Do your employees feel safe?

With white-collar crime and substance abuse on the rise, the chances of your company hiring co-workers and bosses with different sets of values has greatly increased. Poor hiring practices will cause your employees, clients, and vendors to distrust you and your company. The good news? Poor hiring practices can be changed! Although the results derived from using qualified hiring tools and processes cannot guarantee 100 percent success, objective information will always improve your selection decisions. Remember, as a business owner and/or executive, you have a fiduciary responsibility to protect your employees, customers, proprietary information, tools, and communities. (http://BizSavvyHire.com)

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Making the Same Hiring Mistakes?

When you keep making the same hiring mistakes over and over, it’s costly and very time consuming. You lose credibility with your staff and clients. It’s time to stop and get help. You have a misperception of potential employees’ work experience, skills, and/or job fit required. With clarification and by learning new ways to interview, how to use qualified assessments, and how to improve your due diligence processes, you can improve your hiring results. (BizSavvyHire.com)  Hopefully, it won’t be too late to rebuild your credibility.

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Helpful Hint:

Job ads with trite sound-bites fail to attract, e.g., great opportunity and work hard. Learn how-to attract the right employees: http://BizSavvyHire.com

 

 

 

 

Mediocrity Stifles Results

All business owners and executives wish to succeed in their business. Yet when they hire inexperienced and unseasoned professionals, thinking they are saving money, their bottom line suffers. Why? The employees have not had time to develop the business knowledge and acumen needed to perform at the level required, instead relying on “it’s good enough.” Mediocrity stifles results—you get what you pay for.

When hiring for any position, be clear about the attributes required for the person to succeed, and the required results for the company to prosper. Use a structured interview to ensure the person has the actual hands-on experience by drilling down into his or her responses. Often candidates talk hypothetically, not having had the actual responsibility you are looking for. Use a qualified assessment to ensure they have the thinking style, occupational interests, and capabilities to do the job the way it needs to be done to achieve great results. Don’t be afraid to conduct reference checks to ensure the person can and will actually do the work, not just talk about it. (For further information on how to do it, get your copy of Hire Amazing Employees, Second Edition (BizSavvyHire.com).

Although hiring people light on experience and heavy on job fit can be a good idea, realize it will take an extra investment of time and money before they can produce at the level required. Adjust your expectations appropriately.

©Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Jeannette Seibly has been hiring amazing employees for over 34 years. She delivers straight talk with immediate results to business owners and executives of $1MM to $30MM enterprises, achieving dynamic results. You may contact her at JLSeibly@SeibCo.com to discuss your hiring challenges. Get her newest book, Hire Amazing Employees, Second Edition: Improve Your Profits (and Your Work Life)! http://BizSavvyHire.com.  It includes templates for interviews and reference checking.

There Are Hiring Solutions!

The resume looked great. She interviewed well, saying all the right things and providing great examples. You were so excited that you finally found “the one” that you skipped conducting reference and background checks—after all, you pride yourself on your ability to read people. Yet after only three weeks, you had to admit you made a mistake! You contacted the previous employers post-hire and found out they had fired your new employee for not achieving the results she bragged about! The bottom line? You hired a wolf in sheep’s clothing! 

You lament that it’s too costly to use the right hiring tools. You falsely believe in your intuition, but human bias is alive and well and the reality is you are correct only 15 percent of the time. You rely on the candidate’s resume to determine his or her qualifications, but over 50 percent of applicants stretch the truth. By only accepting “good enough,” you place your company in jeopardy—clients do not want to work with wolves, or the bosses of companies who employ them.

There are solutions to your hiring dilemma: collect enough objective, valid, and reliable data. Using the right hiring tools can be cost effective, when used correctly.

First, use an application tracking system that requires completion of the application. Create pre-screening questions to help you weed out unqualified candidates. Also, have each candidate complete a qualified core values assessment. These three items are very cost effective and will help you vet candidates faster and more objectively.

Next, use unbiased skills testing and a qualified job fit assessment to determine if the candidate can do the work, and if he or she will do the job successfully in your organization. Remember, most applicants exaggerate their abilities, and high skills proficiency does not equate to a great job fit or the ability to achieve the required results. Ensure the job fit assessments meet the Department of Labor guidelines.

