Job Fit

Do your employees feel safe?

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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

Small Employer Hiring

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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

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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

Sharpen Your Focus — Strategic Hiring Done Right

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We as business owners and executives often find hiring a painful process. Finally, the new hire starts – only to leave a few (costly) months later. We shake our heads … the person looked the part. Spoke correctly. Used the right jargon. There were even times when we realized (almost immediately) it was a bad fit and hoped s/he would leave sooner.

Some workplaces are already starting to experience difficulty finding qualified candidates. Many times this is due to companies not using up-to-date hiring practices.

The purpose of a good selection process is information gathering. When we solicit good-quality data, we are more apt to make good-quality decisions. When we start with a solid strategy and plan accordingly, we attract the right candidates. Unfortunately, we normally short-change the process, citing time and money, not realizing it actually costs us thousands to millions of dollars more!

This three-part webinar is designed for business owners and executives to help them better understand that a dependable hiring process is entirely do-able. You can do it! All it takes is solid strategy, proper tools and the right attitude.

Part 1: Let’s get down to business results!  “Today’s webinar was invaluable! Learning to focus on the right stuff will help me hire the right person. It’s just what I needed.” KM, Business Owner (after attending Part 1)

Part 2: Qualified Assessments: Detect the 90% hidden during the interview. https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/665209751

Part 3: Due Diligency — The Secrets to Hiring Success https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/947604399

Avoid Disruptive Employees

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As a boss and leader, it’s important to handle disruptive people issues immediately! Waiting can cause more destruction than a bad competitor. How can you avoid them?

Hire the right person for the right job. Good job fit normally creates better team members, whether they need to work independently or interdependently. Have others involved in the interview process. Conduct due diligence by first clarifying what you need to achieve. Use a consistent interview guide and ask the same interview questions of each candidate. This will make the process to compare responses easier. Moreover, it keeps it legal! Don’t settle for less than is required. Accepting someone as “good enough” can create negative and costly impacts to your clients and company.

Integrate new hires into team. Give new hires basic tasks to complete. Enable them to win immediately. Remind them, winning requires everyone pulling together for the benefit of the team. The good news is that the “right” person who does not like these tasks will find great opportunities to get them done faster, often with less cost! A true win for everyone.

Come Down to Reality. Realize there are times when people who create a lot of brouhaha truly are grounded in the mission and goals of the team. It’s time to have a reality check. Be open to the new opportunities healthy discussions produce, without dissing what caused the exchange of ideas.

Just fire them. There comes a time when someone is unable or unwilling to be part of the team, or do the work. It’s kinder to let them go, than to keep haranguing them to perform the job tasks they were hired to accomplish. Working around them wastes costly time drains precious energy. Sadly, this strategy rarely solidifies the team into working well together.

©Jeannette L. Seibly, 2012

Warren Buffet had it right:

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“In looking for someone to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. But the most important is integrity, because if they don’t have that, the other two qualities, intelligence and energy, are going to kill you.”

He went on to summarize his lesson: “When you hire someone to run your business, you are entrusting him or her with the piggy bank. If these people are smart and hardworking, they are going to make you a lot of money, but it they aren’t honest, they will find lots of clever ways to make all your money theirs.”

Consider these facts:

In retail: Employee theft is estimated to be responsible for 47% of store inventory shrinkage.That ‘s over 17 billion dollars per year! Employee dishonesty is the greatest single threat to profitability at the store level.

It’s not all money and goods: A recent national survey found that 59 percent of employees who quit or were laid off or terminated in the last 12 months admitted to stealing company data, and 67 percent admitted to using their former employer’s confidential information to find a new job.

Banks and Credit Unions: The banking industry reports losses of over one billion dollars annually because of employee theft, greater than the amount taken in bank robberies many times over.

Lots of ways to do it: Faking on-the-job injuries for compensation, taking merchandise, stealing small sums of cash, forging or destroying receipts, shipping and billing scams, putting fictitious employees on payroll, and falsifying expense records.

Across business types: Security experts predict that up to 30 percent of the nation’s workers will steal at some time in their career. Difficult economic times, lack of salary increases and the threats of downsizing and cutbacks make it even more tempting for employees to help themselves.

This threatens your existence!  It is not unusual for a small business to be bankrupted by one employee’s theft . The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners reports that small businesses suffered a median loss of $100,000!

