We all know what it’s like to have rock star employees. They show initiative, take responsibility for their position, have an owner’s mentality, don’t gossip or back-stab, and do the right thing, even when no one is looking. When you’ve got a "rock star," you know.
But what if you don’t have enough rock stars? What if you need more – due to staff attrition, company expansion or, say, an unforeseen pandemic that requires a higher grade of employee to get through? Do you know how to spot these types of people in the hiring process?
The problem is, potential rock star staff are not always obvious. Often, they’re NOT the ones who nail the interview. Quite frequently, they’re not the person your “gut instinct” would tell you to hire.
If you’ve made some bad choices in this regard, don’t feel bad - very few companies get it right.
Multiple recent studies have shown that in most industries, 50% of new hires fail in their first 18 months on the job. This includes Fortune 500 companies, even at the CEO level, per The Harvard Business Review. And even among those who don’t fail, less than 1 in 5 end up being an “unequivocal success” on the job.
Why are so many companies getting this wrong? Hint – it’s not technical, or “hard skills" that you should be paying attention to in the hiring process.
Even more surprising than the failure rate referenced above, was that when new hires failed, 89% of the time it was for attitudinal reasons, and only 11% of the time for a lack of skill.
It’s not that technical skills aren’t important - they’re just much easier to assess. Every job (from neurosurgeon to engineer to cashier) has tests that can measure technical proficiency. But what those tests don’t assess is attitude; whether a candidate is motivated to learn new skills, think innovatively, cope with failure, assimilate feedback and coaching, collaborate with teammates, and so forth.
Bottom line: attitude, not skills, is the top predictor of a new hire’s success or failure.
So, how can you spot someone with a “rock star” attitude?”
Accurate personality testing is one possible answer. Testing offers a way, in conjunction with solid interview techniques and reference checking, to increase your odds of hiring someone who WILL work out long term. Our clients routinely achieve an over 90% hiring success rate using our tests, in conjunction with other best hiring practices.
Try our system out for free, and see for yourself whether it’s accurate. We’ll test some of your key staff at no charge, and you can take the test yourself (eye-opening, we promise!) That way you’ll know whether the test provides information that would be valuable for you in the hiring process. You have nothing to lose…and the possibility of a truly “rock star" staff team to gain.
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