IN THIS ISSUE...
"Dig Your Well Before You Are Thirsty" ~ Harvey MacKay
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EXPANDING YOUR POOL—THE KEY TO BEING SELECTIVE!
The underlying assumption of most selection assessment programs is usually you have more applicants than jobs and some applicants are more likely to succeed than others. Assessments are a tool to scientifically choose the few most likely to succeed from the many less likely.
As the economy continues to improve and the population ages and birth rates decline, that underlying assumption begins to break down. What if you have fewer applicants than you have openings? Even more likely, what if you have fewer qualified applicants than openings?
As recently as a year ago, this just wasn’t much of a problem. Many hiring managers either were not around during the employee shortages of the late 1990’s or have forgotten what it was like and how they dealt with it!
The old adage, “good times build bad habits; tough times build good habits” may apply here. When it’s easy to recruit enough candidates for your jobs, complacency and habits rule the process.
- When did you last make a substantial change in the publications where you advertise openings or in the content of those advertisements?
- When did you last look for an untapped reserve of fresh talent?
- Have you looked at where your new hires live, hang out, or hear about your company?
In a recent session with a client company, we requested a simple zip code list of their employees in an entry-level position where they had an applicant shortage. We were surprised and they were chagrined by the results. With a million people living within a 45 minute radius of their plant, 81 percent of their employees were from just seven Zip codes, representing less than 100,000 people.
They were recruiting from less than 10 percent of their possible targets!
Aside from the obvious geographic opportunities, where else can you look to increase your applicant pool?
For many companies like Home Depot, Borders Books and Johns Hopkins Medicine, the answer has been in their partnership with AARP to recruit older workers. Other companies are working with the V.A. and Armed Forces Transition Programs to find good candidates in the ranks of those leaving the military. Community Colleges across the country are working with employers to provide specific career preparation.
Wherever you find them, the payoffs may be huge. Many of these special candidate pools possess a better work ethic and lower turnover rates than the general population. Some come with subsidized on-the-job training. All of these groups help expand your pool so you can be as selective as possible. You deserve the best employees you can possibly find and there’s opportunity in expanded numbers!
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WHY JOB INTERVIEWS ARE OFTEN MISLEADING
GUEST ARTICLE BY GREG MACIOLEK, INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT RESOURCES, INC.
Studies show that interviewing a candidate for a job position is only 14 percent effective in determining “job fit.” On a nice day, it would be just as effective and more enjoyable to sit on a park bench and hire every seventh person who walks by!
The steps of hiring and firing employees are similar to those of marriage and divorce. When you are dating, you are searching for someone with whom you are comfortable and who is as good for you as you are for them. Next, in the courting stage, you are on your best behavior. You are nice to your companion’s mother, you might buy flowers and you refrain from burping at the table. You get the picture.
Your companion may think, “He/she’s not perfect, but when we are married, I’ll change him/her!” So you marry, and one spouse tries to change the other. If it can’t be done, (the usual case, unfortunately) the couple may separate and then divorce. Of course, divorce is extremely traumatic and often very costly.
In a process very similar to dating, a company advertises for candidates. After sifting through many applications and résumés, the finalist candidates are called for a face-to-face interview. With the interview begins the courting. The candidate is on his best behavior. He has researched the company and says all the right things.
Finally the interviewer concludes, “Well, he’s not perfect, but I’ll train him after I hire him.”
Sound familiar? Have you ever regretted hiring someone on the very first day? It hurts, doesn’t it? Or someone asks, “What idiot hired that person?” Ouch!
But you don’t give up. You pay for training, trying to mold the person to do a job he will never do well. Eventually you begin the sad process of firing the employee. This, too, is a traumatic and often costly process. In our litigious society, it can be very costly.
I call it “hiring rabbits to swim.” You might teach a rabbit to swim, but how effectively? Why not hire the rabbit into a running job and then train it to run faster and more effectively. In other words, hire to the rabbit’s strengths or job-fit.
When I conduct workshops on hiring, I ask the participants to list what they want in their ideal candidate. They often list the following descriptions: honest, good people skills, hardworking, self-starter, gets along with everyone, relevant work experience, stable, trustworthy, does quality work.
Then I ask how they determine if the candidate has these qualities. Often they admit, if the interviewee is outgoing, they infer he must have good people skills. If he maintains eye contact, he must be honest.
Except for relevant work experience, the traits we seek may be hard to see. Since it is difficult to determine these traits, we use behaviors (like eye contact or a firm handshake) to infer their presence or absence.
