I ran across a situation recently that made me scratch my head. A very smart group of managers were discussing their newly discovered “benchmark” for a particular classification of job. While I do get excited about gaining insight through the use of matrix, I was disappointed in the overall effort or structure they used to develop their “benchmark.”

Here was their system or process for developing a broad benchmark for a job position. Seems they took a number of people who had been selected as “top performers” and then ran some assessments on this group, averaged the data across the group and decided the data from the average was good for a usable benchmark.

Well, this plan had several major flaws and will probably get them in trouble legally with the EEOC and other watchdog agencies. Here is a list of the flaws I found in their system… Continue reading ‘Beware of Averages – Especially with Benchmarks’ »

During this time of high unemployment rates, it seems strange to discuss the six drivers for employee satisfaction. Yet, it is very important to keep your current employees happy and satisfied because you need to retain your best talent.

So here are six key drivers to providing employee satisfaction – which is a key factor in employee retention… Continue reading ‘Six Drivers for Employee Satisfaction’ »

First of all, you’re not alone! However, the question remains: Why are we unable to make great hiring decisions? The answer is simple: BIAS. Attracting candidates is easy today. Screening out all of the unqualified to discover a superior performer is the real challenge. This challenge also means we must look at the job objectively and eliminate any biases that keep us from selecting the best candidate.

We all see the world from our own viewpoint. This viewpoint is influenced by how we value experience, knowledge, economics, aesthetics, altruism, power and tradition. When we are confronted by a person who sees the world differently, our views could be called biases. Neither right or wrong, nor good or bad, biases are simply a reflection of our personal viewpoint. Oftentimes, this personal viewpoint is unknowingly injected into the hiring process even when it is not relevant to a specific position or to the organization itself. When this happens, it creates a barrier, preventing us from selecting truly superior performers.

Today we have laws that keep us from acting on our biases as they relate to gender, age and nationality, but there are still biases that get in the way. Many people are also unknowingly biased on experience, education and intelligence, and this keeps them from selecting superior performers. In addition, people bring much more to the job, including their passion, beliefs, personal skills and behaviors. Perhaps one of the most important personal skills is that of personal accountability, and most companies do not have an awareness of its importance, nor do they have a way to measure it.

Determining the ideal candidate for a position can prove to be not only the most frustrating part of the hiring process, but also the most difficult. Each person involved in the hiring process will have his or her own idea of what skill set, experience and education is required for the position. Job descriptions begin to assist recruiters, internal and external, in narrowing down the resume requirements. Meanwhile, the personal skills, behavioral style, attitude and motivations of the ideal candidate tend to be undefined and left up to the interviewer. This type of hiring process becomes subjective, rather than objective, and leaves all involved parties frustrated and with less than desirable results.

Typical hiring processes allow for little preparation time on the front end, with more time allotted for interviewing. This often results in a partially or even completely wrong hire, which, in turn, contributes to significant managerial time loss. By turning the process around, you will save time and energy, and improve your hiring decisions, therefore improving your bottom-line.

After years in the staffing industry and making internal hires, our Strategic Business Partner  created the Ideal Candidate Form. This form, along with the patented job benchmarking process, has allowed us to achieve a 92% retention rate on the people placed using this process. Eliminating bias is the key to successful hiring. The only way to achieve this is through an objective process that looks at all aspects of the ideal candidate.

Here is another tip for those of you who are looking for a new position. This tip is very important assuming you are looking for long term employment. Most potential candidates never take their eye off the position or the income to notice this factor that can influence your job satisfaction.

So what am I talking about when I say “Check the Culture?”

Culture is the collection beliefs of the employees in the company or organization. Too often this important influence to job satisfaction and the development of a high performance attitude within the organization is left to chance by it’s leaders. Therefore, it is your responsibility to check out this element of the company.

Here are a couple of reasons you want to know more about the culture: Continue reading ‘Hiring Tip for Employees – Check the Culture’ »

With the recent high unemployment rate, I felt it was time to give a few tips for those who are looking for a new job. So your first tip is…

Pick a Good Boss – If You Want to Grow

Yes, it is important to pick a good boss because they will determine your next level of growth and happiness. In fact, if you are looking for a long term position, then this becomes even more important. Continue reading ‘Hiring Tip for Employees – Pick a Good Boss’ »

When reading some new information about our hiring and selection process, I was reminded that when benchmarking performance in the hiring and selection process -

“You Must Benchmark the Job Rather than the People in the Job.”

This is a very important factor for three reasons:

1. Legal Foundation – a Job Benchmark takes out any bias and focuses strictly upon the job and the traits necessary for the job to perform at higher levels. If you have benchmarks for all the jobs using the same process and used this tool to compare to a common talent assessment, then you have a legally clean system that can be defended or even thrown out of court for lack of bias.
2. Quality of the Current Team – This is tough for some leaders to deal with, yet, it is more common than most would believe. I have experienced this in the review and evaluation of a Fortune 100’s sales team. They were evaluating the sales team for a complete restructure of the sales organization. When we analyzed the data, the evidence showed the quality of the entire team was low (which had contributed  to the decline in sales over the past three years) – so a benchmark of their top performers could have established an B or C level benchmark for future selection. This company needed more “A” players to remain in on the playing field of top performing companies. Their brand name was the only thing carrying the majority of the sales teams performance.
3. Objectivity – One of the key points for using a job or position benchmark is to eliminate bias or personality from the selection process. It also is the starting point for putting objectivity back in the subjective process of hiring and selection. When there is no check system that uses a proven objective scoring or measurement of traits needed for a job or position to be successful, you will be fooled by people in the interview process.

