Hiring Right The First Time |
By Yenisse Alonso
The Human Equation, Inc.
It happens in all organizations: You hire someone who seems perfect for a position but who ultimately fails to live up to expectations. You can't understand what went wrong. The employee's resume was outstanding, detailing the precise skills and experience you sought. And the employee made a strong impression in the interview, coming across as intelligent and confident. Yet, after a few disappointing months, you are forced to acknowledge that he's just not right for the job and must be replaced.
What went wrong? More than likely, the employee, though qualified to do the job you hired him for, doesn't "fit" in your organization. That's because an employee's personality traits, level of motivation, and ability to work with your current staff may all be as important as knowledge and experience in the workplace.
Finding the right fit between an applicant and a job is harder than it seems. In fact, if you ask those in charge of hiring in organizations, they're likely to tell you that hiring the right person for a job is one of the most difficult parts of their job.
Sometimes organizations discover too late that the right skills and appropriate experience are not enough. There are other qualities that are just as important for professional success, such as an employee's enjoyment of the work, degree of motivation, work ethic, and integrity.
"You have to separate the ability to do the job with the suitability to do the job," says Donald Walizer, president of Corporate Psychological Services, a firm specializing in pre-employment assessments. "Just because you can handle the tasks doesn't mean you should be doing them."
The key, then, seems to be finding someone who's not only qualified for the job but also compatible with it. Employers and hiring managers must be as good at judging character as they are at assessing skill level.
A first step is to establish clearly what the job entails, both in terms of knowledge and personality. Personal qualities required will vary, depending upon the nature of the position. For example, the qualities and skills needed for sales are not the same as those required for research.
Once a job description has been formulated, the next step is to evaluate applicants' resumes carefully, reading "between the lines" to discern who might be both qualified and suited for the job. An impressive resume can be misleading, especially since cases of dishonesty and exaggeration are occurring in increasing numbers. A skilled hiring manager must look beyond glowing descriptions of accomplishments for insight into the applicant's character.
For example, a resume indicating a wealth of experience that exceeds what the job calls for may indicate that the applicant is simply looking to fill the gap until something better comes along.
"I would definitely be careful and screen out someone working up the professional ladder who is taking two steps backward," says Debra Bathurst, director of human resources and recruiting at Oasis Outsourcing. This is good advice for hiring managers to follow when looking for the right person for the job.
While resumes can adequately reveal what an applicant has done, they seldom measure how well he or she did it or, perhaps more importantly, why. Thus, in addition to carefully reviewing resumes, employers need to conduct thorough interviews to gain a deeper understanding of the applicant.
The interview is an excellent opportunity to ask the questions that the resume raises but does not answer. If, for example, the resume indicates that the applicant has frequently changed jobs, a hiring manager must ask why. Doing so may reveal that the applicant was hired to complete a particular project, in which case a short term of employment is not a sign of trouble. On the other hand, this instability may reflect a lack of commitment on the applicant's part.
The interview may also help validate the claims the applicant has made on the resume. For example, an applicant who states that he or she implemented a new program at a previous job should be asked how this was accomplished. If the applicant struggles to come up with a clear explanation, this may indicate that the applicant exaggerated his or her accomplishments.
The truth about interviews is that they are only as good as the person conducting them. A good interviewer asks scenario-based questions to determine the applicant's knowledge and decision-making skills and asks open-ended questions to learn the applicant's personal qualities that often carry over into the workplace, both of which should be considered in the hiring process.
Experts suggest that employers move away from the traditional interview format that focuses on applicants' appearance, skills, and experience. According to William Wagner, organizational analyst and president of Accord Management Systems, these qualities are "a miniscule part of the big picture...50 to 70 percent of most job qualifications may be more inherent in personality than skill."
In his piece, All Skill, No Finesse, Wagner supports his argument by challenging employers to consider what they look for in salespersons: assertiveness, confidence, competitiveness, and the ability to communicate well, pointing out that "most of these qualities are personality traits, not skills."
So how do you know which personality traits are needed for particular jobs? Wagner suggests identifying the qualities of successful people in those positions and looking for similar qualities in applicants.
Recognizing the value of finding the right person for the job, employers have increasingly relied on personality tests as hiring tools, though opinions differ as to their value and legality. Some of the more widely used tests are:- the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), which purports to measure such traits as a person's propensity for abnormal or deviant behavior;
- the Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness Profile (DISC), which claims to identify a person's motivations, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, general approach to work, and reactions to specific sets of circumstances; and
- Profiles XT, which aims to measure a person's cognitive skills and potential for job success.
Dr. Ben Dattner, management consultant and adjunct professor of psychology at New York University, enthusiastically endorses such tests, asserting that "a well developed personality and intelligence battery can save [companies] a minimum of tens of thousands of dollars per year" in human resources costs.
Other experts are more cautious. In reviewing the research on the reliability of personality tests, Dr. Michael Harris, vice president of litigation support services at a management consultant firm, has found only modest correlations between test scores and job performance. While Dr. Harris has noted that "personality testing brings value in selection [of job applicants] if used appropriately, responsibly, and in an informed manner," such tests, concludes Dr. Harris, "are not an automatic panacea for hiring problems."
And there are legal difficulties with using such tests in hiring decisions. According to Michael Harris, lawsuits have been brought successfully in some states in which the use of personality tests in the workplace has been deemed in violation of state privacy statutes. Also, Harris notes, it has been argued that the differential impact such tests have on job applicants violates the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1991, which provide protection from various forms of discrimination. But it is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that may have the most direct impact on the use of personality tests in employment decisions. In 2005 the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that a company's use of the MMPI violated the ADA "because it [the MMPI] is designed, at least in part, to reveal mental illness" and thus may be categorized as a medical examination, which the ADA forbids employers from using as a screening device in hiring decisions. In spite of this decision, however, the use of personality tests in the hiring process has continued.
The bottom line, says Joseph Schmitt, a Minneapolis labor and employment law attorney, is that "employers need to do their homework before using such tests."
Carefully filling a position with the right person also improves employee retention. In today's highly competitive job market, finding talented employees is hard, but keeping them is even harder. According to The Recruiting Survey: As Worker Loyalty Fades, Personality Fit is Critical for Hiring and Retention, 46 percent of employees quit their jobs within the first year; only 49 percent remain after two years. And the amount of time an applicant will stay in a position can depend on how well he or she fits into the job and work culture.
"When you have people who are not only good at what they do, but like it, productivity soars," says Walizer.
It pays to hire right the first time, according to the Department of Labor. Replacing an employee costs nearly one-third of the employee's annual salary. Not only are there tangible costs associated with replacing employees, such as recruiting and training expenses, but also intangible costs, including lower productivity and decreased morale, since staff will have to assume more work to fill the void.
So examine those resumes closely, ask probing questions in interviews, and get to know job applicants as well as possible before hiring. The right person for the job is out there, but you have to know what to look for - and how to look for it.
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