Nashroon Mohammed, BA (Hons), Di LC, CCC, CLTMC
Workplace Coach
coachnashtt@gmail.com
Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great, said: "The most important decisions that business people make are not what decisions, but who decisions." Who you hire in your organisation is by far the most important decision you can make, as they are the ones who make the decision of what to do.
Recently, browsing through Amazon.com, I came across the book titled Who: The A Method For Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street. The writings of this book stated that the single biggest problem in business today is unsuccessful hiring. The average hiring mistake costs a company $US1.5 million or more a year and countless wasted hours. This statistic becomes even more startling when you consider that the typical hiring success rate of managers is only 50 per cent.
We are all too familiar with the traditional method of hiring–curriculum vitae, interview, and hire candidate. Over the years, we have seen that most organisations have added personality testing, aptitude and skills testing to their selection process.
Ben Dattner, on September 12, 2013, wrote an article in HBR Blog Network entitled How to Use Psychometric Testing in Hiring. In this article, he outlined that roughly 18 per cent of companies are using personality testing as a means of choosing their people. According to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, this number is growing by ten to 15 per cent a year.
Recruiting and selecting the right candidate to fill the position can be costly, and the costs can escalate when there is a high turnover of staff. Taking this into consideration, it will be prudent to hire people who will fit the position and the culture of your organisation.
In this book, Geoff Smart and Randy Street outlined three reasons why hiring failure happens:
1. The business is unclear about what is needed in a job.
2. They have a weak flow of candidates to fill vacant positions.
3. The hiring officer does not trust their ability to pick out the right candidates.
To avoid these failures, Smart and Street who have spent over ten years doing research for their book, have proposed the "A method of hiring." The A method is a simple process for identifying and hiring A players with a high degree of success; it helps organisations to get the "who" right.
The A method
There are four simple steps to the A method.corecard–The scorecard is a document that describes exactly what you want a person to accomplish in a role. It is not a job description, but rather a set of outcomes and competencies that define a job done well. By defining performance for a role, the scorecard gives you a clear picture of what the person you seek needs to be able to accomplish.
The scorecard describes the mission for the position, outcomes that must be accomplished, and the competencies that fit with both the culture of the company and the role.Source–Finding great people is getting harder, but it is not impossible. Systematic sourcing before you have slots to fill ensures you have high-quality candidates waiting when you need them. The number one method of sourcing candidates is by referrals from your personal and professional network.
Select–Selecting talent in the A method involves a series of structured interviews that allow you to gather the relevant facts about a person so you can rate your scorecard and make an informed hiring decision.The screening interview is a short, phone-based interview designed to short-list only A players for the next step.
�2 A topgrading interview is the key interview in the selection process of the A method. This interview seeks to give confidence to the interviewing team because it uncovers the patterns of somebody's career history, which can be matched to the scorecard.
�2 The focused interview allows you to gather additional, specific information about the candidate.
�2 The reference interview is where you seek to confirm the information gathered thus far with someone who knows the candidate.
Sell–Once you identify people you want on your team through selection, you need to persuade them to join. Selling the right way ensures you avoid the biggest pitfalls that cause the very people you want the most to take their talents elsewhere. It also protects you from the biggest heartbreak of all–losing the perfect candidate at the eleventh hour.Having briefly discussed the A method, let us look at what needs to happen to install this method within your organisation.
�2 Make the people in your organisation your top priority.
�2 Lead by example–follow the A method yourself.
�2 Build support among your executive team or peers.
�2 Cast a clear vision for the organisation and reinforce it through every communication with the broader team.
�2 Train your team on best practices.
�2 Remove barriers that impede success.
�2 Implement new policies that support the change.
�2 Recognise and reward those who use the method and achieve results.
�2 Remove managers who are not on board.
�2 Celebrate wins and plan for more change.
Hiring and retaining talent is crucial to any organisation's success and, therefore, calls for an approach that supports the traditional interview process. According to Zig Ziglar, "there's no such thing as a successful business without a lot of successful people helping to grow it. You don't build a business–you build people–and then people build the business."