appropriate for the job and company involved, and comply with a slew of government regulations, including the new civil-rights act. The American Psychological Association suggests company owners contact the psychology department of a local university to find an industrial psychologist who can make recommendations.

Step Five: Keep Score with the Right Goals in Mind

Score your candidates immediately after seeing them, and make sure the same -- preferably senior -- person is seeing all the candidates for any one position. Assuming you have two or three candidates that have the characteristics to succeed in the job, the final piece of the puzzle is how well they will fit into your team or your company's culture. Look at whether the candidate has similar goals and how well his or her personality traits will mesh with existing employees'. Grade according to that as well, or compose questions to probe further.

The most important thing to remember while doing evaluations is that you are matching a person to a job profile, not comparing candidates with one another. "Comparison works OK if the worst candidates are sixes and sevens, and you select an eight," explains consultant Riordan. "But if the worst is a two and the best is a four, then you have a problem."

Another quality-control feature: make your decision based on a candidate's weakest score. Let's say you've graded a job candidate in three areas, as Riordan and Infincom's Koether do: she scores eight in her capacity to do the job, another eight for her behavioral preferences in a job, and a six on how well she fits the company team. Says Riordan: "Many selection processes would say, Well, you've got two eights -- hire her. I say, wrong. The smallest number will always bring the other two down. Your lowest number should be a seven or above."

Step Six: Finally, Check References Anyway

By this point, you won't be eager to do reference checking. After all, you've already worked so hard to get the right person that you don't really want to know if there's a problem. What's more, if you've been systematic in every other part of the hiring process, reference checking won't turn up anything you don't already know.

Still, do it. But to make it worthwhile, be sure to reach beyond the references -- acquaintances and former bosses -- that the applicant expects you to call. Ask those references for further references for the candidate, then call them.

The Payoff

Your biggest reward for creating and following a good hiring process will surprise you. It won't be the lower turnover or other concrete results you set out to secure -- though you'll likely achieve them. It will be this: if you hire the right way, you will manage your people better than ever before. You won't be able not to. You'll know precisely what motivates them, where they're likely to make mistakes, and how to package your feedback.

So while Infincom's turnover dropped dramatically when Koether altered his hiring practices a mere three years after starting the company, he doesn't rave about that. He says: "It gave us a common language among all our different disciplines. And talk about capacity to produce -- we went from zero in sales to $25 million in nine years."

Millard's Ron Parks knows which of his workers need to be assigned their machine-tooling jobs sequentially, rather than all at once at the beginning of the day. He knows which need continual external reinforcement and which would be insulted by such compliments. Understanding his new hires better begot an entirely new management style. Explains Parks: "Certain personality events used to make me angry. Now I understand that sometimes people can't help it. As long as I hire right, I don't have to put 80% of my energy into trying to change employees. I play to their strengths and subsidize their weaknesses."

 PREV  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 

Read more:

Sign-up for our Leadership and Managing Newsletter

Email Address: