The Most Important (and Easiest to Fix) Cause of Hiring Mistakes

Many organizations, even those using tests as a recruiting tool, continue to struggle with mediocre employee performance and turnover, or too much of both. This is not surprising, considering the many variables that affect both performance and retention. But one causal factor above all others is the failure to precisely identify and calibrate the traits, behaviors and motivations that drive high performance in each job. Allegorically speaking, no test, no matter how effective, can help you if you are shooting at the wrong target.

You would think that understanding what is necessary for success in any job is not difficult to determine; obviously, it is. Mis-hiring examples are everywhere: hiring people with service personalities and then tasking them to sell; looking for self-motivated achievers in every sales role, because some myth says they should be that way; assuming that call center roles require the same attributes as outside sales positions, because selling is selling … the list goes on and on.

So why is effective hiring so difficult? To start with, too many managers and recruiters just pay lip service to the process of job analysis. They don’t appreciate how important it is, so they don’t put the necessary time and effort into the process. As with so many things, simplicity and speed trump accuracy. What is also evident in many organizations is that the recruiting processes themselves are flawed. When the people doing the hiring lack an effective job-analysis regimen that incorporates precise tools, the process becomes perfunctory and superficial – they generalize, they stereotype, they make inferences and they never see the behavioral subtleties and nuances that account for performance variances and that set apart top performers.

The fix? At least that’s simple! Put the time into the job-analysis process for every hire, use job analysis tools that precisely distinguish small behavioral differences and use a monitoring-feedback loop to measure performance and tweak your job models where needed. Putting effort into your job analysis may be the most important step you can take to improve your hiring and retention success.

__________________________________________________________________________For more than forty years, Frank Gump has been helping corporations become more productive and profitable by helping management teams identify and hire top performers and manage them most effectively. Developed and refined through extensive experience in more than 1200 organizations in the United States, Canada, England, and Australia, ADGI’s Organizational Management System (OMS) is a finely calibrated, technologically advanced decision-making process offering the potential for enormous payback. Contact ADGI for more insight and connect with Frank on LinkedIn. Follow ADGI on Twitter @ADGIGroup. Like ADGI on Facebook and follow us on Google+.