Now that you’ve collected objective, reliable, and valid data, it’s time to interview. (Relying upon interviews alone will result in a good hire only 14 percent of the time!) Interview to confirm the data you’ve collected and to find out more about the candidate’s work experiences and accomplishments. Weeding out poor interviewers who would be good hires is no worse than moving forward with candidates who interview well and are bad hires.

Don’t forget to conduct due diligence by conducting reference and background checks, along with employer and education verifications. These will illuminate a great candidate and provide a healthy work environment for current employees!

Do you still think the right hiring solutions are too costly and time consuming? Add up the hours you’ve spent skimming resumes, talking with unqualified or uninterested candidates, and hiring someone not really interested in the job. Yikes! Not using the right hiring tools is costly and doesn’t reveal the 101 other known and unknown factors! The solution: a well-designed selection system ensures your profits improve and your work life does too! It may even save your own job!

Before you hire another person, get your copy of Hire Amazing Employees, Second Edition (BizSavvyHire.com), which includes interview and reference-checking templates.

©Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Jeannette Seibly has been hiring great employees for over 34 years. She delivers straight talk with immediate results to business owners and executives of $1MM to $30MM enterprises, achieving dynamic results. You may contact her at JLSeibly@SeibCo.com to discuss your hiring challenges.

Small Employer Hiring

Small businesses are the backbone of the economy, and on average employ 1 to 10 employees. Many of these business owners have previously worked in corporations, and falsely believe they don’t need a systematic way of hiring due to their smaller size. While they may be right about not needing a formal hiring policy like a larger company, cutting corners and using subjective tools and practices will not protect them from litigation. The sad fact is that a small employer is more likely to make a hiring mistake for multiple reasons, mostly due to lack of experience in hiring. They are under the mistaken belief they can coach and motivate anyone for success. Their lack of awareness simply creates sleepless nights and unnecessary expense of hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars!

The biggest challenge? One bad hire can literally force a small enterprise to close its doors due to theft of money, data and proprietary information. Or, they incorrectly reason it won’t cost them anything to hire a straight commission salesperson, if that person is unable to sell. They don’t calculate the cost to their reputation nor the excessive marketing costs with no positive ROI. One small business owner suffered through theft of proprietary information. It cost him dearly. Instead of seeking better ways to hire people, he simply recreated the mistake by solely relying upon his gut.

Gather objective information. The more objective information you can gather up-front, the less likely you are to interview and select the wrong person. Most interviewers make their decision within the first five minutes of an interview, but spend the next thirty or sixty minutes asking questions that make no difference in changing their minds. Instead, use a structured interview format focused on experience, education and job skills. Have candidates take a skills test to determine true proficiency. Often overlooked is asking about any special requirements. Never assume they read the job posting simply because they applied for the job (e.g., if travel is involved, ask if they are available to travel and how often).

Qualified assessments. Many small employers need to broaden their perspective of what is a qualified assessment. If you’re relying upon non-qualified assessment results, its pay now or pay later in loss of clients or the employee’s unwillingness to do the required activities. Insist upon reviewing the Technical Manual for any assessment you wish to use; do not rely upon a letter from the vendor telling you it meets all federal, state and local laws. Select qualified tools in accordance with the Department of Labor Testing and Assessment 2007 guidelines (for a copy contact: JLSeibly@SeibCo.com. If you have developed one on your own, spend the millions of dollars required to ensure the validity and reliability coefficients comply with EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity), DOL (Department of Labor) and various other requirements.

Training. Since most small business owners don’t hire often, they may overlook current employment laws. Set up a written strategic hiring process and have it reviewed by legal counsel. Review it each time you hire. Take time to learn best interview practices, how to correctly use assessments and skill testing and when to conduct background checks and drug screens (states laws vary). The basic rule of thumb is stay focused on the job responsibilities along with the applicant’s ability to successfully achieve intended results.

All jobs are important! One business owner didn’t feel the receptionist position was an important job in his company. He didn’t understand it’s the client’s first impression, and often a long-lasting one! He spent 5 minutes talking with each candidate and then selected the first one he liked. He went through three employees within a month. He not only lost several clients, one top employee left in protest of his hiring practices.

Hiring Amazing Employees, 2nd Edition, is coming soon! I’ll share more information during this upcoming month.

