TM - November 2007 - (Page 27)

Figure 1: Types of staffing assessments • Personality Measures • Cognitive Ability Measures • Physical Ability Tests • Simulations • Qualification & Experience Questions • Resume Screens • Knowledge & Skills Tests “What • Behavioral Interviews have they • Background Checks done? • Drug Tests “What can they do? Future Performance “What do they want to do? • Culture & Organizational Fit Measures • Career & Job Interest Inventories • Motivational Questionnaires better than assessments of work experience. But they are also complex and do not always work as intended. First, they often measure traits of which candidates are not even fully aware. Many people are unable to accurately describe their own personality and ability level. Second, they might measure things candidates hide so that they get a job offer. For example, many candidates are unlikely to say they lack intelligence or are emotionally unstable. Third, because these assessments measure intangible traits, it is very easy to create assessment tools that look effective but do not actually measure anything useful. Building accurate assessments of what people can do requires rigorous empirical research to ensure they truly measure what they are supposed to measure. For these reasons, you need to be very careful when considering these kinds of assessments. An appropriately designed personality or ability assessment can greatly increase the quality of your hires, but a poorly designed assessment can introduce large amounts of error into the staffing process. What Candidates Want to Do The next step might be a short, structured interview to make sure the candidate’s interests and skills match the job. Qualified candidates could complete more in-depth personality and ability tests to examine the fit between their talents and the competencies needed for the job. The hiring manager could then use a structured interview to look at experience and career interests to guide the final hiring decision. The Importance of Finding the Right Candidates These assessments measure motives, interests and goals related to work. For example, interviews often ask candidates where they want to be in five years. These assessments often are used to predict organizational commitment, retention and culture fit. They might be less valuable to predict job performance, as people’s motives often show weak relationships to their actual behavior. Anyone who has failed to lose weight knows that just because you want to do something does not mean you will actually do it. Conversely, people frequently succeed in doing things they do not enjoy, at least for a limited amount of time. The most effective staffing processes use a mixture of assessments that measure what candidates have done, can do and want to do. For example, you might screen candidates using resume-review tools or pre-screening questionnaires that measure experience and minimum qualifications. Many companies seem to accept high levels of hiring mistakes as a cost of business they just have to live with. This is unfortunate, given the damage bad hires cause. Hiring poor candidates: • Is extremely costly. Employing people whose performance is substandard is expensive. Bad hires also often end up quitting or being terminated early, which means companies incur hiring costs several times for the same position. • Means not hiring other, more qualified candidates. Settling for a poorer candidate to fill a position means calling off the sourcing process without allowing adequate time to uncover a really good candidate. Further, better qualified, overlooked candidates might end up with one of your competitors. • Can increase turnover among your existing employees. High performers like to work with high performers. If your current star employees feel company hiring standards are slipping, they might look for a position at another organization, where they can work with a more elite group of professionals. Hiring mistakes are both extremely costly and frequently avoidable. Resources spent using techniques to increase hiring success rates will be recouped many times over by increasing value from hiring successes and reducing costs caused by hiring people for jobs they are ill-suited to perform. Steven T. Hunt, Ph.D. is chief scientist at Kronos Inc., a global provider of human capital management solutions, and the author of “Hiring Success.” He can be reached at editor@TalentMgt.com. talent management magazine www.TalentMgt.com 27 November 2007 http://www.TalentMgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of TM - November 2007

Talent Management - November 2007 Editor's Letter Contents Letters to the Editor Human Performance Leading Edge Learning Connections Viewpoint Finding Candidates with the Right Fit Turning HR Data Into Business Intelligence Compensation Technology: Drive Higher Performance, Gain Competitive Advantage The Art and Science of Influence Training the Ethical Workforce Making the Best Managers Application: Pre-Hire Testing Drives Down Employee Turnover at Advnace Auto Parts Dashboard: The Role of Learning Business Process Outsourcing Insight: Nationwide Insurance: On Employees' Side Advertiser's Index Editorial Resources Full Potential

TM - November 2007

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