A Homework Assignment Should Be Required Before Hiring Anyone

When the pool of talent is narrowed down to the final two candidates, it’s time for the interview team to come up with homework assignments. An important predictor of how a candidate will adapt to your organization’s environment is to see an example of his or her thought processes, analytical skills, and problem-solving, up close and personal.

Effective homework assignments are projects of reasonable size and scope that involve one of the most critical accomplishments the candidate will have to perform once on board. The candidate should be given all the support he or she needs to adequately answer the question or complete the assignment. The candidate should then return to the interview panel and present results and conclusions, and lead a question and answer discussion based on the homework. No matter what functional area, homework should entail questioning, analysis, research, and a panel discussion with some form of presentation.

While homework assignments are “out there” in the hiring world, some candidates may object to doing what they perceive as unpaid work.

Most Top 5% Talent, because of their self-motivated nature, will be intrigued and embrace the challenge. But if they’ve had previous encounters with unscrupulous employers who actually do assign homework and go on to use candidate ideas (even though they did not hire the candidate) you’ll need to reassure them that you aren’t asking them to come up with the “right answer.” Instead, you are looking for a concrete example of their approach to problems, their analytical and presentation skills, and their ability to synthesize information.

The scope of homework should be appropriate; that is, you shouldn’t ask candidates to dedicate forty hours on nights and weekends to solving your most pressing problem as “homework.” Make it clear at the outset that the homework is not going to be as deep as the actual job, and that you aren’t looking so much for their answer as for deep insight into their thought and action processes.

Every key position you plan on hiring should require a homework assignment. Some examples include, a sales presentation for all sales people, for financial positions consider giving them last year’s and this year’s budget and ask for their input, marketing positions ask for them to review your marketing programs or PR agreements, IT positions depending on the level can include coding examples all the way up to the capital spending on IT projects. The goal is to put them in the job before they come on board.

For more information on hiring, our best selling book, “You’re NOT The Person I Hired” describes a hiring process that has proven to significantly raise hiring accuracy. CLICK HERE to review the book.

If your hiring process isn’t as effective as you want it, our Success Factor Methodology hiring system is also available so you can implement a structured and systematic approach to hiring. CLICK HERE to review the system.

STOP Letting Job Descriptions Miss The Target

The Number ONE reason hiring fails for most companies is that success in the position is not defined!

In our research project, we documented that NOT defining Success was one of the Top Ten Hiring Mistakes made by hiring managers. Not only is it in the top ten, NOT Defining Success is most likely the number ONE culprit behind hiring mistakes and errors.

As we’ve pointed out in previous blog postings, using a traditional job description to both attract and measure candidates against in the interview process is worthless. Job descriptions define a person, not a job. Job descriptions categorize what people should have when they show up for work the first day, NOT what they should do with their skills, degrees, knowledge, experience, and behaviors.

A much better approach is to define the success you desire in a role. This can be done for any role in your organization, from the customer service rep position to the senior vice president of marketing. It is the core of our entire hiring process, the Success Factor Methodology. We’ve verified, validated, and field-tested the use of defining success to attract, assess, and retain top talent.

Over the last decade, thousands of companies around the world have defined success for positions in their companies. Through this simple exercise, they’ve increased hiring accuracy, improved execution of major projects, raised the reliability of obtaining important results, and strengthened the ability to retain top performers.

In our Success Factor Methodology, we call the end product of a definition of future success for a position – the Success Factor Snapshot. The process of building a Success Factor Snapshot is through S.O.A.R.ing. The SOAR process has 4 key components. You don’t have to be great at defining any of them – you just need to work through each one step-by-step. The 4 components of the SOAR job definition process include:

1. Situation – what’s not working or what is the missed opportunities?

2. Obstacles – what are the obstacles standing in the way of achieving the results

3. Action Steps – what are the quantifiable/time-based outcomes

4. Results – what specific results will tell us the situation/opportunity was achieved?

There is extensive information on our website of how to SOAR for a position, including the step-by-step process, products to teach all your hiring managers how to do it, services to help implement across your organization, and an extraordinary wealth of FREE Resources.

Brad and I have posted all our Internet Radio Show Programs in a FREE radio archive. We frequently talk about defining success and creating Success Factor Snapshots through the SOARing process. We’ve also posted real-life examples of Success Factor Snapshots.

If you use the SOAR process to develop Success Factor Snapshots and then use those in place of traditional job descriptions, you’ll immediately start attracting better quality candidates, you’ll make better assessments and evaluations of candidates in the interview process, and you’ll be able to keep your top performers engaged and excited about their jobs.

STOP using outdated tools, like the traditional job description, to define work. Use a tool that permits you to hit the target every time on hiring top talent.

