Employee Retention begins with Employee Selection.

Gambling is alive and well in the modern work environment! It's amazing how many organizations gamble at work by not using advanced hiring techniques that could save resources and future headaches. Employee Selection is a key strategy that can save organizations tremendous resources, time, and energy. Proper Employee Selection is the foundation to an effective Employee Retention strategy. Few organizations are tapping the potential of effective Employee Selection. Why? Because today's typical Employee Selection process is a gamble at best. The good new is it doesn't need to be. There are powerful tools to help you optimize your employee selection and hiring processes.

Several years ago, I was in Dallas attending a trade show and noticed all the beautiful sports and luxury cars and shared that observation with a friend. My friend said, "There are a lot of $30,000 millionaires." A lot of people have everything they have tied up into that fancy automobile. Thinking that a car is demonstrative of that particular person's overall success is an incorrect assumption at best.

What situations that you face are similar to this example? It is sometimes said that a particular person is "all hat and no cattle" when they look the part - being more image than reality. How many of your hiring candidates look the part, but deep down inside, aren't a fit for the position but you won't know it for 90-120 days - long after they have become an emotional part of your team?

How often are people and situations what we think they are? Perception isn't always reality. That perception can be enormously expensive.

Analogously, in your employee selection, inspiring, and maximization of your team and organization, how often do you run into situations where things aren't what they seem?

Making a poor to bad employee selection decision is costly to say the least. Depending upon the industry, the cost of turnover can be anywhere from 30 percent of the annual salary and benefits to over 150 percent. Numbers don't speak to what can't be measured. The wrong hires destroy employee morale and hurt your Customer Experience.

Consider... Through traditional hiring practices, what are the "odds" you will hire the right person? How many candidates look great initially and then when they are on your "bus" they don't work out? Your "odds" of hiring the right person are a LOT LOWER than you think unless you are using advanced hiring techniques. Consider the following statistics (various sources)...

14 percent - Traditional hiring techniques 38 percent - Behavioral Profile 54 percent - Abilities Testing 75 percent - Job Match Testing

By the way... Your odds at winning a hand at Blackjack are in the upper 40 percent range. Yes... You have better odds at winning a hand of Blackjack than you do in hiring the right person. Our thought process is "trust but verify." The candidate wouldn't be applying if they didn't want the job. Therefore, they are going to do everything possible to get it through the resume' that is customized to your job description. No, we don't believe people are trying to be devious. Quite the contrary. It's best to assume the goodness in others.

However... If you don't use a comprehensive Job Match personality profile during your employee selection and hiring process to ensure your candidate is a good job match, you are taking unnecessary risk. Remember that college course you absolutely despised? For me, it was accounting. I took a lot of it and couldn't stand it. I can't tell you how many times I have seen people who went to college for a particular degree field and then came out into the real world and hated it. Ever notice how many people are in careers that are completely different from their major field of study in college? You've been there...

You know what is scary? With recent college graduates, unless you are Job Match Testing, you get to pay for figuring out someone doesn't like the degree field they are going into. Keep in mind... If you aren't going to the highest level of understanding your new hire candidate through Job Match Testing, you won't...

Hire the best candidates. Reduce employee turnover. Prevent conflict. Maximize your training dollar effectiveness. Know with certainty who to hire based on future leadership abilities unrecognized now.

There are several significant reasons to Job Match Test your candidates...

Employee Selection - Job fit - How well do their behaviors, values, personal attributes fit the job?

Inspiration - How do you know what "buttons" to push and which to stay away from if you don't know their behavior profile? Remember - people leave people, not jobs. Is the way you are talking to your new hire de-motivating them?

Coaching - How do you know what skills the new team member needs to maximize their performance? Why not coach immediately rather than the normal 2-3 months process - after you are beginning to "know" the new team member? With the Trimetrix Behavior Profile system, you will know immediately - rather than having to wait for the "honeymoon" to be over.

Interpersonal Effectiveness - How do you help the team member acclimate to the rest of the team effectively if they don't know how to effectively communicate with them? How do you help the rest of the team acclimate to the new hire candidate?

Employee Retention - If the team member doesn't fit the job, they won't stay. When you match the job to the candidate, morale is enhanced as well as productivity.

Succession Planning - How do you know who will scientifically be the best candidate for potential future promotions. How do you choose the best future leader between two good, equally-qualified candidates?

Training and Leadership Development - Where do you allocate scarce training resources? When you use an effective Job Match Testing program, you can identify key areas that candidate will Without at least behavior profiling, you can't possibly know what the full potential of the new hire candidate is. And you can't tap what you don't know.

Please keep in mind... It isn't ethical to base your entire hiring decision on Job Match Testing of any type. Our recommendation is that it be no more than 20-25 percent of your hiring decision. These tools are most powerful when used in combination with your existing hiring program - not by themselves.

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About the Author

Chris Young is founder of the Rainmaker Group. The Rainmaker Group is a human talent selection and development firm specializing in using personality assessments to select and retain the best employees. Give Chris a shout to learn more about maximizing your organization's potential.

http://www.therainmakergroupinc.com 1-866-988-7246 [email protected]