Each month, I share one of the interesting questions that I get from users of our Performance Profile reports.  I recently got the following question from a long-time user of the Performance Profile:

“We saw a strange combination of ratings on a Profile Report for an applicant for our Information Technology (IT) Specialist position.  This is a position for a programmer who will have no management responsibilities.  He was rated a “2” on the Coachability characteristic, and a “2” on the Take Charge Tendencies characteristic.  Is it a bad thing that these ratings are low?  What do you think this combination means, and are these ratings positive or a negative for someone who will fill this position?”

And The Answer Is:

This is a person who has told us, via the Performance Profile questionnaires, that he does not like to be coached or have suggestions for improvement in his performance offered to him (he would probably call it “being micro-managed.”)  Furthermore, he has indicated that he does not have a strong desire to be responsible for making group decisions, or for taking the lead in a group of people.  This implies that he isn’t interested in the responsibilities of a management position.  When I reviewed his education and work history, I saw that he has an associate’s degree from an accredited program with a major in Information Technology and 18 years of experience in the field with high profile technology companies.

His “Coachability” rating makes sense:  when a person combines a good education in information technology with extensive, job-relevant experience, you have a guy who knows his stuff when it comes to IT.  He is not likely to be receptive to suggestions for improvement because he knows what he knows.  The exception will be if he feels the person offering advice has credibility due to greater experience and expertise.

            His “Take Charge Tendencies” rating makes sense now also.  Programming is usually a solitary activity and, as a result, tends to attract people who prefer to work independently rather than by consensus with a group of other people.  Spending eight hours a day writing and trouble-shooting computer code usually does not involve other people and the person who is drawn to this kind of work tends to see working with people as messy and unpredictable.  As a result, most IT specialists don’t want to have the responsibility for managing people.  There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare.  IT specialists are usually happier managing their code than managing people, thank you very much.

            This combination of ratings is a common one among applicants for programmer positions.  The fact that the ratings on these two characteristics are low is more of a plus than a minus for a programmer.  I would be concerned about these ratings, however, if this person ever gets ambitious and wants to be promoted to a management position.  In fact, the following article addresses the issue of what to do about this situation.

            You have an employee who has been very successful in his job and is interested in being considered for a promotion to a management position.  In many ways, this is a good kind of problem to have.  The good news is that this is a person you know – you know his work style, you know what to expect, and he has demonstrated his abilities.  Furthermore, let’s assume that you also have a recent Performance Profile report on the person.

The Essential Question Is…

            This is a motivated, successful employee who wants to advance, and you want not only to provide him with the opportunity to do so, but also to fill an open position with someone whose work you know.  What could go wrong?

It’s Not Always Simple

            The answer to that question is not, I’m sorry to say, a simple one.  It may be that nothing will go wrong, but it is also possible that this is the wrong opportunity for this particular individual and that you may end up setting him up for failure rather than for continued success.  To see how this can happen, let’s take another look at the IT specialist applicant in the Question of the Month above.

An Example Of The Problem

            This applicant was extremely well qualified in terms of education and experience for the IT specialist job, and his Performance Profile Report indicated that he was an individual who would work essentially alone, within stated guidelines and performance objectives.  His Coachability rating was “2,” as was his Take Charge Tendencies rating, and that combination is typical of a person who likes to work alone and be judged according to his finished product.  He does not have a strong desire to participate in consultative decision-making, or to take the lead in a group of people.  He is not well-matched, in other words, for a management position where he would be responsible for coordinating others’ work, making assignments and then following through to monitor progress, to say nothing of taking the initiative to communicate with other departments within the company, which might include negotiating for resources or mediating disputes.  In other words, an entirely different set of skills would be necessary to manage the IT department.

Three Good Rules To Follow

            The question is, then, how do you assess an individual’s promotion potential?  And it turns out that there are three good rules to follow:

            Rule 1:  What does the new job require, in terms of knowledge, skills, abilities, and personality, of anyone who fills the job?  Make a list, if you don’t already have one, of the characteristics of people within your company who have successfully moved up to management positions.  What characteristics do these people have in common? 

