Keeping The Right People
Right people need to be in the right job
Are you sure that your company has the right people in the right positions? While you are hiring, are you convinced that the make-up of all the positions is what you really need to be productive? Many companies that you would expect to know better are just as guilty in putting the wrong person in the job or even creating the wrong jobs.
When a job is found to inhibit progress it needs a re-think. When a new employee burns out way to soon, hiring and placement needs a re-think. A company’s decisions about how to place people can save it a lot of wasted motion and loss of tight money. Conversely, it can mean significant changes to the company’s production efficiency. The benefits, including money saved, include enjoying a more productive staff, a more satisfied staff, and higher rates of success in meeting all company goals—especially recruiting and placement.
What’s wrong with the way we hire people?
Many organizations, if not most, take too long to fill vacant positions on staff. Further, when they do finally make a decision—likely from a shortened list because of the length of time—they often put the wrong talents against the wrong tasks and work structure. This situation is actually at the center of a cycle surrounding common hiring processes. The start and the finish of the cycle is the pile-up of interviews coupled with the pile-up of duties on the hiring supervisor. Here is what is wrong with most hiring processes.
Overall, hiring takes too long.
Not only is the follow-up slow to take place, often too many people insert themselves into the ever-slowing process who have no ownership in the consequences. For example, good candidates get hired by the competitors while one company tries to decide when the candidate should come back to meet yet another person and take yet another interview in a seemingly endless process.
Recruiters are unable to keep up with the demand for more interviewees.
Part of this is fed by the backlog of jobs accumulating while the longer-than-necessary process loses the choicest candidates to competitors. The best candidates, guaranteed, will soon tire of an interview process that has too many steps. To a good, clear-thinking candidate, excessive interviews are a hallmark sign of weakness in the company toward confidence and decision-making. That is not something a strong forward-moving candidate will want to adopt into his life.
Fixing a Broken Process
Top–down responsibility is going to have to come into play. Someone is going to have to be designated to do the decision-making in the hiring process and have the authority to “take the plunge” with the new candidate.
As someone is made responsible, then that someone must have a protocol and pattern to follow and be guided by the wishes of management, without direct involvement being a constant in the hiring process.
Unaffected but interested people—in other words, management that wants to interview but has no real ownership in the outcome—have to be excluded from the lengthening process.
Finding the correct tasks and environments
There are a number of methods used to help place people into what are likeable activities for them. The point of all of them is to let people work in an environment in which they are not only comfortable for long periods of time but also where their personality type can thrive. Entire companies have been devoted to screening and sorting such attributes, but good judgment still has to prevail. Carrying the use of such matrix developers too far can be as much of a problem as the opposite. In simple terms, not everyone will fit exactly into a pigeonholed label.
Among the tools are personality attribute tests such as Professional DynaMetric Programs ProScan. (For a full description of ProScan, go to www.pdpworks.com.) Others (i.e. Jung- Myers-Briggs, www.TrueColorsCareers.com) have been used identify personality types and to determine mind style and learning style delineators (i.e. cognitive style measuring tools such as Gregorc), each of which can build four basic categories of people to help group together similarities and differences in people.
How much is too much?
The key is to use such tools wisely. A hiring manager trying to get a methodology to do his or her thinking is bound to make big mistakes in the application. One of the best ways would be to take a couple of quizzes, for example the short, seventy-five question Myers-Briggs, and the five minute Gregorc Style Delineator to give you an idea for predispositions that candidates might have to certain types of activities.
But, if you want to try the very best method for detecting likes and dislikes, during the interview just ask the candidate. Most are well aware of what tasks they love doing and what activities drive them up the wall. Most experienced candidates possess that kind of self-awareness.
Paying attention to where you place a candidate saves money and time. Some research shows placement of the right person in the right type of job can increase longevity by at least ten percent. Something not measured, though, is the improved morale among happier workers whose brains are not taxed to the limit. Anything that would help cut down on the vicious cycle of a long hiring process, complicated by high turnover, would be welcome relief to any company and any hiring supervisor.
For more information about how we can help you with your Human Resources and hiring processes, call us at 888-700-8512, request a proposal or contact us.
