|
Eastern Pennsylvania Business Journal • November 15, 2004
Don’t Hire on Promises—Make Them Prove It
 |
By Kevin Flemming, CSP
Kevin Flemming is president of Integrity Personnel, Inc., a Lehigh Valley-based staffing and recruiting firm. He writes about staffing issues for small and medium-sized employers. His column, "Talent Search," appears in the Eastern Pennsylvania Business Journal every third week of the month.
|
Now that the 2004 election is finally concluded, it’s a good time to compare the promises that candidates make with the actual results they produce. Not the presidential and congressional candidates—there’s been enough written about them. I’m referring to the promises of future performance made by the candidates we select for employment in our companies.
When was the last time that you hired a receptionist who proclaimed to be a “people person” only to hear your customers complain about how rude she is on the phone? Maybe you brought in a bookkeeper who insisted that he was an expert in QuickBooks yet couldn’t produce a simple P&L report on his first day.
Is it possible that people exaggerate their capabilities in a resume? Could it be true that some individuals actually make false statements about their experience during interviews? You certainly don’t need me to answer those questions. But how do we uncover the candidates who lie about their skills to get a job? How can we know (with confidence) that the person we’ve hired will deliver on his promises—without suffering through a three-month probationary period?
The need to verify a candidate’s skills
The more cynical employers among us will claim that it’s impossible to know. Many believe that there is no way to prove a new employee’s skills until he or she is actually on the job and performing the required tasks. I disagree with that premise. Although establishing what a person’s true skills are before hiring him takes some effort, there are good evaluation tools available to the employers who want better results.
Verifying job candidates’ skill sets during the interview process is necessary to minimize the high cost of turnover. For perspective on those costs, review some common elements that impact the cost of hiring today:
- Limited Resources: Very few companies employ designated recruiting professionals to manage hiring activity. Most of the recruiting responsibility falls on the shoulders of over-worked line managers. The pressure that they feel to just get a body in the seat can cause even the most dedicated among them to cut corners in screening candidates.
- Unlimited Access to Candidate Resumes: The Internet allows even the smallest employer to have immediate access to thousands of resumes. Although this may initially seem beneficial, it actually makes it harder to narrow down the list of truly serious candidates. More resumes means it takes more time and more interviews to find the right person for the job.
- Increasing Opportunity Costs Related to New Hires: As organizations become leaner and more efficient, individual employees have greater impact on businesses. The cost of making poor hiring choices is not limited to salary and benefits expenses. Replacing under-performing employees also result in losses in productivity and sales.
Accessible tools for testing candidates
Fortunately, the current business climate that has forced companies to operate with less people has also produced better solutions to these recruiting problems. As recently as 2001, employers that wanted to utilize skills testing had to invest significant dollars for the limited products that were available. The companies that developed testing software covered their high development costs by selling expensive user licenses, thus making it difficult for traditional employers to justify the cost of adopting uniform candidate testing.
Today, testing applications are more affordable and accessible. Some products offer total on-line access, eliminating the need to set up and install proprietary software. Many of these Internet-based applications also allow customers to use software on an as-need basis rather than requiring an upfront investment for an annual user license.
The main benefit that testing provides to the employer is an objective view of an individual’s true ability. Testing places the burden of proof directly on the candidate and eliminates the guesswork out of reading a resume and asking interview questions. It will also help a company develop more standardized hiring criteria for specific positions.
There are tests available for practically every software application used in business today, as well as a wide variety of hard skills such as problem solving, math and file organization. Two well-established companies that offer computer-based evaluations are Qwiz, Inc. (www.qwiz.com) and Kenexa (www.kenexa.com), based in Wayne, Pennsylvania. For an expanded list of testing vendors, log on to Workforce Management magazine’s website at www.workforce.com.
Testing saves companies money
By confirming that a person has the ability to perform the functions of job before extending an offer, your company will gain better control over training and turnover. Employees with the requisite skills require less training and less handholding in their first weeks on the job, which results in greater self-confidence. Individuals who are able to understand and perform the functions of their job early are less likely to quit in the critical first months of employment.
According to economic forecasts, employers will be experiencing a new period of business growth in the coming year. Adding computerized skills testing to their hiring process will minimize the time and effort associated with recruiting the new workers that they will need.
|
