One of the most expensive mistakes we ever make as managers is
hiring the wrong people for a job, yet simple, affordable tools exist to
greatly improve the probability that we are hiring the right person.
As part of our focus on business leadership development I’d like to
share a story, then give you a chance to experiment with just
such tools.
One of our clients who uses our employee selection tools recently
asked us to do a research project to determine how well we could
distinguish their high performers from their low performers in a
technical sales role involving approximately 50 people.
After analyzing data from the assessments of the 50 salespeople,
some very interesting information emerged. Here are just a couple
of them:
-In a personal skills part of the assessment, here is what we discovered:
The best 12 performers averaged 21.3 skills out of 23 above the
national mean.
The low 16 performers averaged only 13.8 skills above the mean.
Do you think that might be valuable information in the selection
process? How hard would it be to count the number of skills above
the national mean on the report? If an applicant had 10 skills above the
mean, would you be eager to hire her for this role? I don’t think so! Or,
at least, you would probably want to do some deeper interviewing.
-In a behavioral insights part of the assessment, we discovered:
The best performers ALWAYS had one specific behavioral attribute
above the midline.
A number of the low performers had this attribute below the midline.
Do you think you would be quick to hire someone for this particular role
who had that attribute far below the midline? I don’t think so. You’d use
this as a flag and investigate some more.
With this new information, the client is excited to see the impact on the
quality of their hiring. In fact, we would enjoy doing the same for you.
Further develop your leadership skills and take advantage of this opportunity
to experiment now and be more confident in your next hire.
You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Our very best regards to you!
Ed