Consider punctuality, for example. A hiring official may think a candidate’s early arrival for the interview is a sign of integrity or good work ethic. In reality, it may be the first time the candidate has been on time for an interview in his life!
In a hurry to hire, we may neglect to examine whether we are hiring a rabbit to run - or to swim. Haste to hire is a costly exercise and results in both the company and the employee being unhappy.
Valid, scientific assessment of the characteristics necessary for job fit can reduce these errors in the hiring process and increase hiring success!
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CUSTOMER SERVICE “BLITZ” IMPROVES SERVICE, PROVIDES ONGOING TRAINING
A luxury boutique hotel basks in the high-altitude sun and snow of the Rockies and caters to skiers and snowboarders all winter; fly-fishers, mountain hikers and bikers in the summer. Guests who pay the hotel’s $700+ room rates demand very high levels of service. The hotel’s ownership and management demand no less, as they are in hot pursuit of AAA’s coveted five-diamond status. Adding pressure to the equation, the resort area is rapidly growing and the employee pool is both limited and in high demand. Employers must select good people, develop their employees internally and work hard to keep them.
For the past two years, the property has used the Step One Survey II™ to help select high-quality employees and has also used the Profile XT™ to insure good fit and high probability of success in building their management team. In the fall of 2004, before the ski season, the hotel embarked on a full-scale “blitz” designed to identify the common characteristics of their top customer service people and to provide coaching input for each staff member to improve individual customer service. The program also included training and feedback to ensure every member of the team was on the same page when it came to delivering five-diamond class service.
The core of this intensive effort was Profiles International’s Customer Service Perspective™ assessment (CSP). Before the kickoff, management identified the hotel’s top performers in customer service. The CSP was administered to this group and a Success Pattern was created. These top performers met with management to create the Company Service Perspective - their consensus answers to the 49 very tough questions on service issues contained in the assessment - a thoughtful guide to “how we do it here.” Built on this foundation and implemented over a one-month timeline, the initiative followed this sequence:
In week one, all employees completed the CSP, requiring about a half-hour each, on-line.
In week two, all supervisors received training on proper use of the CSP’s Coaching Report and received their own Coaching Report in the process.
During the third week, every employee met with their supervisor and the two discussed the Coaching Report results and how to improve each employee’s customer service delivery. The employee’s answers to the Company Service Perspective questions were discussed, with emphasis on where their responses differed from those developed by the top performers and management. Since many of these answers differ with perspective and situation, these were often lively discussions.
Week four was devoted to small-group workshops of 20 employees or fewer and focused on the Company Service Perspective, the company’s answers and the situations and circumstances leading individuals to have differing answers to these questions. The atmosphere was one of encouraging individual opinion, as the questions often have no one “right” answer. Participation was high and the groups generally agreed. Their awareness of the complexities of service issues had been greatly increased. Finally, as follow up to the initiative, individual working groups continued to discuss these questions and issues, one question at a time, through the winter as they held routine staff meetings.
The hotel participates in a third-party customer satisfaction measurement program, which provides a numerical summary of customer feedback on a monthly basis. Results of the program are at left.
EMPLOYMENT SCREENING AND LEGAL UPDATES
(from ESR's June 2005 newsletter)
View the full newsletter.
Lawsuit Underscores Importance of Following “Only in California” Rules.
A class action lawsuit recently filed in California underscores the importance of following specific state rules in hiring. For California employers, there are a number of “only in California” rules.
[Full Article]
ESR Quoted in SHRM Magazine on Safe Hiring-“Words to the Wise”.
The June 2005 edition of SHRM’s HR Magazine quoted ESR president Les Rosen from his presentation at the 2005 EMA Convention in Dallas, Texas. This was the fourth straight year SHRM invited him to speak at the EMA convention.
[Full Article]
Four Reasons Employers Screen New Applicants.
[Full Article]
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HOW WELL ARE YOU EXECUTING YOUR 2005 PLAN?
 Are you having a difficult time getting 360° accountability of your managers? Every manager's objectives are succinct and vital to the company's objectives and every manager has direct ownership of their plan. From the first day of the plan year, every manager knows for what they are accountable. The progress reporting for every planned action is built into The One Page Plan and gives you updated periodic reports that allow you to quickly monitor their progress. This system clearly identifies excellent and poor performers.
"70% of strategy failure is because of bad execution. Bad execution results from managers not being aligned to the corporate strategies and goals." -David W. Light, CEO & Executive Coach, Business Builders LLC. [Back to Top]
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