hiring assessments

Hiring Assessments Can Revive Your Bottom Line

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 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!

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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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Laser coaching requires you to stop managing

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Effective bosses know that everybody has their own learning style. Instead of telling your employees how to get the job done, provide assistance that is focused on a quality process and an intentional end result. As a manager, take time to listen, ask the right questions, and use qualified assessments to become a laser-focused coach with the ability to guide your team and provide the necessary adjustments. Encourage your employees to interact with one another, other teams, and their clients to develop new processes and systems to achieve the required end results:  satisfied customers and a positive return on investment. (http://SeibCo.com/assessments)

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Promote the best, not the ones you like the best.

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Too often we use a “halo effect “when promoting employees into leadership roles or coveted opportunities. These people looks like the right ones because we like them or they’ve done something extraordinary recently. Unfortunately, they may not have the thinking style, core behaviors, or occupational interests to get the job done in their new positions. To approach promotion more objectively, first, understand the competencies required of the job. Second, use qualified assessments to discern candidates’ inherent strengths and weaknesses. Third, promote based upon merit, not likeability. Always use the same strategic hiring system for both internal promotions and external hires. To learn how to create a strategic hiring system that works, get your copy of Hire Amazing Employees, Second Edition, http://BizSavvyHire.com.

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Culture is the fall guy

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Why do so many executives fail in new jobs? While many blame company culture, I would suggest that culture is the scapegoat. Poor cultural fit simply amplifies or points out what the C-suite or board members on the hiring committee failed to uncover during the vetting or onboarding process!

Instead of blaming culture, management teams should take the time to think through and write out a strategic hiring process that works, and design it to ensure that each party explores and investigates the other. They should use qualified systems and tools, trust the process, and follow it. Remember, more conversations will be required when hiring an executive to ensure consistency of philosophy and provide deeper exploration of issues and potential solutions. If you follow a well-designed system and use it in the spirit in which it was intended, you will know that you’ve done your best to ensure a positive partnership—even though there are never any guarantees. Excerpt from Companies and Executives Need to Vet and Onboard Each Other! http://SeibCo.com/books/eguides   

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Have you hired a salesperson who can’t sell?

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Selecting salespeople who can actually sell is a huge challenge for any employer, particularly when a significant number of applicants stretch the truth or lie. When technical sales skills are required, the level of deception increases to offset lack of experience or poor results in previous positions. Even if they did well and sold the same or similar products or services for your competitor, it doesn’t mean they can or will produce the same level of results for you. 

Many times sales managers are misled when applicants:

  • Have very good verbal skills (which does not mean they have the personality and/or interests to deliver the results);
  • Appear to be good team players (many good salespeople are not); or
  • Are able to sell themselves (which does not mean they can sell your products or services).

Measuring sales metrics during the interview, not after, requires you to ask the right questions and listen to candidates’ responses. Be specific in your questions by asking for actual numbers, percentages, and increases or decreases in results. It will not eliminate the need to use valid assessments that objectively, reliably, and legally measure your candidates’ true match to your sales job.  http://SeibCo.com/assessments

©Jeannette Seibly, 2013

Emotional hiring can be dangerous!

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Many executives are good decision-makers or they wouldn’t have the title. However, many are so busy that they fail to listen during interviews unless the candidate says the right things. Then their impulsiveness and impatience kicks in and they hire people that “feel like the right ones”! Hiring based on intuitive powers may sound great, but in reality it is an excuse for not using a strategic hiring system.  

Anytime you hire someone who doesn’t fit all the necessary job requirements but has the likeability factor, you’re doomed for failure. Frequent job-seekers—people with backgrounds to hide and manipulative types—have honed their interview skills well! They know what to say and how to sell themselves to get a job. They know how to be likeable.

Infuse objectivity early in the hiring process. (http://wp.me/p2POui-nj ) This will significantly reduce the possibility of interviewing these types of job candidates and falling into the emotional hiring trap. Use a structured interview process, qualified assessments, and due diligence. Call those references! (Learn how to hire the right person. Get your copy of Hire Amazing Employees, Second Edition. It could save your own job!  http://BizSavvyHire.com)

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

GPAs are not good success predictors

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Many companies today rely on applicants’ GPAs from high school or college as an objective indicator to predict their success on the job. Unfortunately, knowledge does not mean you know how to use information effectively in a business setting. There are street-smart individuals with lower GPAs who will trump those with book smarts in achieving the intended results. Why? Many street-smart people know how to work with and through others to solicit the 90 percent of information not found in books or on the Internet. Using qualified assessments can objectively help you determine if a person’s thinking style will fit the job you need to have done. (http://BizSavvyHire.com)

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013