Windridge - Identify. Develop. Retain.

Interviews and Assessments

Interviews and assessments should work hand in hand during the hiring process. They enable you to interact with and understand the candidate, and they provide information not only around skills but around strengths and concerns .

When conducting interviews and when analyzing assessment results, it is important to ask yourself three questions:

1) Am I measuring someone's interviewing skills rather than their ability to perform? Using performance based hiring assessments, in addition to the interview, will help you look past most personal biases. This assessment/interview combination will enable you to probe deeper and find out more about the candidate's strengths and areas of concern as they relate to the work to be done and to your organization.

2) Are interviews and assessments decision-making tools rather than a way to collect information? Interviewing and assessment should be about gathering information.... You will then be able to make educated hiring decisions that are in the best interest of the organization and the candidate. 

3) Am I hiring someone who is just like me rather than the best person for the job?

Make sure, as much as humanly possible, you take yourself out of the picture when assessing and interviewing candidates. They are not you and their responses and scores are uniquely their own. 

Strive to hire people who are the best fit for the position, and be aware, this might translate to their scores or interview being stronger than yours... This should not be viewed as a threat to your security, but as an asset to your career and organization. Become known for making smart and objective hiring decisions and you will become more valuable to your organization.

Skills versus Behavior

How many times have I heard, “we hired him for his technical skills, but we had to let him go because of his lack of people skills”?

Hire not only for technical abilities, but make sure that “behavior” plays a key part in your hiring decisions.... You will then develop a strong, competent workforce.

Technical knowledge is taught and should be ever increasing in the life of an employee. Interpersonal skills and communication skills are far more difficult to teach (old habits die hard) and have significant impact on production capabilities and the everyday interactions/satisfaction of the workforce.

~ Lindsay

Hiring For Quality

"When it is essential that people learn rapidly and perform at superior levels, you need objective and repeatable ways to judge candidates. No scientist would rely on interviews, feelings, or opinions to judge a scientific experiment. Neither should we in judging a candidate." Keven Wheeler

A very good article and the only disagreement I have is in the suggestion of using multi-rater feedback assessments as a hiring tool... They are simply not developed for this use. Sometimes the questions have absolutely nothing to do with the job, contain gender and race bias, and filled with subjectivity: Beware!

Full Article

Supervisor and Above Assessment

I always recommend using the Winslow Behavioral Assessment (24 trait) for any Supervisor or above position being filled. This recommendation applies to both external candidate(s) or internal employee(s) who are moving up.

The level of feedback in this performance based behavioral assessment  provides key insights and the ability to better identify whether the candidate will be able to perform under the scope of responsibility required for success in these upper level positions.

I was pleased to see this important assessment concept discussed by Charles Handler and Mark C. Healy on the ERExchange today.

"There are some key differences between successful assessment for managerial and executive-level positions (versus the assessing that is done for hourly workers):

* Managerial jobs require a slate of skills that are not often required for success at simpler jobs. These include things like leadership, business acumen, managing performance, strategic decision-making, conflict resolution, etc.

* A mistake at this level of hiring can be much more costly than for an hourly hire, mostly because managers are responsible for potentially hundreds of people and millions in both costs and revenue acquisition.

* Managerial hiring has a tighter integration with ongoing developmental strategy and activities as organizations look to maximize their investment in an individual by understanding and developing potential from within.

* There is a broad range of job complexity once you hit supervisory levels. The selection process for a front-line leader can differ vastly from that used for executive roles. Executives often complete day-long assessment centers while first-level supervisors are more likely to be presented with a simple in-basket or situational judgment exercise, which is scored automatically.

* Feedback becomes a more integral part of the assessment process. Pre-employment assessment for hourly jobs almost never provides candidates with any feedback at all.

* When making promotional or hiring decisions about managers, assessment requires a "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" approach. Trained assessors (often both external and internal members of the organization) make ratings based on a variety of data."

Your Onboarding Program Needs a Pair of Fresh Eyes

Six action items for better onboarding
Thursday, May 15, 2008 | by David Lee

Do you know the impact your onboarding program has on your new employees, moment-of-truth by moment-of-truth?

Do you know what it's like to experience your company as an employee on the first day of work? The first week? What about the week prior to that first day?

What about when your new employees meet their supervisor and their teammates? Are you managing that experience in a way that produces an excited, engaged employee? Or for new employees at your company, is it more like buyer's remorse?

Read Full Article

Thought for the day.....

Hire the best people, trust them, and then get out of their way and let them do what you brought them onboard to do!

Candidate Selecton and Assessment Usage

Here's a very brief summary of the results from the 5th Annual Rocket-Hire Online Screening and Assessment Usage Survey - Article and research by Charles Handler and Mark C. Healy

Effectiveness of Screening and Assessment Tools
This year, 65% of prescreen users and 77% of assessment users felt their tools added value to their organization. In contrast, a full 21% of prescreen users and 10% of assessment users felt these tools did not add value. Users of metrics to evaluate their assessment results tend to report success with prescreening and assessment use.

This year's results let us know what's really going on, and it confirmed what most of our previous surveys have found:

• Having an ATS installed is now nothing particularly innovative, especially if you work in a medium or large organization. For some, it's hard to even imagine the old stacks of resumes and bulging file folders of applicant information.
• Prescreening and assessment are continuing their gradual penetration into the mainstream of recruitment and hiring.
• Qualifications screening, personality inventories, and skill and technical certifications continue to be the most popular online assessment tools. Assessments of cognitive abilities as well as fit with the company culture have expanded their footprint as well.
• Respondents report a lack of understanding, weak budgets, or a general lack of support for online tools as their primary obstacles to adoption or greater use of modern prescreening and assessment technology.
• Those organizations that formally evaluate their hiring practices tend to support the use of prescreening and assessment, but a large number of organizations are still failing to evaluate the effectiveness of their screening and assessment tools.

