Scary things are all around you – movies, the stock market, recent weather patterns, the cost of health insurance, driving on the highway. Being scared – your heart races, your adrenaline pumps, and you get that momentary thrill of being surprised – is usually not a big deal if it doesn’t last long or if it doesn’t cost you a lot of money, and in the case of a movie, if it is all make-believe.

For real-world scares, however, nothing is more frightening to a business leader than hiring someone who appears to be a perfect fit for the job, only to quickly discover that, underneath the winning smile and the navy blue suit, he or she is a workplace nightmare:

• they’re never on time.
• they’re unable to do the job.
• they’re unwilling to do the job.
• they’re unprepared.
• they’re dishonest, disinterested, and disgruntled.
  

Consider what a “scary hire” can do to your company:

• a scary hire drives your turnover up. There are all sorts of causes for high turnover, but one big culprit is workplace stress. Workplace stress occurs most often when the person does not fit their job, their manager, or their organization’s culture. In fact, in a related study, while 20 percent of turnover was directly linked to job stress and unfair treatment, an additional 48 percent was indirectly linked to related stressors, like poor work/ life balance and inadequate compensation. That’s a lot of stress, which can unfortunately translate into a lot of disengagement, and a lot of turnover.
• a scary hires costs you hard dollars. Replacing the average employee will cost you about 25% of their annual salary (this includes the costs of recruiting, interviewing, travel, and training a new hire). These are all replacement costs, meaning the dollars spent here could potentially disappear into the ether if a hire is not made; worse, they could double or triple if the next pickup is another scary hire.
• a scary hire costs lost time on the job – whether it’s the actual vacant position, someone pulling double duty until that position is filled, or someone training the eventual new hire for that position. It all costs valuable time, which we all know equals hard dollars.

Now that you understand what a scary hire can do to your company, let’s consider how to avoid a scary hire…use the ProfileXT assessment as a part of your hiring system.  The ProfileXT is the most technologically advanced, state-of-the-art system available today for measuring human potential and predicting job performance. The ProfileXT can measure how well an individual fits specific jobs, or specific talent pools, or specific leadership positions, all in your organization. The “job matching” and “performance modeling” features of the PXT are unique, and it enables you to evaluate an individual relative to the qualities required to successfully perform in a specific job or a specific pool of jobs, unique to your company.

This less-than-one-hour, online assessment reveals consistent, in-depth, and objective insight into an individual’s thinking and reasoning style, relevant behavioral traits, occupational interests, and match to specific jobs in your organization. It helps your managers and you interview and select people who have the highest probability of being successful in a role, and provides practical recommendations for coaching them to maximum performance. It also gives your organization consistent language and metrics to support strategic workforce and succession planning, talent management, and reorganization efforts.

Best of all, the PXT is extremely cost effective, and the reports are written in plain language that do not require a specialist to interpret the results.

The ProfileXT, plus using the Interview Report from the assessment outcome, will provide the essential data for a vastly improved hiring process. Using structured interviews, and the ProfileXT assessment to select candidates, reduces hiring managers’ reliance on their gut instincts. Gut instincts cannot determine a new hire’s fit with the organization’s culture, norms, and values . In fact, the interview is often a lousy way to assess fit. Because fit is important, the best approach is to create a Performance Model based on your Top-Performers, then assess and interview using the Model and the structured Interview Report.

Being scared is not what you want to be when you are ready to hire. Are you ready to get some help with your hiring process?? Call or email me today…