It is no secret that organizations today are looking for ways to make better decisions about the people they hire and promote. Most leaders understand that soft skills are just as important as technical skills in determining who will be their strongest contributors. In fact, according to the Center for Creative Learning, soft-skill deficiencies account for seventy-five percent (75%) of career “derailers.” Some example career limiters include conflict resolution, interpersonal and influencing skills. The ability to successfully determine and evaluate your candidates’ skill proficiencies against the critical skill requirements of your jobs is key to good hiring and promotional decision-making. In this article, we bullet-point four simple strategies that enhance success in selection of talent.
1. Identify the Job Skill profile: Not all jobs in your organization require the same set of skills to be successful. A sales job requires a much different set of skills than a quality assurance engineer. Before you begin the hiring process, you want to identify the key skills most important for success in your unique job. We call this the JOB PROFILE. Creation of the job profile should also include consideration of technical and soft skills important to your team and organization’s overall success. Keep in mind that not all organizations function in the same way and with the same set of values. A candidate that has been successful in another organization does not guarantee success within yours. Success is determined when there is a match between your unique job profile and the skill proficiency of a candidate.
2. Create Behavioral Questions for the Candidate: After you have identified the job profile, you create a set of behavioral based questions that will measure your candidate’s proficiency against those key skills. The best interview questions ask candidates to describe a situation where they actually used the skills in your job profile. For example, if you identify “influence” as a critical skill, you might formulate your questions like this: “Tell me about a time that you had an idea that you wanted to implement. How did you go about influencing your decision-makers and what happened as a result?” Creating strong technical and soft skill behavioral questions lays a strong foundation for success in the hiring process.
3. Rank the Candidate Responses and Get Consensus: During the interview process, interviewers rank the candidate responses (using a rating scale such as ineffective, effective or superior) against the requirements identified in the job profile. Next, the team gathers together to share those ratings. Candidates that gave answers demonstrating the highest level of proficiency across the skill set outlined in the job profile become the final candidates for the job. Regardless of whether or not the interview team is able to reach consensus on the top few candidates quickly or after some significant discussion, the time invested is well worth the reward. The leader is responsible for keeping the consensus meetings focused on how well the candidate demonstrated proficiency in the key skills areas.
4. Finalists Participate in an objective Assessment tool: Before making a final selection decision, ask your top candidates to take an objective assessment. (Please read this month’s article on “Assessment & Evaluation” for documented evidence of assessment value in the hiring process.) Remember, an assessment should measure your candidate’s skill against the job profile. When that happens, the tool greatly improves hiring and promotional success rates. According to an Aberdeen Group study (Talent Assessment Strategies: A Decision Guide for Organizational Performance: March 2010), organizations using assessments achieved the following results:
• 75% greater year over year improvement in hiring satisfaction
• 75% year over year decrease in hiring costs
• 2.5 times greater year-over year increase in profit per full time equivalent
Obviously, these types of results magnify the importance of imbedding assessments within your hiring process. The assessment can also be used throughout the career of the hired employee. It should be incorporated into all stages of the integrated talent process — including on-boarding, performance management, career development, and succession planning.
Creating a rigorous hiring process following this 4 step process guarantees better quality hiring decisions. We utilize this approach in our own organization and help our clients implement it as well. As the research indicates, the investment pays for itself. When you get the right talent and put them in the right job, the rest of leadership becomes much easier. Star performers thrive when they can use their best skills to get results.
Author: Diane Brown at TJ Associates LLC (Talent Journey). Copyright protected, all rights reserved worldwide.