Does this type of process or system work? Well, yes it does. Our research partner has been following the success of using an assessment based hiring process with the focus on job or position benchmarking. Their data indicates that 92 percent of the people placed in jobs using the patented job benchmark to talent report system are still in their position after a one year. This compares with placement agencies record of 20 to 50 replacement rates.

This improvement in placement and retention rates will have a significant return on investment in your company. If you want to learn about this hiring system, contact Voss Graham at 901-757-4434 and we will discuss how this system can improve your bottom line.

This week I have had several conversations regarding the old cliche:

“Don’t Judge a Book by It’s Cover.”

And, it appears that this simple phrase is more important than ever. Let me give you a few examples from my recent conversations with people. Continue reading ‘Judge Things and People on Content rather than Looks’ »

The universal question appears to be “How Do I Find High Performers for My Company?” And it seems to get more focus and debate everyday.

First let’s deal with a myth that Hiring High Performers is impossible. The reason is, there are so few – by some estimates less than 1% of the population. Well, while I don’t want to debate the issue of just how many high performers are there in your market. The real issue is “Can you Top Grade Your Staff?” Can you find the best fit for a position at this moment in time. Continue reading ‘How to Hire High Performers’ »

Beyond salary and sales, there are many important aspects of talent management that are often not tied to the bottom line. Yet, “dollarizing” the value of talent management initiatives is vital to bottom-line analysis. Whether you are placing a value or cost on your current status, or calculating the ROI of your next talent management strategy, metrics that assess the monetary value will help you see the true effect on the bottom-line.

Bottom Line Statistics
Knowing the bottom line results of talent challenges will help you implement strategies with a proven ROI that you can see on your balance sheet. Find out how much you already know by asking yourself questions like:
•    What is disengagement costing the bottom line?
•    What was the ROI on your last training? What can be expected of future training?
•    How are your team-building initiatives impacting your bottom line?
•    What was the cost of your last bad hire?
•    What is your overall turnover percentage? How is it related to tenure?

In a study on over three million employees, Gallup found that over 70% of Americans who go to work are not engaged. This means businesses may be operating at significantly less than full capacity, a loss that could cost millions a year.
•    What is employee disengagement costing your company? Several thousands, millions, more?
•    How can you calculate this cost?
•    How does it compare to the investment of a proactive approach to increasing engagement?

With tightening budgets and a focus on cost-saving strategies, businesses worldwide are making drastic labor cuts. But is that always the right move? A recent study analyzed the savings resulting from changes in general and administrative functions and found that 75% of the savings came from strategies focused on restructuring and redesigning, while only 25% was from reducing.
•    Would you, too, save three times as much on your bottom line by investing in your people and processes?
•    Is the slash and burn approach actually costing you more?
•    What would the ROI be if you restructured and redesigned your workforce?

As business associates who want to make a difference in the bottom line, we might find advice in Aristotle’s quote by remembering to assess, in money, the value of talent management initiatives so we know its true worth. How else can we place fair value on the investment in people? After all, they are a company’s biggest asset.

The Second Myth of Sales involves the selection of sales people. Many sales managers believe that anyone can sell, so the hiring process is easy. Just hire anyone and put them in the job. No training necessary if they follow the instructions of the sales presentation. Well, maybe some product knowledge training which has been up to 85% of the sales training budget for many companies (commodity companies). If a person can fog a mirror, they can fill the position! Major mistake were made using this method.

Then if a person does not work out, fire them and replace the person with another. No problem using this method. The problems of this method of hiring is really a big problem. This process belief ignores both the direct costs of bringing the wrong person “up to speed” and then replacing them, as well as the indirect costs of lost business and dissatisfied customers. The indirect costs can be very large depending upon the size of average customers and average sales volumes. I have seen one bad hire cost a company several million dollars with lost customers!

The Truth is that the proper effort used on the front end will have the right sales people doing the right sales job.  Successful sales people can be found using effective selection processes.  Organizations using proper hiring methods get better results by increasing sales, improving profitability and reducing turnover.

A proper hiring process includes a complete understanding of the sales position. Accountabilities are established for outcomes, types of territories, number of accounts within a territory, percentage of market-share (using different categories – total customers, products or services mix, etc.). Then an accurate establishment of traits needed for the position to be successful are identified – before talking to the first candidate.

Other criteria are identified and weighed as to level of importance in the hiring process. Then behavioral interview questions are both identified and selected or assigned to the interview team. Standards are set for identifying potential high performers. Assessments are used to create objective information on each candidate. And, multiple people are interviewed in order to have a selection of top talent.