You just won’t know: On average, it takes 18 months for an employer to catch an employee who is stealing.

How can you protect your business?

As devastating as these possible losses are, two simple and inexpensive processes, inserted in your hiring system, can dramatically reduce the possibility that you will experience them:

Perform background checks before you hire. While background checking is far from flawless, it’s a valuable tool to learn about past problems and possible risks–and it doesn’t cost much!

Use an honesty-integrity assessment. A valid, predictive honesty-integrity assessment will help you avoid hiring someone likely to cause you this kind of problem–again, it doesn’t cost much!

Combine these two tools to help protect yourself from mostly preventable business disasters!

To learn more about using background checking and honesty-integrity assessments in your hiring process:   Contact JLSeibly@gmail.com. We’ll show you the tools, explain the low costs and high benefits, show you real-life examples of how they work, and arrange a demonstration, if you like!

Written by John W. Howard, PhD

Sources of statistics

Contact us for further information:

  • For a brief description of all our systems and tools, click here.
  • For a flash demo of our simple and affordable online hiring and recruiting solution, click here.
  • For a flash demo of our online performance management system, click here.
  • For information on our simple, affordable online HRIS, click here.
  • Or, for more information and a custom solution for your business, call or email!

Measure Sales Success During the Interview, Not After

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Selecting sales candidates who can actually sell is a huge challenge for any employer.  Even if they sold the same or similar products or services for your competitor, it doesn’t mean they can adequately sell for you. 

Many times future employers are “sold” or mis-led about an applicant’s sales abilities when:

  • They have very good verbal skills (does not mean they have the personality and/or interests to deliver the results);
  • They appear to be good team players (many good sales people are not); or
  • They are able to sell themselves (does not mean they can sell your products or services).

The following interview metrics do not eliminate the need to use valid and objective assessments that actually (and legally) measure your candidates’ true sales capabilities (think, learning style, core behaviors and occupational interests). These questions simply provide you additional information to ensure you’re getting a true sales person, and not a “marketing-type person” who relies upon others to sell and close the deal.  Your sales people create your company’s reputation, now and in the future.

  • What was your candidate’s quota for his last employer(s) – did s/he hit it?
  • What was the average size deal?  (Dollars and re-sales)
  • Did s/he make President’s club or receive other industry recognized “acknowledgement.”
  • Does s/he have inside vs. outside sales experience?   Which did they prefer?  Why?
  • What were the number of cold calls, conversations, presentations, etc that s/he made daily and weekly?
  • What was his or her close ratio? (How many presentations vs. number of actual sales?)
  • Where did his or her leads come from – were they generated by the person or were they given to them by others in the company?
  • What were his or her day-to-day activities, including time at the desk and time in front of the potential customer?  Or, in front of current customers, up-selling or cross-selling?
  • What formal sales training has s/he had?
  • What tracking system did they use to keep stats on lead generation, lead conversion, and repeat business?
  • Do they plan their work and work their plan, effectively?   How do they know?
  • If they were to describe a sales person, what words would they use?  (Remember, you’re looking for the positive attributes, not the age old “snake oil” descriptors.)
  • If they were to use one word to describe his/her customer’s experience of working with him/her, what would that word be?

© Jeannette L. Seibly and John W. Howard, 2008

Jeannette Seibly, Principal of SeibCo, is a nationally recognized coach, who has helped 1000’s of people achieve unprecedented results.  She has created three millionaires.  You can contact her:  JLSeibly@gmail.com OR http://SeibCo.com  Jeannette is also the author of “Hiring Amazing Employees.”

John W. Howard, Ph.D., owner of Performance Resources, Inc. helps businesses of all sizes increase their profits by reducing their people costs. His clients hire better, fire less, manage better, and keep their top performers. He may be reached at 435.654-5342, OR JWH@prol.ws

Performance Evaluation Reminders Worth Repeating

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In order for a company to succeed as a whole, its managers need to help their individual employees succeed by effectively managing their performance. All managers can benefit from these reminders.

Managers’ Attitude Matters

“The attitude of managers is critical,” said Jeannette Seibly, Human Perfor­mance Coach and Consultant, SeibCo, LLC (Highlands Ranch, CO). “Managers must have a mindset for the employee to win.”

