Hiring Assessments Can Revive Your Bottom Line

 HireRight“If it weren’t for assessments, I would hire the way I always do and  get the same bad results!” — President, Engineering Company

 

Many companies today are focused on increasing sales, saving money and improving profitability. They spend a lot of time evaluating equipment and systems to ensure the best ROI. However, they fail to take the same amount of care when selecting the right resources to hire and manage their most important asset – their employees!  The result is, they miss many opportunities to hire the right people, and often lose top talent and customers due to their mistakes – costing them time, money and market share.

Cost of Poor Hiring Practices

Many executives know their turnover rate – some are proud that they are below industry standard. However, they have not quantified the financial impact to the bottom line and are in denial that they can do anything to improve it.

When you take the time required to tabulate the cost of a bad hire, promote the wrong person, or lose a talented employee, you will realize you must objectively assess potential job candidates for job fit, core values and required skills.  Using qualified assessments can significantly lower theft, cost of turnover, workers’ compensation, unemployment and other employment/liability claims when used appropriately. Remember, include intangible costs such as loss of reputation, quality, customers, vendors and other important factors in your calculations, since all of these can negatively impact your bottom line.

Select Qualified Hiring Assessments

There are over 3,000 publishers of assessment products in the market. Most assessments do not comply with the Department of Labor’s guidelines for pre-employment use (See: Testing and Assessment: An Employer’s Guide to Good Practices, Department of Labor). High-quality tools will have technical manuals (not just a letter from a law firm) to ensure each assessment meets the validity and reliability specifications for pre-employment and selection purposes. Ask for the technical manual and refuse to use an assessment for pre-employment purposes without one.

Assessments with High Validity and Reliability are Incredibly Accurate

Many assessments used for training or coaching purposes will show differences in people. However, they usually do not comply with higher statistical requirements for pre-employment tools. Not only is using the right assessment of legal importance, using tools that actually have the highest validity and reliability will measure people accurately and objectively – a requirement to predict future success. The best assessments provide you the ability to become a laser-like coach. Also, due to their accuracy, you will improve your selection process and reduce costs. Remember, any tool, system or process used during the hiring or promotion process must comply with pre-employment requirements.

When you select the right qualified assessments and use them as directed, they work and will positively revive your bottom line.

©Jeannette Seibly, 2015

Source: “Hire Amazing Employees,” Chapter 11, Assess for Job Fit—Use Qualified Assessments http://BizSavvyHire.com

Jeannette Seibly has been a business advisor and facilitator for over 23 years; she guides the creation of new solutions for business challenges and is the author of Hire Amazing Employees.  Check out her website: http://SeibCo.com. Or, contact Jeannette @ http://SeibCo.com/contact

Stop wishing for millions and get a job you love!

Many wish daily to become a millionaire, be wealthy and live a life of freedom — freedom from stress, strife and bills. Yet, most do nothing that will put them onto the right career path and increase the probability of achieving that lifestyle.

However, there is some additional bad news. There are many millionaires experiencing a lot of stress. So, stress isn’t going to go away. Same with strife and having bills that need to be paid.

The key to wealth? Find a job you love. Feeling wealthy is an inside job! Many times it will attract the financial freedom you crave, even if it’s not a million dollars in the bank!

Years ago I met a CFO that didn’t have any interest in financial management. Yet, he believed it would make him more money than his true interest in mechanics. His comment, “Find me a job as a mechanic that pays as well and I’ll take it.” The irony? Many good mechanics (aka ones that love their work) were making more money than he was!

The cold, hard reality is 63 to 79 percent of employees are in jobs that don’t fit them! When you are working in a job that doesn’t fit you, often, you will feel trapped. Your productivity, job satisfaction and upward career mobility are limited. You don’t develop the discipline or take consistent focused actions that will bring you success. You develop mediocre skills, fail to learn the basics required to succeed, and make a terrible boss (unfortunately, most companies reward their employees with promotions and increases in their paychecks – regardless of whether or not they fit the job)!

