How to hire for absolutely the best results

Consider this:

• On average, over half of new hires fail to meet expectations.
• Fewer than one in five new hires is a great hire.
• A high performer outperforms an average performer by 400%.

What is it worth to you to find more high performers and reduce your chances of a bad hire from to 50% to less than 15%?

The most significant thing you can do to ensure the best results is to adopt an evidence-based mindset. With an open-minded attitude, you will seek to identify what has worked in the past and what has the best chance of working in the future. You will endorse those policies, as opposed to expressing allegiance to your past practices.

Knowing and sharing what the person needs to do to be considered successful, must be the central focus of your recruiting and performance management processes if you want to achieve the best results.  Articulating the well-defined organization-centric goals for:

• potential candidates Can be the difference between someone applying or not applying for the position
• new hire a successful new hire and someone likely to leave the company quickly
• staff can be the difference between a team member being engaged and someone to just going through the motions
• high performers can be the difference between an employee achieving a breakthrough and someone leaving to find more challenging work

A traditional job description is a catalog of required skills, experiences, education, and personality traits. On the other hand, the measure of an employee’s success boils down to five or six performance objectives. This gap is a significant disconnect.

Traditional job descriptions may be useful for job ratings and pay equity. However, they are useless for advertising, screening, selection, hiring, and managing performance.

Do Traditional Job Descriptions Prevent You from Seeing and Hiring Stronger Talent?

Absolutely. A more efficient way to go about achieving the best results in hiring is using a performance-based job description. You the can assess how the full talent stack of candidates might contribute to delivering the best results.

Consider a Person's Full Talent Stack for Best Results

In your selection process, consider the candidate’s full talent stack – skills, knowledge, accomplishments, and behavioral traits. They are essential to achieving your performance outcomes. Our talent analytics provide an unbiased predictor of success in a role with 85% reliability. We identify high potential individuals.

Still not convinced?

Here is a summary of the reasons why you should replace your skills- and experience-based job descriptions with performance-based descriptions:

• Hiring of high potential candidates
• Recruiting people motivated to take your job for career reasons
• Meeting great people, who would not have applied to you because they saw your post just as a lateral transfer – they have all the skills and experience listed on your job so why change
• Motivating your new hire to do the work required, as they will know what work is needed before they are hired
• Turning performance discussions into meaningful planning sessions rather than painful ranking sessions
• Aligning objectives with organizational goals, so the employee knows exactly how Their work contributes to the organization
• Hiring of candidates with diverse backgrounds who may tackle problems differently
• Eliminating discrimination, as people who can do the job but who do not have the skills listed will be considered
• Eliminating the talent shortage due to your narrow job specification

Connecting Individual Performance to Corporate Performance

To ensure individual employees’ efforts have maximum impact on the bottom line you need to link their performance objectives to organizational goals. Deliberately make the connections to align your organization.

Traditional goal setting involves individuals seeking managerial approval for their self-defined goals as a part of their performance review. These goals are often activity oriented, describing what the individual would attempt to do in the coming year. Traditional goal setting also emphasizes self-improvement and professional development activities. The problem with this approach is the individual sets goals from a selfish point of view, in isolation of how these goals impact others or contribute to the company’s goals.

We take the six performance objectives much further in our goal alignment program (GAP). Everyone in the organization has them. We determine the relative contribution of each objective to meeting corporate goals. You use this insight for authentic performance assessment. We also provide a contribution-based budget, so you align your resources to achieving your objectives.

Our approach is organization-centric instead of individual-centric. Goals are established to achieve specifically defined results. This framework facilitates people building something collectively. When working together efficiently, each team member becomes part of a solution.

Staff is interdependent yet connected and will, therefore, share their successes with their manager, co-workers, workers, team members, and the organization. Individuals have a different, defined part to play in an organizational goal being achieved. The goal-setting process becomes institutionalized as it integrates with other management systems.

With our integrated employee performance management system, goals ensure individuals are held accountable for areas of focus. Managers have frequent reasons to track and monitor efforts. They intervene when necessary to ensure the goals are met.

With the above in place, your performance discussions become planning sessions. You and your employee both want the performance outcomes to be achieved. You will both be rewarded for your shared success and achieve the best results.