The goal is to evaluate the employee’s performance, not attack their character; to build the employee up, not tear them down. This shouldn’t be a “gotcha” kind of meeting, said Seibly. Nothing in the assessment should come as a surprise to employees.

Seibly also noted that too many managers go into evaluations frustrated because they do not know what needs to be done to fix a performance deficiency. This “frustration will come across more than anything else” during the evalu­ation, she warned. She suggested that the manager should “ask a boss or ask a mentor” for guidance.

Communication Skills Are Key

Whether having an informal performance coaching conversation or conduct­ing a formal annual performance appraisal (PA), managers should be reminded of these best communication practices.

Be specific. Sweeping generalizations can too easily be misinterpreted or misunderstood. Employees need to know exactly what they must stop doing or what they should continue to do.

Support the assessment with evidence. Evidence doesn’t necessarily have to be tangible (e.g., a letter of praise from a customer); the manager’s visual observation of an example of stellar or substandard performance can suffice.

Written PAs should include narrative comments to support ratings/rankings. Copying comments from the employee’s previous reviews or only changing a few words here and there isn’t acceptable.

Set goals. Focus on improving or sustaining performance in the future, rather than dwelling on past mistakes. Negative feedback should include steps for improvement.

Take protected class and protected leave out of the picture. Watch for signs of illegal discrimination. For example, age shouldn’t be noted as the reason for an employee’s inability to learn new technology, just as leave taken under the Family and Medical Leave Act shouldn’t be used as evidence of an attendance problem.

Talk with employees, not at them. Some managers try to come across as more authoritative than necessary in order to be taken seriously. More times than not, however, this will backfire and put employees on the defensive. Use the following approach.

Do use a collaborative tone. Instead of telling the employee they should do this and they should do that, ask for their input on how to improve or maintain performance. You want “a two-way conversation,” said Seibly.

Employees should be allowed to explain their actions and question the assessment, within reason. It’s good to know what’s on the employee’s mind; if the employee’s thinking is flawed or the manager has misunderstood, this is the time to clear the air.

Don’t sweep any awkwardness under the rug. For example, a recently promoted manager may have difficulty criticizing a friend and former peer. The manager should acknowledge this awkwardness and stress that the meeting is professional and not personal.

Do use the sandwich approach. Seibly recommends saying two positive things, followed by two changes the employee needs to make (make them doable!), and then end by making two more positive points. This approach is “so much more positive and powerful than anything else you can do,” said Seibly, who cautioned against listing more than two changes at once for fear of overwhelming the employee.

Don’t apologize for negative feedback because doing so gives the impression that the assessment is inaccurate.

Reprinted with permission from Personnel Legal Alert, © Alexander Hamilton Institute, Inc., 70 Hilltop Road, Ramsey, NJ 07446.  For more information, please call 800-879-2441 or visit www.legalworkplace.com.

Solutions for Your Most Important People Problems

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We have a simple mission:  We increase your profits.

We help businesses increase their profits, by reducing their people costs. Our clients hire better, fire less, manage better, and retain and develop top performers.

We offer tools and systems that improve:

  • Selection of honest, hard-working employees, who show up for work, avoid substance abuse, are less often absent or tardy, and perform!
  • Performance of sales people and other employees.
  • Retention—Keep your good people.
  • Placement—Ensure that each candidate/employee is in the right job.
  • Promotion—Avoid “promotion failure” due to the Peter principle.
  • Coaching—Get the most out of your people resources.
  • Career development—Give them a reason to want to stay with you.
  • Motivation—Do you know what “makes them tick”?
  • Teams—Function and balance. Where is your “operator’s manual”?
  • Customer service—Is there anything more important?
  • Management—People don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. Fix this.
  • Recruiting—Maximize your candidate pool, manage it efficiently.
  • Performance Management –Turn this into something productive!

Our tools are scientifically designed and validated. We customize the measures to reflect the needs and values of jobs in your company.  Each assessment has been tested to ensure compliance with EEOC and Department of Labor standards; use of our tools may provide a positive defense against claims of discrimination.

