Hiring has significant consequences for any organization. If you make the right choice, performance improves, capability deepens and teams mature. If you make the wrong choice, morale and performance drops and regrets create tension. We have all heard stories about motivations, strategies, cultural fits but when you move past the “key words” how do you find the underlying motivation and key characteristics of a meaningful hire?
The Trend Today
More companies today recognize the risks of rushing to hire. Moving quickly with high hopes costs too much in lessons learned. Managers in companies are starting to include assessments as a key element of their hiring practice. By that, I do not mean an “occasional practice” or ad hoc assessment. They invest with this extra information to helps make discerning selections about who is the best fit for their organization.
Why An Assessment?
Here are several solid reasons to consider:
- Interviews Are Not Enough – Everyone should be on his or her best “behavior”. That is typically selling each other on the value of the opportunity You simply can’t learn enough in one or even two or three meetings. You might fall in love with a candidate but infatuation is not adequate for a long-term choice like hiring and onboarding a person. It’s a smart investment to get to know how they think, address problems, relate to others and what motivates them. It’s best to get to know more to place a bet for long-term success.
- Objective Thinking– An independent assessment provides views about a person’s competencies, orientation developmental aspirations and motivations. It helps a prospective hiring manager learn how best to mentor a new person. Assessments provide feedback on cultural fit, gaps, issues and recommendations for development.
- Alignment – Many managers find it challenging to get a team to agree about what it wants in the profile of an ideal candidate for a key position. Assessments can help a team coalesce its perspective.
- Securing Top Talent in Competitive Times –Assessment help strengthen a view for how to keep talent longer. It helps validate promotability, prepare managers to address succession planning and development experiences they can provide to invest in longer term value of talent.
Pick Reliable Assessment Tools and Methods
Be sure to select the right combination of tools and to design the best method to support your organizational needs. Consider tools well known for their quality and reliability.
The results from these tools available today adds further dimension of your interest in your candidates. “That assessment was so insightful.” declared a client candidate recently. Her new manager agreed: “It was telling! I saw the very behaviors once she joined us that were identified in the assessment. It made it easier to incorporate her into our business, our team and the role she was to play.”
It is also important to establish consistent use of tools and processes. I find that the assessment tools work best when applied to the entire organization if possible. If not, at least the team. I encourage my clients to remain consistent in applying these assessments rather than to try too many at random. It helps for comparisons and for internal discussions about mentoring, coaching and succession planning.
Consider the reduced risk
Reduce risk and the Turnover costs! Investing in your employees and in those you are looking to attract will aid you in “assessing” potential talent and the best use of your current team’s talent. Being proactive is a major piece in the job of thoughtful hiring managers. Be sure to use the “tools” you have meaning your HR team and outside consulting partners to support this new approach.
If your company seeks help identifying and assessing the best talent, we can help you benefit from using well-crafted assessment methods to hire the best people.