Barry

Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn Discussion Group for Hiring Managers and Executives on how to hire and retain top talent.

How can you change your luck in hiring?

In 25 years as Retained Executive Recruiters, Brad and I have had the pleasure of conducting more than 2000 workshops for hiring managers, executives, and CEOs on how to hire more effectively.

In every workshop we ask the question: Looking back over the past 5-10 years, what’s your success in hiring? What percentage of candidates whom you’ve hired have lived up to or exceeded your expectations and what percentage fell short of your expectations?

On a consistent basis over those 25 years, most managers, executives, and CEOs would be jumping for joy if they felt they achieved a 50% track record on hiring candidates who met their expectations in the first 12 months on the job.

Is there any other process in your company that will you accept that level of random variability in hiring? How about the payroll checks you write, or the bills you pay for vendors?

I doubt it.

Why then do most hiring managers, executives, and CEOs accept average and mediocre results when it comes to hiring?

There are many reasons that lead to average and mediocre results in hiring and the acceptance of poor hiring practices. We’ll explore many of these in coming blog posts.

The number one reason hiring fails in most companies (whether you have 6 employees or 60,000 employee) is that there is no systematic process for hiring. Okay – maybe you’ve got a checklist, a few steps, and a couple of forms. However, the reality is that most hiring managers and executives do whatever they want to find, select, assess, evaluate, and hire candidates. There is not a systematic rigorous process across the company from manager to manager.

The minute you implement a structured, systematic and rigorous process across every hiring manager in your company, hiring accuracy will explode upward. Over the past 20 years we’ve seen companies that implement our simple 5 step Success Factor Methodology raise hiring accuracy from roughly 50% (standing at the crap tables) random results to successful hiring outcomes in the 80-90% range.

Imagine this for a moment: Every hire your company makes from the day you implement a structured, systematic, and rigorous hiring process – you’ll have an 80%-90% confidence level that person will achieve your desired results and outcomes.

No more crossing your fingers depending on luck and hope as the primary elements of your hiring strategy.

Take our FREE Hiring Assessment to determine if you’ve got a hiring process capable of finding, interviewing, and selecting top performers at every level in your organization.

Barry

Don’t forget to sign up for our LinkedIn Discussion Group on Hiring and Retaining Top Talent

Who Embellishes More During An Interview?

Candidates or hiring managers?

If you get 10 or more CEOs and key executives in a room and ask, “What percentage of candidates embellish in the hiring process?” you will hear anything from the conservative 80% to the more skeptical 100%. I don’t know if there have been any studies on this topic, but most would agree the number is over 50%. Whatever the percentage is, it doesn’t matter, when you consider the following.

Hiring managers generally wait until they need a person to begin the hiring process. It can take 2 or 3 months to hire a person. By this time most hiring managers are desperate to hire a person. So then, with a hiring manager desperate to hire someone, some hiring managers start to sell more than interview. The results are often “embellishing” by the hiring manager. OK, “What percentage of hiring managers embellish during the hiring process?” Even if it is 50% what impact does this have on the interview?

Simply put, if in an interview candidates embellish 50% of the time and hiring managers embellish 50% of the time, too often everyone is lying to each other about the position or their ability to do the job. Is it any wonder why most interviews are a waste of time? Is it a surprise that so often when the candidate shows up for work, hiring managers say, “You’re not the person I hired.”

There are a number of things hiring managers can do to reduce embellishment. Two simple things are:

1. Become proactive in your hiring. 80% of the time most hiring managers know in advance a position may need to be filled. Instead of waiting until the need is critical, start the process sooner. When there is a potential need begin the process at least passively. Start developing a queue of candidates, ask others if they know of anyone, review some of the free internet networking sites such as Linkedin, attend networking meetings that potential candidates attend, and when appropriate tap into current employee’s networks. You don’t have to be reactive which causes “desperation” hiring.
2. Prepare a structured interview that probes deeply. This will help to avoid the selling rather than interviewing syndrome. When hiring managers have a structured set of questions specifically designed to test the candidate’s ability to deliver a standard of performance, the probability of candidate embellishment will be much more difficult.

Eliminating embellishment on both sides will dramatically change both the quality of interviews and the results.

We offer a number of free resources to help you and your hiring team eliminate embellishment. Consider joining our Linkedin leadership and best practices group where these issues are extensively discussed. CLICK HERE

Our audio library contains all of our radio show recordings from our Monday morning talk radio program, heard on www.latalkradio.com at 11 AM PDT.

Finally our best selling book, “You’re NOT The Person I Hired,” with sales over 10,000 copies, outlines a structured hiring process with extensive chapters on advanced interviewing techniques. CLICK HERE