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2012  All Rights Reserved

Hiring Refresher for Busy Bosses

http://ow.ly/d6yi1

  • Did the last hiring mistake zap you?
  • Still spending sleepless nights, over-thinking how to fix it?
  • Customers complaining about the quality and timeliness of deliverables?

You may need a refresher on hiring and selecting the right top performer.

As busy bosses, we do not hire often. When we do, it becomes very time consuming. We hope to find a quality candidate like the one who just left, or avoid hiring a similar problem to the one we fired.

This is a short 30-minute refresher on “secrets” to shorten up the selection process and ensure  hiring the right person. The first time!

  • How to use ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) effectively to weed out less desirable candidates.
  • What is a legally qualified assessment? What makes them different than the 3,000 published ones on the market?
  • Completing a full due diligence now saves countless hours and money later.

Join us on Thursday, September 13, 2012 @ 9 a.m. MDT (11 a.m. edt/8 a.m. PDT)

Registration takes only a minute and will save you many sleepless nights!

Infuse consistency, reliability and validity into your hiring process! Register today! http://ow.ly/d6yi1

About our presenter:

Jeannette Seibly has been successfully assisting her clients to hire the right person, the first time, for over 20 years. With over 33 years of human resource, business management experience working with companies ranging from $100K to $100MM, and reducing countless turnover and poor hiring selections, Seibly has saved companies 100’s of thousands of dollars. She’s the noted author of “Hiring Amazing Employees” (BizSavvyHire.com), “It’s Time to Brag!” (TimeToBrag.com), and over a hundred articles on hiring and being a biz-savvy executive and business owner. She’s already at work on the 2nd edition of “Hiring Amazing Employees.” (BizSavvyHire.com for current copy).    Register today! http://ow.ly/d6yi1

Top 3 Hiring Myths for 2012

Companies are hiring again! The challenge? Despite all the tools available to help companies hire right the first time, hiring managers continue to rely upon traditional hiring practices or “flavor of the month” hiring gimmicks. Unfortunately, it costs employers thousands of dollars when hiring the wrong person for just a couple of hours! And, can cost millions of dollars when someone is unwilling or incapable of doing the job and the company loses a valuable client or top employee.

These are not new myths.  No formal scientific study was conducted. They are simply ones that have withstood the test of time during the past several decades.

Myth #1: It’s cheaper to re-invent the wheel. Many companies falsely believe they can invent their own tools to attract employees due to numerous social media sites. Yet, sole reliance on your own efforts will reduce your ability to attract qualified applicants. Designing your own applicant tracking system can cost 10x to 1000x more money than selecting a top-rated one with the features you need, like SEO (search engine optimization).  Keep in mind: Applicants will review the top three listings on page 1, skim pages 2 and 3, and not look at any other pages.  While some may argue they don’t want a lot of candidates, picking candidates from a small pool normally means settling for less than the job requires. A well-designed system will provide better applicants for less cost, and allow you to focus your efforts on the best, most likely to succeed candidates.

Myth #2: The perfect candidate exists. Perfection is an illusion. Looking for five “must have” qualities without good decision making tools is a waste of time. Currently, many of us spend less than 6 seconds skimming a resume (or searching for confidential key words); decide “yes or no” within the first 4.3 minutes of an interview; and overlook reference and background checks. How good can our decision-making process be? Top talent will bypass potential employers, if those businesses are unable to understand and follow their own selection system, or use inappropriate tools. Remember, these candidates may be your future clients, vendors and/or suppliers!

Myth #3: I’ll know the person when I meet him/her. Really? Too often we hear, “I can tell the character of a person by looking into the whites of their eyes!” Seriously? If the person does not speak the “hot buttons,” they will not be considered. Many candidates today are well-trained to tell you what you want to hear! It will not make them the right person to achieve the results required to grow your company or keep current clients. Use of qualified assessments (per Department of Labor guidelines) will reduce hiring candidates that simply don’t fit the job, or simply cannot or will not do the job! Review the Technical Manual to ensure proper use.

For additional information on how to hire right the first time: BizSavvyHire.com

For a copy of Testing and Assessment: An Employer’s Guide to Good Practices, U.S. Department of Labor contact JLSeibly@SeibCo.com

Jeannette Seibly is an international business advisor and executive consultant for privately-held companies with revenues of $1MM up to $30MM. She has created million-dollar results for 25 companies, and 3 millionaires!

©Jeannette L. Seibly 2012