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The Helm Report: Tools, Tips, &
Techniques for avoiding hiring mistakes and developing
people.
Published on the second Thursday of each
month
Barbara Otto, Editor (mail to mailto:botto@helmtest.com
Visit us online at http://www.helmtest.com/
Word count for this issue – 1628
Approximate time to read = 9 minutes
Dear
Friend,
We took a short road trip to visit our daughter, who has moved
to Fort Campbell, KY, with her husband (newly enlisted in the
101st Airborne Division), and we were amazed at how
much further spring has advanced just a few hundred miles to
the south! To
those of you in the deep South and the Southwest, I understand
summer has arrived, with a vengeance. Here’s hoping for a
great month, both in terms of weather and in terms of
business! |
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Most hiring mistakes occur because the hiring decision was
made on the basis of incomplete information about the
applicant(s). The
best hiring decisions are the result of a three-step
approach:
·
Clearly define what the job will require of whoever fills
it;
·
Gather job-relevant information about each applicant from all
available sources;
·
Compare the candidate’s potential to the job’s
requirements.
First, Define What The Job
Requires
Define, in as
much detail as you can, what the job will require in terms of
duties and responsibilities, intelligence, job knowledge and
skills, reporting relationships (both up and down,) peer
relationships, and work style preferences.
This may be
the most crucial step you take! Particularly if you
have not reviewed the written job description in the last year
or so, now is the time to look it over and make sure that it
is specific, detailed, accurate, and complete. Ask others in your
company to help you review the job description so that you can
be sure it is an accurate reflection of what the person who
fills that job actually does.
Include all
requirements, such as specialized knowledge or skills,
credentials and education, experience or career path, physical
requirements, and so forth. Don’t overlook the
communication (oral and written) skills that the person in
this position must have. Consider the reporting
structure in your company and be specific about who the person
in this position will report to, supervise, and work with.
Here’s a chart
that summarizes the kinds of information you should consider
in updating a job description, along with some questions to
ask yourself that will get you started:
|
Job
Duties and Responsibilities |
What does
this person do every day?
Occasionally? What is he or
she responsible for, accountable for? How does this
person spend a typical day, week, month? |
|
Job
Knowledge and Skills |
What does
this person have to know how to do? What can he or
she learn on the job? What specific
knowledge, training, skills, certificates, education are
required? |
|
Reporting
and Peer Relationships |
To whom
will this person report? With whom will
this person interact as a peer, or as a supervisor? What difficult
interpersonal relationships exist that this person will
have to manage? What oral and
written communication skills are required? How important
will this person’s ability to get along with all kinds
of people be? |
|
Work
Style Preferences |
What are
the characteristics of this position: will this person
work alone, or in a group? Is it a
physically isolated position? Will there be a
demand for multi-tasking? |
The finished
job description should include a list of required skills,
experience, abilities, and qualities that represent a complete
picture of the job itself. The more specific and
complete you are at this point, the easier it will be to
evaluate candidates later.
Second, Gather Relevant
Information About Each Applicant
The task at
this second step of the process is to find out what each
applicant “brings to the party.” This step of the
process includes, of course, all that you do to announce and
advertise the job opening, identify a pool of interested and
qualified applicants, and begin to narrow that pool to the
most qualified candidates – the ones who meet all or most of
the requirements you’ve identified in the first step. The most important
part of this step, then, is to identify the candidates whose
knowledge, skills, abilities, personal attributes, and
experience most closely match those that are required by the
job.
Applicants,
like all human beings, are complex. No single source of
information will provide enough information for you to
evaluate how well a particular person meets the requirements
of the job you have identified. In fact, it turns out
that the best way to get to know the applicant is by using
multiple sources of information and multiple
kinds of information. The chart below
displays the kinds of information, and suggests sources for
it:
Kinds Of
Information |
Sources For
Verification |
|
What this
person knows how to do – his or her experience and
knowledge that is required by this job |
Resume,
reference and background (education)
verification |
|
Character
– what kind of a person is this? |
Performance Profile Report,
Interviews, background and drug checks, Work Attitude
Questionnaire |
|
Personal
Style and Work Behavior Preferences – how will this
person behave in the situations you have identified in
Step 1? |
Performance Profile Report,
Interviews, Work Sample, background and personal
references |
Remember, the purpose of gathering this information is to
identify candidates who most closely match the requirements
for the job that you have identified in Step 1.
