By Scott Patchin
July 1, 2010
“Hiring him was a huge mistake. The pain started for me on day one. He interviewed well and had a great resume, but it was just a mistake.”
Every leader has a story like this. If it happens at a Fortune 500 corporation, the manager feels the pain, but the organization still survives. For the entrepreneur, who depends on the productivity of key people, a bad hire creates very real personal pain as well as financial pain for the organization.
Using Assessments to Make Better Hiring Decisions
Hiring decisions are made by answering three questions about candidates: Are they willing? Are they able? Are they manageable? Find an assessment that provides information on an applicant’s work style, communication style, motivation and manageability. Assessment feedback, coupled with information from interviews and knowledge of the job, should be used to answer the three questions posed above.
One of the biggest mistakes is skipping over the manageability question. Smaller organizations have unique cultures and often have leaders who are as busy doing as they are leading.
Using an assessment effectively includes:
• Making it part of the hiring process, and
• Having internal leaders take the same assessment.
Legally, using assessment results alone for a hiring decision is risky because defending your decision then means having to prove a link between the results and job performance. To be safe and fair, make an assessment one piece of input as part of a larger process. One method is to have candidates take assessments online prior to the final interview.
The Final — and Most Important — Hiring Step
One mistake organizations often make is ending the hiring process after an offer is accepted. After all the work of hiring a new team member, it’s tempting to slip into the mode of, “the sooner she starts the better.”
A rigorous assessment and interview process affords key insights into your new team member’s strengths and weaknesses that can help smooth the transition and insure success in the new work relationship. Use this information to identify two or three actions to take in the on-boarding process to help ensure success in the new role.
Since the leaders take the same assessment, analyze where a leader’s style might not mesh with the candidate. For example, a common characteristic in a CEO is someone who is action-oriented and expects others to jump into new situations and make decisions. When hiring someone who is more analytical, the conflict comes when decisions are thrust upon that person before s/he is comfortable with the role.
For most new hires, even executives, it’s important initially to hand them a few projects that will be quick wins for them, to help foster their self-confidence and the confidence of their peers and those they will supervise. Picking the right wins in an unfamiliar company is often difficult and forcing a new hire to do so is a risky on-boarding strategy.
Here are four things you can do to improve the chance your new hire will be successful:
1. Write an on-boarding plan consisting of:
• Key people for the new hire to meet initially,
• Five areas of competency from the job description to be reached within the first three months, and
• Two deliverables — hopefully wins — to be achieved in first six months.
2. Have the leader and the new hire share non-work information with each other, such as family, hobbies, life stressors, outside-work commitments, professional associations and favorite sports, restaurants or rewards. Focus on building trust through caring-to-ask. Both the leader and the new hire will make mistakes and trust will be needed in the future.
3. Direct the leader and the new hire to review assessment results together. Share communication styles, leadership styles, natural strengths and general needs. Openly talk about areas where potential conflict could arise and what to do when it happens.
4. Set up weekly 30-minute meetings between the leader and the new hire for the first three months. The agenda should focus on:
• Reviewing the progress of the on-boarding plan,
• Problem-solving together, and
• Revising priorities.
So Where is the ROI?
The two main costs of adding assessments to your hiring process are extra time with the candidate and the cost of the assessment. For hiring, it will cost $500 to $1,000 per candidate per assessment if you use an outside resource.
But, consider the alternative. In his book Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best People, Brad Smart shares a study that puts the cost of a bad hire at 14.6 times his/her annual salary and states that it takes 1.6 years on average to remove the person from your organization.
Make one fewer hiring mistake next year on a $50,000 role, and your investment is returned many times over. What would be the value to your organization if 75% or more of your new hires met or exceeded the goals you set for them? Assessments, coupled with integrating some of the best practices mentioned above, will help you get there.
Want more? Get more expertise by watching Scott Patchin take a deeper dive into assessments and on-boarding. View this YouTube video.
Scott Patchin is president of The trU Group, and is committed to helping organizations get the right people in the right roles to grow their culture and their business. Scott has served in leadership roles in health care, banking, and manufacturing sectors. He has called Michigan home for most of his life, and is committed to making Michigan the best state to work and live. Contact him at scott@thetrugroup.com.