Many of us believe we make rational decisions most of the time and that we are good judges of people. Unfortunately, our experience and research shows that when we are asked to make rational decisions about people, our track record drops pretty dramatically. The good news is that several decades of work and research have shown that if we seek out and consistently use valid, objective information about the people we are considering bringing into our organizations, we can improve the quality of our decisions about people and grow our businesses. In previous issues of this newsletter we have described the importance of bringing people aboard who can deliver your intended experience to your customers and how these people are critical to your continued success.

This is far from a new idea. We, like many others, firmly support Jim Collins’ idea that you need to have the right people on the bus in order to achieve any long-term success. The question, as always, is “how do you make that happen?”  This issue will directly address this question by providing information on three common tools that will increase the likelihood you will hire the right people AND that these people will help move your business forward. Used together, these tools will provide insight into multiple dimensions of your candidates allowing you to quickly and accurately gain a complete picture of your candidates to make an informed and rational decision about the faces and the hands of your brand. The key to remember when considering all of these tools is that you must start with your intended customer experience in mind. That is, all of the tools you put in place must take into consideration the competencies that are required to execute the job correctly, as well as how the job should be executed in order to deliver your intended customer experience. Failure to consider both elements (the "how" and the "what") will result in inconsistent customer experiences, a focus on steps of service rather than customer experience, and ultimately, customer defection.

Most employers would agree that evaluating a candidate for any position, at a minimum, includes the use of a job application. However, many employers do not realize that the application can be a powerful screening tool if constructed properly and used effectively.

Consequently, organizations that screen applications are able to improve hiring operations by reducing time and cost spent evaluating unqualified candidates. This will also improve legal defensibility. To ensure you are getting the most out of your application in the hiring process, there are a few things to consider when analyzing your own application and its effectiveness:

Every company faces the same challenge:  hiring employees who can consistently deliver the organization's intended brand. To do this, they need to perform well, fit the company’s culture, and stay. Other than guess work or relying on your "gut" (both of which are equally ineffective) the two most popular ways of identifying a quality hire are profile and performance-based selection. While each method has its advocates, they come from contrasting conceptual perspectives, and provide very different end-user information. 

Profile-based Selection
Profile-based selection, often referred to as a hiring profile, describes what a composite of current high performing employees “looks like” in terms of knowledge, experience, or other personal characteristics. This profile is then used as a benchmark for comparing the profile of a job applicant to the profile of the composite high performing employee. If the candidate matches the profile, he or she is eligible for hire. The most alluring aspects of profile-based selection are that it is economical, quick, and makes sense to most managers and employees.

However, these benefits are counterbalanced by several shortcomings. First, high performers must be designated prior to the development of a profile, placing considerable weight on the ability of managers to accurately identify and assess performance. Further, biases such as political issues among supervisors, departmental loyalties, and people nominating people with whom they are most comfortable can all affect manager nominations of “high performing” employees. In addition, it is conceivable that employees chosen as “high performers” may in fact be just average or poor performers due to the restricted make-up of a company’s workforce. 

The net of all this is that a company that wants to raise performance standards, change the definition of effective performance, or select employees on a more inclusive basis, will not be able to do so using a profile alone. Instead of selecting a quality hire, you may very well select an adequate hire.

Performance-based Selection
Performance-based selection is similar to profiling in that the aim is to identify the characteristics of successful employees that can then be applied to job candidates, but is different in one major respect:  Performance-based selection focuses on actual job behaviors and success without regard to the personal make-up of job incumbents.

The process starts with the identification of what a quality hire does and how he or she does the job, rather than what he or she “looks like.” Groups of job experts are interviewed and results from job analysis are mined for the actual definition of performance, fit, and retention. As a result of this process, only performance predictors that are representative of real, important, and measurable criteria of job success are identified.

Performance-based selection, in contrast to profile-based selection, lets you know what someone can actually do. In addition, because the measures of performance are created independent of job incumbents, they can include aspects of performance that are currently important as well as aspects that will be important to the company in the future. This solves one of the challenges inherent in hiring profiles; that is, they are not suited for inclusion of future-oriented performance requirements. 

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