Irrespective of size or sector, your organisation, in order to compete successfully in today’s challenging marketplace, must deliver more with fewer resources to customers who demand more for less. To do this you must ensure each position is filled with a person who has the potential to become a superior performer.
Traditionally employees were recruited on the basis of their skills and knowledge as evidenced by their C V or application form backed up by one or more interviews. In the majority of companies these interviews were carried out by people with little or no training and employment decisions were often made “ on gut instinct or personal chemistry”.
Frequently the results reflected more on the candidate’s ability to match the style and attitudes of the interviewer than meet the real requirements of the job.
If skills and knowledge always lead to superior performance then recruiting high performers would then just be a case of choosing the person with the most qualifications and experience. However, although these “hard” skills are much easier to define than the “soft” skills most appointments that are judged to have failed do so because the person has “not fitted in” rather than they did not have the expected level of skill or knowledge, many people are hired for their skill and fired for their attitude!
In order that we may overcome our own inherent prejudices we need some objective ways of understanding and quantifying the “soft skill” requirements of the job and attributes of the candidates. Increasingly pyschometric profiling is being used, according to a recent survey by the Industrial Society over half of all companies routinely use one or more psychometric instruments in their recruitment and selection procedures. Fortunately, there are now psychometric profiling systems available to the organisation without an extensively trained H R person or deep enough pockets to use half day assessments with consultant occupational psychologists. These systems can not only identify an individual’s natural and adapted behavioural style but also can look at the underlying values that drive that behaviour. The ideal behavioural profiles for the job itself can also be profiled using the responses of people who know that job. Other more sophisticated tools are also available which look beyond behaviour and values to the specific competencies required by a role and exhibited by an individual.
Although some people may have had negative associations or experiences with so called “personality tests”, the essence of success with these profiles is to use them to enable understanding not label behaviour. The basic presupposition behind the profiling system that I am most familiar with is that no one behavioural style or set of values is better than another, just different and by understanding that difference and matching it to the job not only does the individual perform better but is also much more likely to get much more job satisfaction. Some SME’s that I have worked with have substantially improved the quality of their recruitment by profiling the short listed candidates and then giving them a copy prior to their final interview during which they review the report together. Not only does this lead to a much greater understanding of the fit between the candidate and role but it also enables much quicker integration into the existing team as behavioural and communication styles have been explicitly identified.
Comments