            Rule 2:  Now look at your current employee who wants to be considered for the job.  List the qualifications he has for the new position:  his knowledge, skills, and abilities.  And don’t forget to list the personality characteristics he has that will serve him well in the new position (use the Performance Profile Report for this.)  How current is the Performance Profile report that you have for this employee?  While it is true that basic personality preferences are pretty much “hard wired,” life throws us all curve balls sometimes that affect our on-the-job behavior.  Often the change is short-lived, but sometimes some pretty basic characteristics, such as trust in others (which directly affects teamwork skills) can be affected long term.  If the Performance Profile is more than a year old, and you are considering this employee for a job with substantially different demands, then have the employee re-do the Performance Profile.  He or she will get a new Professional Development Guide that will provide practical suggestions that will be useful now and in the future.

Rule 3:  Compare the requirements of the job you listed in #1 above with the qualifications the person brings to the job.  Look carefully at the mismatches.  How seriously would the mismatches affect his performance in the new position?  List the mismatches and sketch out what actions you, and he, could take to reduce or eliminate their effect on his performance (such as, training, coaching, seminars, etc.)  Be as hard-nosed and objective as you can.  Review this comparison with other managers for insights you may have missed.  Then you are ready to make a decision that will be best for the company and for the person.

A Final Note

            If it turns out that this employee is not well matched to the job he or she wants there are a couple of things to keep in mind.  The first one is that you don’t do anyone a favor by putting them in a position in which it is unlikely they can succeed.  Second, you need to determine whether this person is motivated enough to make specific, long-term changes in his behavior that would be required for successful performance.  If so, use the Action Plan in the Professional Development Guide and follow up with the person regularly with progress reports.  Finally, be open with this individual about future possibilities, if they exist, and about other jobs that the individual may not have considered.

            This month, we are adding a new feature to our newsletter in which we profile one of our employment tests that are not part of the Performance Profile.  I don’t interpret the results of each of these tests as they are administered because the scoring software incorporates my professional judgment and recommendations, both of which were determined during the validation study.  If you would like to see a complete list of the employment tests we offer, click here to go to the Catalog of Tests at our web site.

The Job Applicant Survey

This month’s featured test is the Job Applicant Survey, which is an attitude questionnaire that is designed to be used primarily with hourly employees.

Here is a checklist of problems that hourly employees can present.  How many of these have you had to deal with?  (Check all that apply):

Now, take a look at what you have checked above and take a guess at what it has cost your company to deal with those problems:  the out-of-pocket expenses, the lost customers, the decreased morale, and the lost productivity.  It is amazing what one bad apple can cost.

Human nature being what it is, some people just have bad attitudes that they bring to work.  And there is nothing you can do about human nature.

Forewarned Is Forearmed

What you can do is to know about an applicant’s job-relevant attitudes that might cause problems.  The more you know, the better decisions you can make about hiring and training effective employees, and about which potentially problematic applicants not to hire. 

The Job Applicant Survey measures attitudes regarding work ethic (initiative, attendance, punctuality, attitudes toward authority), work-related risk areas (employee theft/pilferage, drug use, proneness to violence), and customer service (patience with rude or demanding customers, willingness to sell.)  The Job Applicant Survey identifies any problem attitudes an applicant may have in these areas.  Armed with this knowledge you can:

• Avoid hiring potentially problematic applicants.
• Make better-informed hiring decisions.  Knowing that an applicant has questionable attitudes means that you can include this information in the decisions you make about applicants’ suitability for different jobs.
• Focus training for the people that you hire in areas that their attitudes may affect.

Identifying just one problem applicant could save you hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars you would otherwise spend dealing problem behavior that might have been avoided.

For more information about the Job Applicant Survey, click here.  Or call us to try a free Job Applicant Survey – it’s a free call to (800) 886-4356!