5. Job Match Personality, Abilities, Interests “ Checking the Past” The Selection Process is... & “ Reviewing the Present ” “… to predict future ‘superior’ performance” Company Fit Attitudes,Values, Demeanor, Appearance, Integrity Skill Fit Education, Training, Experience, Skills, Etc.
6. Here’s what you see & hire/promote… Here’s what you get! Here’s what you see & hire/promote…
7. Here’s what you see & hire/promote… Here’s what you get!
What happens when you put someone in a job that simply doesn’t fit them? This is you, or me, or indeed anyone who might ever be placed in one of your positions (hold up an elastic band). Notice that at the moment I’m quite relaxed and loose – and I have a deal of flexibility at my command (stretch and unstretch the band lightly ). I’m in a job that suits me; I feel good, I’m pretty relaxed, and I’m under no great pressure from my job. Now I hate doing paperwork. So, every week when I have to prepare my project progress report, something which I despise, it stretches me (stretch the band) putting me under a little stress (twang the band). But that’s OK, because it’s just once a week, and it takes no more than an hour or two. I can cope with that and, when the report is complete I can relax again into enjoying those parts of the job that turn me on more (let the band go limp). Now, imagine I’m so desperate for a job that I convince you to give me a job that involves report writing 24/7 - what do you think happens? (Stretch the band to the extreme). Now, because I’m getting no respite from this work that I despise I stay in this stressed situation until one of two things happens: Either I simply stop trying to meet the demands of the job; I give up – my stress goes away (let the band relax completely) and I feel much better. But you, as my employer feel a little cheated that the person you selected for this position failed to live up to your expectations. The other possibility is that I am such a conscientious guy that, despite the stress it causes me I continue to give my all to the job – until I (stretch the elastic band until it breaks). There are lots of people out there who are living ‘lives of quiet desperation’ because they are in jobs that simply do not suit them. Put someone in a job where they cannot deal with the demands of the job; where their personality simply doesn’t suit the environment of the job or the people and situations they encounter; or into work that they simply find mind-numbingly boring and you set them up for this sort of stress. They pay for your poor decision – but so do you; in the cost of having less than superior producers! <CLICK>
And that’s exactly what is happening all over the world/country – people are being placed in jobs that simply do not fit – so they ‘disengage’. They either simply stop trying to do good for their employers – the ‘not engaged’ figure represented by the deeper white bands in this slide. Or worse, they start actively trying to do their employers harm (the ‘actively disengaged’ represented by the black band in this slide). So, how do you avoid this? <CLICK> = 195 ÷ 11 = 17.7 % = 198 ÷ 11 = 18 % = 167 ÷ 10 = 1.67 % w/o France
Every year we speak with hundreds of people responsible for placing people in jobs in their organizations, and the first thing we ask them to do is outline the approach they take to hiring, moving or promoting people into their positions. There are, of course, lots of variations on a theme, but most people follow at least these two key steps as they set out to predict the future: <CLICK 2> First, they look at candidates’ educational qualifications, skills, experience – any information they can find about the candidate’s past performance that has any likely relevance to what they want them to do in the future. This information on past performance is gleaned from resumes, application forms etc. This is really to determine if the candidate has the basic skills and know-how necessary to undertake the target job. <CLICK 3> If this looks interesting enough then they move onto the next step of reviewing how the candidate looks today, and to determine how well they feel the candidate will fit in with the company – and for this they generally use the interview as the core of the process. <CLICK 4> Remember their job is to predict the future superior performance of those they hire. Well the research shows that most placement decisions are made mainly on the basis of interviews. 1 st Click 2 nd Click 3 rd Click 4 th Click
Cast your mind back to the last job interview you did. Think of who you presented to the interviewers on that day – was it you ‘warts and all’, or was it a highly polished version of you (all warts gone!), with the perfect education, qualifications, experience, and personality for the position on offer? <CLICK> People are like icebergs when they attend interviews – they float into the room looking powerful, whiter than white – a wonderful force of nature. So we hire them. And the moment we welcome them aboard we get a lot more than we had expected! <CLICK>
Now, sometimes what we get is much more valuable than what we thought we were getting – and we have that wonderful experience of hiring someone who greatly exceeds the expectations that we have of them. But sometimes that seven-eighths that floats below the surface unseen is what makes them a critical danger to our businesses – so much so that if we had seen that large volume of hidden attributes we might have avoided them altogether! Interviews simply cannot see below the surface of the individual, cannot give you (the “occasional interviewer”) the information you need to have to make a good decision when you put someone into one of your positions. <CLICK>
Interviews provide valuable information about a person that you cannot easily get through any other means – so they are necessary. But interviews alone DO NOT provide all of the information needed to make these key decisions. And no business can afford the risk of making decisions that can have such a dramatic financial impact as we’ve seen people can – unless they have all of the necessary information. That’s where the value of job-matching, as identified in the Harvard Business Review study discussed earlier, really comes into its own. <CLICK>