There clearly is a growing interest in scientifically derived hiring tools. This trend is encouraging but not particularly surprising; these numbers will continue to grow as more organizations understand the value in properly evaluating the impact of screening and assessment tools, seeing for themselves how quality hiring tools can improve a workforce.

*** As in all things communication is of the utmost importance. Make sure you communicate with your assessment provider specific organizational needs and that you receive adequate feedback on assessment results. This will enable you to more effectively use the information you are gathering.

For more information on Rocket-Hire's online screening and assessment usage survey, read the entire report at  http://www.ere.net/articles/db/150E39E8923D40A2948D5C88522DB068.asp

Are You Hiring Future Champions or Future Saboteurs? by Jon Kaupla

This article provides great food for thought around our interview practices .... Thanks Jon!

Six effective practices

3/25/2008 | by Jon Kaupla

about the author

Jon Kaupla

Director - BrandConnect

Core Creative, Inc.

email | bio

Each time we interview a prospective employee, we not only question the recruit, we question ourselves. Am I talking to a candidate who would become an asset to the company? This candidate looks good on paper and is in a best-behavior mode, but will he or she be a good match to support our organization's goals? Or is this a potential company saboteur?

As recruiters, we have the daunting job of selecting employees who can deliver what an organization defines as its on-brand activity. We want to avoid an employee who doesn't fit in, who will be unproductive, criticize management, provide substandard service, or undermine a company's internal culture and its promise to its clients. These are traits we've identified as workplace "sabotage."

If you think the word "saboteur" overstates the situation, consider the potential damage a saboteur can inflict on your organization: squandered recruitment costs, decrease in productivity, harm to company reputation, inadequate customer service, and negative workplace morale. Ultimately, these behaviors also chip away at your bottom line.

Distinguish Champions from Saboteurs During the Interview Process

Employees play a critical role in the success of the company by carrying out its values and establishing a culture of engagement and success. So we need to communicate to recruits what will be expected of them and, most critical, identify the characteristics we're looking for and weed out potential saboteurs.

Each organization calls for a different set of behaviors and personality traits. Identifying these behaviors (and recognizing the absence of these traits) in the recruits we interview is a weighty challenge, but I've found the following practices to be effective:

Read Jon's Six Effective Practices at http://www.ere.net/articles/db/1C084E18DF8F496DA512ABA8A3E8D81D.asp

Testing and Selecting Employees

In an article on HRLeaders.org (http://www.hrleaders.org/) my colleague Dr. Wendell Williams (AIM -Attitudes, Interests and Motivation and MAT-Multi-Tasking assessments) discusses best practices for assuring that the assessment tools you are using meet the 1999 Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing "Guidelines."

"Know all about the test(s) you are using.

Several organizations assembled test development experts to develop the 1999 Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. While the 'Guidelines' outline best hiring practices, the 'Standards' outline best test development practices. That is, any test used for placement or hiring should meet the following minimum criteria:

• Based on an established theory that predicts job performance
• Follow sound test development practices to ensure reliability and accuracy
• Be shown to actually predict job performance
• Be fully documented"
  (read more here http://www.hrleaders.org/ViewArticle.aspx?id=220)

There are great assessments on the market for general training & development needs, and then there are great assessments which focus on employee's "best fit" specific to the work being done. Understand this distinction and the assessments in your hiring practices will become very useful tools.

Five Common Types of Hiring Mistakes

Below are five common hiring mistakes,

1) The Unmotivated Hire. This is hiring someone who sounded good in the interview and who is reasonably competent, but not motivated to consistently do the work needed to be done. These are the people who need to be over-managed just to achieve average results.

2) The Partial Hire. This mistake refers to a person who does parts of the job really well, but not all of them. For example, a hard-working developer who misses deadlines.

3) The Non-Hire. This covers all of those hiring mistakes associated with a top person being excluded because someone made a bad assessment. This typically happens when interviewers base their decisions on first impressions or some superficial, narrow, or flawed reason.

4) The Lost Opportunity Hire. These are the worst mistakes of them all. This refers to a great person who you probably would have hired, but who decided to voluntarily opt-out before an offer was made or declined your offer for some preventable reason.

5) The Wrongful Hire or Wrongful Non-Hire. Asking inappropriate or illegal questions causes lawsuits, especially from weak people who you didn't hire. You'll also get these from weak people you hire and then quickly fire. A structured objective interview where everyone asks the same questions and evaluates everyone the same way will eliminate this problem.
(Read Lou Adler's complete article http://www.ere.net/)

How does one overcome one or all of these hiring mistakes? Information, information, information!

When notifying candidates of their assessment passwords I'm always a bit amazed at the amount of information they are willing to share. People like to talk about themselves; use this tendency to pick up on nuances during the interview.......

The more comfortable you make a candidate, the more relevant information they will share around past accomplishments, attitudes towards teamwork, frustrations and how those were overcome, thus increasing your likelihood of making a great hire.

Don't settle for first answers, always probe deeper with "Tell me how that worked out" or "What did you do then?" Do your best to keep quiet and let your candidates do the talking!

Your goal is to discover relevant position/performance related information from the candidate before the hire.