Have You Ever Regretted Hiring Someone?
Hiring a member of staff is a key process a business needs to master in order for it to succeed. Poor hiring processes and practices will lead to poor employee performance and satisfaction , which will most likely lead to an early exit of the employee. This will almost certainly be a significant loss of time and financial resources of your company, not to mention the feelings of the ex-employee and any clients s/he may have come into contact with during their term of employment. A poor hiring decision in client facing roles reflects badly on your company and in turn on you. The question to ask yourself – should this ever happen to you – is, what part of my recruitment, on-boarding and ongoing management of my employee did I get wrong? Remember, difficult as it may be to accept, you deserve the employees you get. You hired them, they did not choose you.
What Is Your Process?
Traditional hiring methods run along the lines of determining the position/salary/job description. Advertise for the role through a variety of means. Receive and filter a number of CVs before selecting those you’d like to interview. Conduct interview(s), determine the ‘best’ candidate (assuming one or more are suitable) and offer them the job. What in the above process do you do differently?
What Else Can Be Done?
Is it possible to filter candidates based purely on their CVs? These are factual documents highlighting their skills and successes. Rarely do they reveal negative information about a candidate and often exaggerate, conceal information or plain lie. A company needs to be able to dig underneath the surface of the candidate’s skills to see deeper into their character, motivations, values and beliefs. Mark Murphy wrote a terrific book on interviewing for attitude. His company, Leadership IQ, conducted an impressive survey discovering that 46 percent of new hires failed within 18 months, and that 89 percent of the time it was for attitude, not a lack of technical skills.
What Can Be Done To Improve Hiring?
Companies should hire on attitude not aptitude. As they say in Disney, “Hire on attitude, train for aptitude”. Of course some core skills/qualifications/experience are necessary. However, without the right attitude and fit to your Company’s values and points of culture, you’re likely to find the candidates will fall into the 46% category within 18 months.
To see how you can transform your hiring policies/procedures to reduce the risk to your company of a poor hiring decision, get in touch.
