Productivity and Marketing
 
Technology Removes the Mystery and Fear in Hiring Decisions
by Bob Epstein
 

When you buy a person, do you receive a manual?

Compared to buying a computer or automobile where you can see features in advance, a hiring decision is based on much less available information.

Have you ever hired a person that impressed you only to find that they were wrong for the job?

How would you like to have that job fit information before you make that hiring decision?

As we all know, a bad hiring decision has a huge cost including recruiting, advertising, interviewing, travel, managerial time, salary and benefits


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There are more costs that you may not think about:

· Revenue production and new business that you might have secured with the right person could be lost forever, not to mention the effect on morale, your company image, and the waste of managerial time.

· Starting the entire hiring process over.

Knowing that the people you hire determine the performance of your company, wouldn't it be nice to have tools to predict an individual's performance in your company before you hire them as well as a manual to help optimize their performance after they come on board?

 


A decade ago, experts used software to perform complex marketing and business analysis.

Today, recruiters and human resources professional can use these tools on a daily basis.

Does the word assessment spell mystery and fear to you? Relax, because technology has brought us new tools that accurately predict job performance and job fit.

Unlike personality tests of old that were designed to look for abnormal behavior, today's technology provides far more meaningful information by analyzing specific core competency traits in an individual that are job specific.

Using benchmarks based on top performers and comparing individual traits on a standardized comparable scale, the new technology looks not just at personal behavior traits, but also at mental abilities and interests.

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Computerized systems offer the ability to instantly analyze large amounts of data, while still bringing costs down.

The total person pre-employment assessment even grades itself, telling you if you can rely on the results.

For example, you are alerted as to whether people are mis-portraying themselves in attempting to make you think they are something that they are not.

In short, technology has made hiring decision information fast, accurate, revealing, valuable, affordable and useful

 

A large well-known international consulting firm has clearly identified, over an eight-year period, one trait that signals a red flag over the hiring decision. The trait is a measure of drive and sense of urgency and is a separate trait from competitiveness. They found that most of their recruited candidates scored well in competitiveness, and in the early days used this trait as a key. However, a yearly analysis of top performers vs. poor performers showed that 80% of the top performers were average in drive and sense of urgency. 80% of the poor performers were extremely low in the same trait, scoring in the low 7% of the population. An example of this trait is a person driving home at the end of a long day. The person with a normal drive/sense of urgency is thinking about what he/she has to do to make that sale work tomorrow. The low drive is thinking about what's for dinner and who is on TV tonight. This firm now looks at more than competitiveness and saves a fortune by not hiring the wrong person.

Thanks to technology, you now can have that manual and see those features that go with your candidate. Concerned about legalities? Using this type of assessment actually cements your legal position by demonstrating that you are not using bias and are not discriminating. Resumes and interviews, still an invaluable part of the hiring process, can now be supported by legal, unbiased total person job fit assessments costing around $100 a person. You do not have to do what the assessment tells you and should never hire solely on an assessment, but isn't it nice to have the information before the hiring decision, rather than when it is too late?

A new key to successful hiring and managing? It is not a mystery anymore.

About the author . . . Bob Epstein is a former advertising agency President who retired and became a consultant. He has an M.B.A. from the University of New Mexico with a minor in Psychology. Prior to his advertising career, he worked for IBM and Clairol. He is President of Epstar Inc. and serves clients large and small. Bob can be reached at 1-800-245-0699, bob@epstar.com. Website www.epstar.com