And What To Do About It

Though our workplace has changed, most companies still hold onto an outdated approach to hiring employees, resulting in performance and retention problems.

We are in a service workplace; much of manufacturing has moved offshore. Instead of performing repetitive tasks, employees now creatively invent service responses on the spot; each response must be “customerized” – appropriate for each customer. The better the service event, the more committed and loyal the customer. The more committed the customer, the more significant the bottom-line results. And at the center of this process is the employee – the right one can win customers for life. The wrong one can send them away forever.

Hiring the right employee is now more critical than ever. Though this is critical, most organizations do not have great success hiring the right employees for these two reasons:

1. Organizations continue to use outdated job descriptions that do not define the key performance attributes needed to be successful in the job. The do not assess, define and articulate the talents, strengths, passions and critical skills (performance attributes) needed to be successful in each role. Without a proper way to assess and define the performance attributes of a job, the organization is unable to share these requirements with potential job candidates – and the wrong candidates apply.

2. Job candidates are not very self-aware. They do not know their talents, strengths, passions and critical skills, so even if a company can define what the required performance attributes, most people don’t know whether they are a good fit for the job. This complicates the hiring process and increases the probability of hiring the wrong employee.

Both sides are at fault. Both sides need to change and to meet someplace in the middle.

Organizations must now clearly define the talents, passions, strengths and performance skills need to be successful in each role. This allows the organization to share these success attributes so that job seekers can assess their fit for the role. For the organizations I consult with, I use a Talent Matrix – a one-page summary of the performance talents, team talents, and skills and experience needed to be successful in each role in the organization. From this information, organizations can more successfully source candidates who have the required hard-wired attributes.

Job candidates must become more self-aware; they must make the effort know their talents, passions and strengths to be able to assess whether these attributes match the attributes required in the job. I coach organizations to require job candidates to apply using a talent-based resume; skill and experience resumes are rejected. A talent-based resume summarizes the job candidate’s primary talents, key work experience (that showcases the talents) and other valuable performance information that helps the hiring manager assess whether the job candidate would be a fit in the current employment opportunity. And to be able to complete a talent-based resume, a job seeker must be well aware of his/her strongest performance attributes. This encourages job candidates to only apply for jobs that seem a good fit and results in fewer, but better, candidates for hiring managers to review.

Your bottom-line success is based on your ability to have highly engaged and passionate employees doing great things for customers. The primary component of employee engagement is employee fit. Employees who are good at what the job requires and passionate about doing it, do the work in an epic way. This requires hiring the right employees.

So to get it right, both sides need to improve the hiring process. When both improve, it will be an easier and more effective process to align the right employee to the right roles – employee performance, satisfaction and loyalty improves; the organization’s bottom line improves. With such critical things at stake this is a change that cannot wait.

Contact me to learn about the Talent Matrix, my work on talent-based interviewing and the talent-based resume. The way to fire up your employees is to first get them in the right jobs.