So, you are not alone in feeling you don’t know what to do to make more money. However, working in a job you hate usually will not bring it to you! There are many myths about becoming rich as a realtor, investor, financial planner, or in other potentially high-paying professions. Becoming rich can happen when people are good at those jobs, fit them and authentically love what they do!

This never-ending cycle continues until you wake up and get a job you truly enjoy. Or, you get fired and have to find another one. (Unfortunately, most don’t look at this event as a blessing and an opportunity to find the right job. Instead, they look for a job just like their last one! The cycle starts over again!)

Studies show (yes, one is from Harvard Business Review!) that if you have the interest, core behavior and thinking style that fit your job responsibilities, company and culture, you are much more likely to succeed!

The solution: The Pathway PlannerTM uses the same assessment information (based upon the world’s largest validation and reliability studies) that thousands of companies use to hire. (Contact http://SeibCo.com/contact) This educational and career planning tool helps you discover what career possibilities best suit you. The key (like anything) is to get into action! As you read through your results, you learn about different career paths that may work for you. Next, investigate the realities of those types of occupations by networking. As opportunities in those professions open up for you, prepare for a job-winning interview. SeibCo provides the how-to-do-it in the book, It’s Time to Brag! Career Edition, (Time2Brag.com).

Now, get to work, learn the basics of your profession and enjoy your career! You will feel like a million-bucks! (http://SeibCo.com/contact)

©Jeannette Seibly, 2015 All Rights Reserved

Jeannette Seibly is an award-winning and internationally recognized business advisor and career coach. For the past 23 years, she has helped thousands of people work smarter, enjoy financial freedom, and realize their dreams now.  She has an uncanny ability to help her clients identify roadblocks, and help them focus to quickly produce unprecedented results.  Each client brings their own unique challenges, and her gift is helping each one create their success in their own unique way. Along the way, with her commitment, she helped create three millionaires.

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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

Avoid Costly Hiring Blunders

Many business owners and executives often find hiring a painful process. A challenge they hate. As a result, they rely heavily on the interview as a major decisive factor, which only provides hiring success a shocking 14% of the time! Sadly, this creates costly hiring blunders. They often forget to include other equally important indicators in their hiring decision process. The goal of any hiring system? Collect enough of the right information to make solid decisions.

Applicant Tracking System can help you attract great candidates and simultaneously provide factual details of their past employment, education and skills. Select a tracking system that is user friendly and can be reached within one or two clicks from social media sites or other venues. The beauty of these systems is you capture their attention now and have them complete the application form at the same time. Remember this important distinction: a resume is a marketing tool, but an application is a legal document that requires actual dates of employment, salary and titles, to name but a few of the facts provided, that all help you make better-informed decisions.

Qualified Assessments allow us to see the whole person. Nearly 90% of a candidate’s true self is frequently camouflaged by resumes which selectively depict a person’s education, skills and job experience. That true self is often further camouflaged by the strength of an interviewer’s skills. Avoid these pitfalls by selecting assessment tools that meet the Department of Labor’s guidelines. This is important because you want to be sure the quality of the results actually reflects the job fit of the person you are interviewing, for both the present and the future. Remember, we often hire for perceived job skills and in the end, fire for a poor job fit.

Full Due Diligence requires conducting background checks, real reference checks and collection of other pertinent information. Be sure to have more than one final candidate.When you only have one candidate, you are more likely to rationalize why it won’t make a difference, many times to the detriment of the enterprise. Too often employers select only one and after it’s too late, find out something they hadn’t discovered earlier. The bottom line is … you can pay now to conduct a proper assessment process, or pay later in loss of business, increase in litigation or theft of data, money or proprietary information if you’ve hired the wrong person. You decide.

Join us on Thursday, September 13 @ 9:00 a.m. MDT (11 a.m. EDT/8 a.m. PDT): Hiring Refresher for Busy Bosses http://wp.me/pN8WG-97  Find out more about how to effectively use the above-mentioned tools to make better informed hiring decisions.

 “Hiring Amazing Employees” eBook is available at http://BizSavvyHire.com

©Jeannette L. Seibly, 2012

 

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