People Precision

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How to Hire and Retain Top Talent

Guest Post by: Favor Larson

When you are recruiting talent for an open position, whether it’s new to the organization or you are replacing a former employee, where does your recruitment strategy end?

Is it the day the candidate accepts the position? The day he or she begins employment? For all intents and purposes, recruitment would end at the time the new talent is acquired; however, is this truly the best recruitment strategy?

retaining top performing employeesI’d contend that you could experience two versions of the same hire. One version, less successful, by abandoning this new hire on the day of employment, and a second version, more successful and poised for internal growth, by instituting an onboarding program that begins at discovery and continues to engage your new hire in his or her role in the company.

Let’s say you played by all of our talent acquisition rules. You properly benchmarked a job enlisting the aid of subject matter experts who were able to identify the position’s key account-abilities and complete a job report for which to screen candidates. All qualified candidates took talent reports, and when placed up against the benchmark, those who were deemed a match were called in for rounds of interviews. You used the suggested interview questions to get to know each of the qualified candidates with the Behaviors (DISC), Motivators and soft skills necessary to excel at the job. In the end, you weighed all of the information you had gathered throughout the process, and you offered the position to the candidate best suited for the job.

Without question, the best possible candidate has been recruited for your open position. But without a plan for your new employee’s first year, how can you ensure his or her success and make the most of your new employee’s talents for your organization? This plan may include a job related development binder that details all objectives and expectations for the employee, thus reducing confusion about essential job functions. It may also include determining what skills are most critical for the employee’s success, and then providing formal training with clearly communicated expectations and benchmarks.

Other elements of a recruitment plan that are less formal but essential are simply ensuring that the employee’s workstation is ready; that all HR paperwork is delivered and filed properly; scheduling meetings with key company representatives and peers; creating opportunities to better understand the culture of the organization; and holding monthly one-on-one check-in meetings to maintain focus and adjust priorities as needed.

This is where you can experience two versions of the same hire. The same candidate with those benchmarked ehaviors (DISC), Motivators and soft skills will not be as successful in your organization as the one who has the opportunity to engage in your company’s onboarding program. If you’re ready to launch a comprehensive recruitment and retention strategy with a solid onboarding program, contact your TTI-certified associate, or call us at (800) 869-6908 or (480) 443-1077.

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Favor Larson is Senior Business Services Consultant for TTI Success Insights, striving to improve the quality of the workplace through the application of assessments in businesses using an in depth knowledge of behaviors, motivators, personal skills, emotional intelligence and acumen. @TTISI_Favor

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Hiring (not Firing) for Soft Skills

Guest Post by: Cindy Rosser

When you’re in the process of reviewing potential candidates, it’s easy to fall prey to common biases, especially when you rely on resumes and interviews.

According to a study by Michigan State University, employment interviews are only 14% accurate, and yet 90% of all hiring decisions are made from interviews.

how to select best job candidate

So how do you select the best candidate to serve your company and ensure tangible results that elevate your brand and mission as an organization?

Some of the most commonly overlooked factors in the hiring process are a candidate’s competencies, or soft skills. For many jobs, soft skills are as important as technical skills in producing superior performance. In fact, soft skills are often transferable to different jobs, whereas technical skills are usually more specific.

Let’s say a candidate you’re considering has been using your CRM system for most of her career. In the short term, you may be confident that she understands the functionality of the system. Perhaps even she’s developed mastery of the system. She can run a query, invoice a customer and import/export data. However, do you know if she has developed personal accountability, a measure of the capacity to be answerable for personal actions?

Does her problem solving ability require further development as she anticipates, analyzes, diagnoses and resolves problems? What about her flexibility? How agile will she be in adapting to change if the company were to switch CRM systems, and does she posses the initiative in learning and implementing new technologies that comes from having the well developed skill of continuous learning?

By identifying the soft skills that will make a person excel in a specific position within your company, you will help ensure proper job fit. Your employee will shine, and when she shines, that resonates throughout the organization, and your customers will see it too.

To read more about our selection process click here.
 

 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cindy Rosser is a Solutions Consultant at TTI Success Insights, dedicated to serving the company’s network of independent coaches, consultants, speakers and trainers.

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Superior Interview Questions for Superior Employees

Guest Post by: Adam Wong

For those seeking to hire new talent, the internet is full of pages and pages of potential interview questions to ask candidates.

There are the lists of traditional questions:

what questions to ask in job interview

  • What interests you about this company and this job?
  • What did you like or dislike about your previous job?
  • What was your biggest accomplishment in this position?
  • Have you ever had difficulty working with a manager?
  • How do you evaluate success?

Then, there are the eccentric questions that promise to explore the candidate’s psyche, catching him or her off guard and away from canned responses:

  • What song best describes your work ethic?
  • What do you think about when you are alone in your car?
  • If we came to your house for dinner, what would you prepare for us?
  • How would people communicate in a perfect world?
  • If you could be anyone else, who would it be?

And yes, these are actual interview questions Fortune 500 companies asked their candidates over the last year (courtesy of Glassdoor).

Now imagine that prior to recruiting candidates, you were able to reveal the necessary Behaviors (DISC), Motivators and competencies that a job required. You would know that the type of person you’re looking for is, say, comfortable with analysis of data, as the job requires that details, data and facts are analyzed and challenged prior to making decisions, and that important decision-making data is maintained accurately for repeated examination.

You would also identify that a successful candidate for this position would value knowledge for knowledge’s sake, appreciating one’s continued education and intellectual growth. In addition, you would recognize distinct competencies that the job necessitates, such as the ability to write clearly, succinctly and understandably; the ability to identify and prioritize activities that lead to a goal; and the ability to imagine, envision and predict what has not yet been realized.

Knowing all of this information about the job itself, your ideal candidate easily comes into focus, and interview questions that correspond directly with the specific needs of the job will yield more valuable results. Referencing those necessary behaviors, motivators and competencies, your interview questions for this particular job might look like this:

• How do you organize details for use and recall? What system do you use?
• Would you consider yourself to be an expert in something? What is it? How did you go about gaining the knowledge?
• How do you know when something you’ve written has achieved its communication goal?
• Describe the most complex project you ever worked on. How did you establish action steps and milestones for that project? What was the most difficult part of that project for you?
• Give me an example of when you predicted something that would happen in your department, organization or industry. What caused you to make that prediction?

Once you experience a job benchmarking process, it’s easy to see why there’s not one ideal list of interview questions. Each job has its own demands, and if candidates aren’t “one size fits all,” then the interview questions can’t possibly be either.

To learn more about improving your recruiting process by implementing TTI’s patented job benchmarking system, contact your TTI-certified consultant, or call (800) 869-6908.

 

 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam Wong is Director of Network Development for TTI Success Insights, driving excellence through careful thought and attention to detail, consistently anticipating the needs of all customers. He serves as an integral member of the product development team, creating new products and improving existing tools to better support the company. @TTISI_Adam

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