HIRE RIGHT AND PROSPER
By Lori & Bob Bomes
If you're a business owner or manager, you're driven by a vision of greater success, right? Over the past 26 years in consulting with businesses, we've yet to meet a business owner or manager who doesn't want a more productive staff and increased profits. Yet the key to greater productivity and profits -- using best practices to hire the right people -- is largely ignored.
In Jim Collins' seminal work, Good to Great, all 11 “Good to Great” companies focused on what he calls, "First Who, Then What?" These 11 companies were managed by people who truly valued their team members. They got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right positions on the bus. Like the rules of life, the rules of hiring right are simple, but they just aren't easy. Here are some steps to follow to ensure you're hiring the right people.
Clearly define responsibilities
Before you hire for any position, you must have the roles and responsibilities for that position clearly written. This should include what you expect the person filling that position to accomplish and in what time frame.
It takes time and effort to build clear job descriptions, but it’s well worth the effort. Great coaches in sports know exactly what they expect their players to do based on the position they play. One of the greatest organizations we have studied, The Navy SEALs, has written descriptions for every position on every team it sends out. With people's lives at stake, they aren't going to leave anything to chance. Why should your business do any less?
Accurate job descriptions are not a nice add-on, they are an absolute necessity. Well-defined roles, responsibilities and goals help to identify the talents necessary to be a highly effective individual in the position.
The right person
Now that you have these great job descriptions and you know what someone needs to do, you need to find someone who can do it.
For the most part, hiring managers hire people they like. They hire people they feel comfortable with, regardless of whether they have the talents (versus skills) for the job.
Understanding the distinction between skills and talents is essential because they are not interchangeable. Talent is an innate superior ability; it’s what you’re born with. On the other hand, you acquire your skills through training and experience. For example, an accounting firm will hire an accountant with acquired skills, such as an accounting degree from an accredited collage. What the firm finds difficult is hiring an accountant who has the talent, the personality traits such as character strength, sociability, dominance, competitiveness, and motivation to sell the firm’s services.
Hiring people you like who do not necessarily have the skills and talents just doesn't work. You end up with a situation in which workers are unhappy with their bosses; and bosses are unhappy with their workers. And everybody loses. Think about how you feel about the people who work for you or the people for whom you work. This unhappiness with each other is not based on whether we like the people or not, although that's a common misconception. It's based on people lacking the talents required to do the work that needs to be done.
We've seen manager’s waste years complaining about sales staff or department managers who just don't get the job done. They send them to training, get angry at them, warn them that they must produce or be fired, and yet the manager keeps them on the team! Not only are the employees miserable, but the rest of the team is angry at management for hanging onto them.
All people have talents and skills that they can use to be successful at certain jobs. But even the nicest, most well-intentioned people will be unable to do a great job if their position does not require their own specific talents. For example, a successful sales person has to be able to ask questions and listen for answers. That's a special talent. A department manager needs to be able to work with people with different behavioral styles, yet get the same message to them, in different ways. That's special talent. An inspector checking cloth that is printed at high speeds needs to be able to notice small changes in color. That's a talent. Well-defined roles, responsibilities, and goals help to identify the talents necessary to be an effective contributor to your team.
The benefits of pre-employment evaluations
Once you have detailed job descriptions and know the skills required to do the job, you might think your work is done, right? Actually, this is where many companies make the mistake of depending on the traditional interview process to get new hires. This is where you hear hiring managers talk about a certain chemistry they feel -- or don't feel -- with qualified applicants. But should a hiring decision be based on feelings or chemistry? In more cases than not, the answer is no.
That's why many leading companies give job applicants pre-employment evaluations to see if they have the talents needed for the position they apply to get. Great law and accounting firms have clearly defined job descriptions and know the educational qualifications and skills of the people they hire. But they also use pre-employment testing to understand the personality of their applicants because if they're looking for a rainmaker, a certain personality is needed. Even the National Football League (NFL) gives college players who want to play professional ball intelligence and personality tests.
Like many business experts across the country, we see pre-employment evaluations as a major step to providing a solution to the hiring process. This testing is legal; it's economical; and it works. It helps you avoid trying to force a square peg into a round hole.
Whether you're a business owner or a business leader, you have choices: you can continue complaining about the people you have in your organization or you can change the way you hire and fire. When you hire right, your organization prospers. And that is what's required to move an organization from good to great.