Carolyn B. Thompson
Training Systems, Inc.
221 Vermont Road
Frankfort, IL 60423
815-469-1162
Reprint Rights
713 Words
Group Hiring
by: Carolyn B. Thompson
Put the applicant's future co-workers or team members in charge of hiring
the people with whom they can work best and they'll create a realistic
picture of skills required for the position. You'll also bypass the 1st
days of "newcomer to the team" syndrome.
Mistakes in hiring result in higher recruitment costs, unqualified
employees, accusations of discrimination in hiring and wrongful discharge
suits, not to mention poor moral, lower productivity and costly mistakes.
If you added up the time and money you're company has spent on all the
ramifications of an incorrect hire you'd change your assessment methods
immediately. But, you say, we already have the applicant interviewed
thoroughly by HR and 2 managers and we try to check references but you
know you rarely get more than name, rank and serial number! Applicants
have become increasingly adept at giving the right answers or showing
their best side in an interview and who are the managers who are
interviewing - how much do they really know about doing the job and how
much will they be working with the applicant should they be hired?
There is a better way - and numerous organizations of all sizes and from
all industries have tried it - have the potential employee's co-workers or
team members assess their ability to do the job which includes working
together with them! When given the opportunity to do this at St. Joseph
Hospital in Bellingham, WA, employees and the HR department worked
together to create an assessment of applicants' true abilities to do the
job - not just what they said in an interview.
They set up a process that included an in-depth panel interview with all
people the applicant would be working closely with, paperwork, phone and
other time management exercises appropriate to the position being hired,
mock staff meetings if such were applicable and other work simulations as
they related to the tasks of the job. During the assessment process the
organization asks applicants to perform certain parts of the job while
observing their ability to make decisions, handle conflict, set priorities
and communicate as well as the technical aspects of the particular job.
BE CAREFUL - Very thorough job analysis/job descriptions must exist in
order to make the simulations as realistic as possible for the best
prediction of on the job performance. You also need to choose tasks for
which the candidate is physically capable or be prepared for trouble! The
co-workers who will be assessing must be trained in observation and
evaluation techniques (most of us currently have managers doing these
assessments without training so this will be a step toward better
assessments in and of itself!) The simulations need to be set up to give
the best prediction of actual performance and can include role plays,
paperwork, sample technical tasks, computer based simulation and many
others. Depending on the positions you're hiring for some of these
simulations can be bought and you can then customize them to your company,
others may need to be created by you or with help from an outside expert,
someone who designs work simulations (trainers, training designers, work
evaluators, job analysis may all be successful at this - ask for
references and look at samples of their simulations).
An added benefit of this type of interviewing/assessment is that although
more people involved makes it more difficult to come to consensus on who
the best person is for the job, once they decide great support is gained
from the team since people support what they create. The training required
for more than just managers to interview and assess requires time and
energy but the employees gain valuable insights into characteristics of
skills that were once reserved only for managers. A side benefit is the
increase in employees observation, evaluation and decision making skills -
all necessary for other parts of their job.
Using several co-workers or team members to assess applicants provides a
more comprehensive base of information about the applicant's ability to
perform the job on a day to day basis. Simulation exercises further cut
down on hiring mistakes because the applicant gets a better picture of
what the job is all about and the organization gets to see if the
applicant can do the job not just hear that they can!
Carolyn B. Thompson is the President of Training Systems, Inc., a
customized training and HR consulting company that helps small and medium
sized organizations enhance their ability to recruit, inspire and retain
quality employees and improve performance through training. Training
Systems, Inc. also provides training design and delivery services to
training companies and the training departments of large companies, and
professional and trade associations. Carolyn B. Thompson is an experienced
trainer and consultant knowledgeable in the challenging area of employee
recruitment, inspiration and retention. She is an exciting, inspirational
trainer who leads people to learn. She has written articles for prominent
magazines, has been interviewed for Chicago's TV Channel 26, the "You're
Hired" radio show, Safety & Health, Small Business Computing, Business
Week, Working Woman, Redbook and Inc. magazines, been the subject of
articles in the Daily Southtown and Star newspapers, as well as written
chapters in several books. Most recently, Carolyn produced a two-tape
audio cassette set entitled "Straight Talk for Employers" , has written a
book entitled "Creating Highly Interactive Training Quickly and
Effectively" and is writing a book about on-the-job training for Crisp
Publications.
(c) Training Systems, Inc. 1999 |