Brief Overview of Selected Tools 

iApplicantsTM Online Recruiting and Hiring System

Developed entirely from input provided by companies like yours, iApplicantsTM is a complete, affordable, efficient, intuitive, and easy to learn applicant tracking and management system. Automatically post your jobs to a wide selection of free internet job boards, track your applicants in ways that make sense for you, e-mail selected candidates from within the system. Ask job-specific screening questions to quickly weed out those who don’t meet minimum requirements, and use any of our assessment tools automatically as part of the application; it’s all here. Designed for companies with 20 to 2,000 employees, it includes powerful reporting functions (including tracking EEO information in the background), application and resume search functions, and much more. No setup charges, no long-term contracts, and you can be an expert in less than an hour.

Step One Survey II®

This is a pre-employment screening assessment, designed to increase your probability of only hiring people likely to become “good employees” in the general sense. It measures your candidate’s attitudes toward 4 critical components of workplace behavior: Integrity, Substance Abuse, Reliability, and Work Ethic. Results show how your candidate compares with the general US working population. Consistently applied in a wide variety of work environments, the SOS has demonstrated dramatic effects of reducing turnover, absenteeism, tardiness, on-job injuries, vehicular accidents, and jobsite theft. It is designed to be completed by your candidates pre-interview, and provides a structured interview guide to enrich the information usually available before an employment decision is made. The measure is available in English and Spanish, and is easily completed over any internet connection, or in booklet form. Scoring and reporting is nearly instantaneous.

ProfileXT®

The ProfileXT answers “the astronaut’s question”—Does this candidate have the “right stuff” for your job?  A “total person” assessment with a myriad of uses, the ProfileXT is used for selection, coaching, training, promotion, managing, succession planning and job description development. Using 20 different scales, it measures the job-related qualities that make a person productive – Thinking and Reasoning Styles(5 scales), Behavioral Traits (9 scales) and Occupational Interests. (6 scales). A separate Distortion scale provides a measure of the quality of information in the assessment. Proper use of the ProfileXT will help you put top performers in each job, maximize their performance, and keep them with you longer.

Profiles Sales Assessment™

Combining the power of the ProfileXT with a set of 7 Critical Sales Behaviors, this assessment predicts and supports job-specific sales success. Used in sales selection and in sales management, this powerful tool will help you hire or promote top performers, place them in jobs where they can perform at top levels, motivate and manage them to produce even more, and keep them longer—because they fit their job.

Customer Service Profile™

Worldwide, up to two-thirds of all customers leave due to poor customer service. When you hire employees using our Customer Service Profile, you populate your organization with people who will increase customer satisfaction, reduce complaints, build customer loyalty, increase sales and make significant gains in profitability. This tool assesses the attitudes and customer service characteristics of existing employees and new job candidates. It gives you the critical information you need to hire people with good customer service skills, improve customer service training, and increase overall customer satisfaction.

Management Development Program

This is a combination of tools, applied in a systematic annual cycle to:

  • First, measure each participant’s competencies in 8 major areas and 18 subcategories critical to management performance. (Checkpoint 360 Assessment)
  • Second, improve competency level in the areas identified as most critical for each participant’s job, and offering the greatest opportunity for significant gains. (SkillBuilder Units.)

Unlike most management assessment programs, ours not only identifies skill sets where each manager (according to themselves, their supervisor, their peers, and their direct reports) needs improvement, it provides a system to directly and efficiently improve those skills. Training is individual, self-paced, practical, and essentially provides on the job training in the specific skills needed, providing lasting change in manager behavior.

All of these tools can be used separately, or in powerful combinations based on your goals and needs. With the exception of the Step One Survey II (restricted to use pre-employment), all can be used with either job candidates, or with your existing employees. Let us help you increase your profits by reducing your people costs! We provide solutions for your most important people challenges.

(C) Jeannette L. Seibly, 2008

Are you looking for “green” hiring tools that save time and money?

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http://www.trackingapplicants.com/seibco.html

Developed entirely from input provided by companies like yours, iApplicantsTM is a complete, affordable, efficient, intuitive, and easy to learn applicant tracking and management system. Automatically post your jobs to a wide selection of free internet job boards, track your applicants in ways that make sense for you, e-mail selected candidates from within the system. Ask job-specific screening questions to quickly weed out those who don’t meet minimum requirements, and use any of our assessment tools automatically as part of the application; it’s all here. Designed for companies with 20 to 2,000 employees, it includes powerful reporting functions (including tracking EEO information in the background), application and resume search functions, and much more. No setup charges, no long-term contracts, and you can be an expert in less than an hour.