Did you ever notice, either in your own business or when visiting another business, that some employees love what they do, and others wish they were not there, or struggle to be competent?
Do you wish everyone that you employed were happy and productive, or do you take the attitude that you are not paying them to be happy?
I think the days of the “not paying them to be happy” are over. I am not saying you can’t be tough and demanding, but at the end of the day if your employees are not happy you will pay for that in a hundred different ways without even knowing it. They might include:
- Theft
- Not friendly with customers
- Not concerned with quality
- Apathy
- No pride or job ownership
- Backstabbing you or other employees
- And scores of other “creative” ways that we haven’t even thought about
A lot of this can be due to a toxic workplace culture, but I am going to save that topic for another day, because the start of having happy employees starts with hiring employees with the right fit for the job.
Hiring someone just because they are willing, is not enough. You do him/her no favors by hiring them into a job that ultimately does not fit them. More importantly when their unhappiness turns to resentment, extricating them from that job is usually very painful, and more often than in years past can end up in litigation or the involvement of state agencies.
So, it makes sense to have “the right butts in the right seats” and to never settle for marginal applicants. But how do we make sure we have a good applicant sitting in front of us at that interview?
All too often employers start an interview by asking a question or two and then begin telling the applicant about the company or themselves, ultimately taking over the bulk of the conversation. This “telegraphs” the responses that the employer is looking for and after he/she nods their head a couple of times and agrees with the interviewer, the interviewer begins to believe that this person is exactly what the company needs and perhaps sees a younger version of themselves in the candidate. We call the this “the halo effect”.
So how do we avoid this pitfall?
By creating a set of questions, unique to that position, that you ask to all the candidates. These questions are designed to draw more and more information from the candidate by being open ended and with follow up questions like “tell me more about that” or “tell me about a time that…” or “how did this make you feel”.
But before we can design the questions, we first must know what characteristics we are looking for. And the characteristics we need for one job description (Janitor) may not be what we are looking for in another (Teacher).
So, each Job Description should have its own set of questions that search for the characteristics that you are looking for. And we determine that by looking at other employees with the same job title.
Think about the good employees that do that job, and what separates them from the marginal employees. Why do they enjoy the challenges that the job presents, while others do not? What makes them special or a perfect fit?
Once we understand those characteristics, we can then design questions that help us determine whether the candidate has similar ones.
This process can take a couple of days of observation and a couple hours to complete the questions, but if it saves you just one lawsuit, or some employee sabotage, then it is time well spent.
Like most tasks in a business, they need to be turned into a process and then memorialized. This takes away the subjective nature of an interview and begins to turn it into a scientific or mathematical endeavor that provides a much higher degree of success. Not to mention a more valuable/saleable business.
Speaking of scientific mathematical hiring processes, I am working on an even more scientific method right now. And I am looking for a couple of companies to Beta test. It takes a simple Myers Briggs personality test and charts the results against the “top performers” for that job so that you can see if the person you are interviewing has the natural talents, aptitude, and personality necessary to perform well at this job. If you and your company are interested in helping me to perfect this tool, please reach out to me.
That said, Interviewing should not be an art, a hunch, or a good feeling unless you are just looking for a lunch buddy. Rather it should be as standard, and scientific as possible so that you can easily compare one candidate to another later by referring to your notes. And ALWAYS pay attention to those red flags that often pop up during an interview.
Lastly, make sure you never do more than 10% of the talking, do not “telegraph” your feelings about their answers, and the time to “sell” them about your company and why they should take this job is later when you have decided that this is the candidate you really want.