The purpose of this mini course is to encourage you to systemise your hiring process. The selection of new employees is about legal discrimination. First we start with a large group of applicants and through a process of "hurdles" based on the Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes, Mental ability and Experience (KSAMEs) needed for the job, we end up with what we hope is the right person for the job. From my experience, most hiring managers are doing just that, relying on "hope".
If selecting a new employee is about discrimination, then it is imperative that we discriminate fairly. The way to ensure this is to systemise the hiring process so that all applicants get treated the same way. For example, all applicants are subjected to the same interview questions, same interview panel and the same psychometric assessments. This leads to better hiring decisions because the process has been standardised; in other words we are always comparing "apples with apples".
A good analogy of the selection process is to visualize an iceberg. A third of the iceberg is visible above the waterline. This depicts the Knowledge, Skills and Experience (KSE's) that are observable of the candidate and whether or not they can do the job. This kind of information can be teased out through CV's, Resumes or application forms as well as interviews and referencing. KSE's are learned behaviours, thus they can be trained and coached.
The other 2/3's of the iceberg that aren't visible is what most HR managers fail to assess. "Will" or "How" they will do the job. This depicts the applicant's natural personality characteristics, motives, values and mental abilities. In other words, their attitude. It is only through psychological profiling that this can be assessed. There is more about this in Tip #5.
A lot of hiring managers will hire based on KSE's, but end up terminating or having problems with employees further down the track because of their mental ability, personality and attitude.
Getting the right mix of mental ability and personality traits which are applicable to the job helps to insure the applicant applies their skills, knowledge and experience in a productive manner which benefits both parties.
Just as a note of caution, there are various ways of systemising the selection process dependent on the job itself. The tips to follow in this mini-course are generalised and designed to make you think about what elements you require to develop your own peace-of-mind selection system.
What are the problems with the traditional selection process?
1. No planning. Has a job analysis been done for this position? Do you have a written list of the Skills, personal Attributes and Knowledge required for this position?
2. Most managers hire on emotion. They are very good at hiring people on what they can do and poor at assessing who they are. Gut feeling and emotional judgement tend to rule - managers like and hire people who are like themselves.
3. Most managers hire based on experience instead of ability. For example, you could teach someone how to sell, how you can't teach optimism, motivation and resilience to persuade.
4. Interviews are just unstructured 1-on-1 conversations.
5. The majority of talking is done by the interviewer.
6. Interviewers are untrained.
7. The candidate's personal characteristics are rarely put through any personality and critical reasoning tests.
8. Poor effort in terms of background checks and/or references.
There are more; but the issues listed above are some of the main areas we would like to cover in this report. - 18099
If selecting a new employee is about discrimination, then it is imperative that we discriminate fairly. The way to ensure this is to systemise the hiring process so that all applicants get treated the same way. For example, all applicants are subjected to the same interview questions, same interview panel and the same psychometric assessments. This leads to better hiring decisions because the process has been standardised; in other words we are always comparing "apples with apples".
A good analogy of the selection process is to visualize an iceberg. A third of the iceberg is visible above the waterline. This depicts the Knowledge, Skills and Experience (KSE's) that are observable of the candidate and whether or not they can do the job. This kind of information can be teased out through CV's, Resumes or application forms as well as interviews and referencing. KSE's are learned behaviours, thus they can be trained and coached.
The other 2/3's of the iceberg that aren't visible is what most HR managers fail to assess. "Will" or "How" they will do the job. This depicts the applicant's natural personality characteristics, motives, values and mental abilities. In other words, their attitude. It is only through psychological profiling that this can be assessed. There is more about this in Tip #5.
A lot of hiring managers will hire based on KSE's, but end up terminating or having problems with employees further down the track because of their mental ability, personality and attitude.
Getting the right mix of mental ability and personality traits which are applicable to the job helps to insure the applicant applies their skills, knowledge and experience in a productive manner which benefits both parties.
Just as a note of caution, there are various ways of systemising the selection process dependent on the job itself. The tips to follow in this mini-course are generalised and designed to make you think about what elements you require to develop your own peace-of-mind selection system.
What are the problems with the traditional selection process?
1. No planning. Has a job analysis been done for this position? Do you have a written list of the Skills, personal Attributes and Knowledge required for this position?
2. Most managers hire on emotion. They are very good at hiring people on what they can do and poor at assessing who they are. Gut feeling and emotional judgement tend to rule - managers like and hire people who are like themselves.
3. Most managers hire based on experience instead of ability. For example, you could teach someone how to sell, how you can't teach optimism, motivation and resilience to persuade.
4. Interviews are just unstructured 1-on-1 conversations.
5. The majority of talking is done by the interviewer.
6. Interviewers are untrained.
7. The candidate's personal characteristics are rarely put through any personality and critical reasoning tests.
8. Poor effort in terms of background checks and/or references.
There are more; but the issues listed above are some of the main areas we would like to cover in this report. - 18099
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