No more jokes about wishing you could ‘clone’ that high performing employee. Enough sifting through a haystack of resumes, hoping to find someone who fits the job as well as the terrific employee you’d love to clone. No need to waste time and money on unnecessary turnover.
Employers who wear out busy staff with a tedious hiring process are using an ‘old school’ approach – advertising, using a standard job description, scanning resumes, and wasting long hours in unproductive interviews and training. And in addition to all that, they’re wasting precious time on the wrong candidates!
But that doesn’t have to be you, because there is a science to hiring high potential candidates who are a great fit for your job openings, and it’s better than making exact replicas of the employees you already have. After all, isn’t your team stronger if the new employee is an amazing fit for the job and brings some new skills and talents with them?
First, think about how you know that you’re hiring a person who has the potential to reach superior performance and the job satisfaction to stay with the company. (That’s the point, right? After all, achieving both reduces the expenses related to turnover and boosts the bottom line.) How exactly do you really know when you’re hiring the right person?
Recognize that it’s about more than just the person. It’s really about the match between the job and the person. And the only way to really know if you’re hiring a great match to the job is to thoroughly define the position, inside and out. Not just the tasks it calls for, not just software skills involved, and not just the experience that might mean they have the personal skills the job calls for. You need a clear picture from a lot of different angles to reveal what it takes to really excel in the role. And that requires more than just having someone write up a job description, even if it is someone who has done the job. You need a proven process to benchmark the job, so you know when you have a candidate who matches it.
Our process begins by identifying the key job accountabilities – the reason the job exists. With these accountabilities as a guide, benchmarking defines the skills, attitudes, behaviors and task preferences that a perfectly matched candidate will have. Most companies only look at past experience, technical skills, and interview manner. Our research-based, scientific process adds:
* Behaviors – how do they problem solve, work with others, pace their work, and comply to procedures, etc.?
* Motivations – what do they value and how will that attitude motivate them on the job? Values define the candidate’s natural inclinations so they can be matched to a job that they are more likely to enjoy and excel at.
* Personal Competency Skills – are they strong in personal accountability, organization, attention to detail or customer focus? There are 23 personal skills that drive performance, depending on the job. Which specific skills will make a person a superior performer in your open position?
It’s crucial that comprehensive assessments are used to provide deep insight into the person. Superior assessment tools measure a candidate’s personal motivators, world view, workplace behavior, emotional intelligence and personal competencies. Making a great hire the first time is easy if the selection process starts with a clearly benchmarked position, so you know exactly what you’re looking for.
And there’s a bonus that makes HR Managers very happy. Benchmarking and comprehensive assessment tools take the bias out of the hiring process because they apply a clearly defined standard to each candidate. This process clearly documents that the employer is using unbiased, objective criteria to hire safely under the law.
Benchmark the job for a superior performer and use assessments to reveal that you’re only spending time on high potential candidates. A challenging new economy means employers need to step up their game!
Benchmarking is more than just listing responsibilities in a job description. To learn more, contact Coach Karl.
