Recruiting High Performers

Very few of us would dispute that the strength and productivity of highly successful organisations invariably lies with its people - their performance and their personal commitment. 

So how can we be sure when we are hiring new staff that we are getting what we are looking for in terms of seeing people’s talents and strengths but also their weaknesses?  How can we make sure they are telling us the full story?

Recent research from world renowned assessment provider SHL showed a third of the candidates they interviewed admitted that they had misrepresented themselves in interviews.  That 17% had stretched the truth about what they could do.  And, staggeringly, 88% of the experienced HR professionals interviewed felt at some point that candidates had deliberately overstated what they could do.

How do you find out if prospective employees are showing their true colours?  Psychometric assessment has long been considered an essential tool for digging beneath the surface and providing more information to make the best selection decision possible.    The results of assessments can add significantly to recruitment processes as they allow the underlying factors that impact on high and low performance to be uncovered. 

In an ideal situation, the outcomes of recruitment should be clear.  A candidate goes through a rigorous screening process for the job.  CV screening, interviews and referee checking are all carried out and at this point, there are generally two outcomes.

1. Your chosen one is brought on board and goes on to become a high performer. 
2. You decide the candidate is someone who is unlikely to do well in the role and they aren’t selected.

However, in the real world, it doesn’t always work quite like that.  Sometimes, you bring someone on board who seems great on the surface but in six months time hasn’t achieved all that you wanted and in fact has wreaked havoc on you and/or their co-workers.  This is despite lots of training, a fantastic induction process and plenty of support.  Or there’s the person that you decide not to offer the job who you later hear is working for your opposition and achieving great things.  

So how do you make sure that the person you bring on board goes on to be a high performer and a great contributor to the team?  And that you aren’t missing out on a possible star?

• Firstly, make sure you know what is really needed in the role.  In other words, if you are looking for a salesperson, they will need to be able to sell, negotiate and build great relationships with clients.  Or if they are to be leaders, they need to be able to manage people well, control the business and have a strategic focus on where the company is headed. 

• Once you are clear about what is needed, ask questions in the interview to see if your candidates have any experience in the skills you need.  By asking for specific examples from their past roles (competency based questions) you should start to get a ‘feel’ for how they will fit into the role.

• And build psychometric assessment into your employee selection processes (Figure 1 shows the 3 general categories of assessments).

Figure 1

Assessments do add cost to your selection processes but what is the cost of getting it wrong?  A conservative estimate of the costs of recruiting, training and managing new staff is 1-2 times the person’s salary.  Why take shortcuts when making decisions that are as important to your business as getting the right people?

By Liz Barns-Graham and Liz Wotherspoon

Liz Barns-Graham is a consultant with Grafton. Grafton provides psychometric assessment as part of recruitment processes for a vast array of client organisations. Grafton has a toolbox of assessments and can access tests from the world’s leading test providers to ensure a process that delivers results. Liz Wotherspoon is a Director of The ICEHOUSE and Grafton.