Third, Compare Candidates and
Requirements
The purpose of
the third step of this process is to systematically and
objectively compare the most highly qualified candidates you
have identified in the second step so that you can make a
selection (and an offer of employment.) Once you have a good
idea of what the job will require of whoever fills it and have
evaluated each applicant’s potential, based on all the
information available for each applicant, you can do a
side-by-side comparison.
No one is more
aware than I of how hard it is to compare individuals, since
each person is unique and brings a complex mixture of assets
and liabilities to any job. That’s why I suggest
that it helps to make this comparison as systematically as
possible and to include several individuals’ points of view in
the comparison. Including at
least two others in the final decision process helps avoid
three of the sources of bias that otherwise unconsciously
affect the selection decision process:
·
The “recency effect” – the last person you talked to is often
the one whose impression is freshest in your mind;
·
The “reflected glow” – the unconscious (and unintended)
preference you may feel for the candidate who is most like you
in background (he went to the same college you did,) attitudes
(he is a workaholic too,) or preferences (he likes to deal
with problems head on, just as you do;)
·
The “dismissal of negatives” – sometimes it is tempting to
explain away a candidate’s liabilities if there is another
strong characteristic that you find appealing.
I have
developed a one-page “Suitability Profile” that I use when we
are hiring. It
allows us to compare the most highly qualified applicants that
we can identify. (This is a link to a sample “Suitability
Profile”)
At least three
of us complete a Suitability Profile for each of our top
candidates, and then we compare our comments and ratings
together. The
Suitability Profile keeps our discussion focused, objective,
and complete. We
each get a chance to address all of our concerns.
Caveat:
Does this process guarantee that you will avoid hiring
mistakes?
Unfortunately, no; it’s not a perfect world. But a thorough
evaluation of what the job will require of whoever fills it,
and an equally thorough evaluation of each applicant’s
strengths and liabilities areas will improve your
success rate!
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A new Performance Profile user
emailed me with this question:
“I just got two Performance
Profile Reports:
one is an applicant for VP of Finance, and the other for a
mid-level supervisor position. They both got the
same “Job Match” and “Potential For Growth” ratings.
Does this mean they are equal in terms of competence and
ability? Could
the applicant for the mid-level supervisor position step into
the VP of Finance position?”
And The Answer Is:
No, the Job
Match, Potential For Growth, and Recommendation ratings on the
Performance Profile are individualized. I assign those ratings
by looking at what the specific job in question will require
of whoever fills it and comparing those requirements with the
strengths and concerns of the individual who is applying for
that job.
The Finance VP position has a different set of requirements,
from technical knowledge and experience to personal
work-style preferences, than those that are required for a
mid-level supervisor. While the ratings were
the same for these two positions, the way I arrived at each
rating was based on what I know, in general, about the
different requirements for those two kinds of positions, as
well as what I know specifically about the company and those
jobs in that company.
Both
of these candidates appeared to be suited for the positions
for which they are applying, but neither candidate was
particularly well suited for the position the other was
applying for.
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The security and confidentiality of the information that
applicants provide at our web site is a top priority with
us. We take great
care to keep all information confidential, and to be sure that
the answers to questions that applicants send over the
Internet to our web site are confidential until they are
integrated by us internally. We have recently
increased the security in our Assessment Center by protecting
it with a Secure SSL Certificate, which means that the
identity of our Web site is authenticated to visiting browsers
and that all information flowing to and from our site is
encrypted. A
small, locked padlock in the lower right-hand corner of the
screen identifies our Assessment Center as a site that is
secured with a digital SSL certificate.
Remember, people are your
most important asset!
To hire the best, test!
To reveal management potential, test!
To diagnose
problem behavior, test!
Best regards,
Kurt G. Helm, Ph.D.
Phone Toll Free 800-886-4356
© 2006, Kurt G. Helm, Ph.D. All rights
reserved. You are
allowed to use material from this newsletter in whole or in
part provided that you include attribution in the following
form: “By Kurt G.
Helm, Ph.D., of Helm and Associates, Inc. Please visit our
website at http://www.helmtest.com/ for
more information about how to avoid hiring mistakes by using
pre-employment testing as part of the applicant evaluation
procedure.” |
Feature Article: How To Know Your
Applicant Is Right For The Job | 
FEATURE ARTICLE: How To
Know Your Applicant Is Right For The Job