subject: Recruit Like The Marines; Improving Your Hiring Process Today For Better Hires Tomorrow [print this page] Recruit Like The Marines; Improving Your Hiring Process Today For Better Hires Tomorrow
Rumor has it the economy is recovering slightly. There are some positive signs, but the floodgates have not opened. In fact, there are predictions of another lean year or two before we see some heavy movement. With that said, hiring is probably not top-of-mind for you. But, that is a mistake. While I fully agree that this is not the time to hire people, it is absolutely the time to refine your hiring process. Investing time in that now will save you time and money when you do start hiring again.People often ask me what makes the Marine Corps so good at making Marines. They draw from the same pool of candidates all the other services do, yet somehow, they make Marines out of civilians--Marines who fight our battles and make us proud to be Americans. Well, I have a secret for you. It isn't boot camp and it isn't the drill instructor, although those are critically important. It is the selection process. Marine recruiters find people who want to be Marines. That makes training and motivating a whole lot easier. In other words, they find people who are better-suited to be Marines. You can do this, too. A number of firms are putting technology to work for them and creating job profiles, or benchmarks. These profiles describe the ideal candidate and are created through a facilitated discussion of key employees who then complete an online assessment to create an objective benchmark. Candidates who make it onto the short list then take the same assessment, and the hiring firm is able to compare the candidate to the ideal. Of course, few people will be an exact match, but the fewer deviations from the ideal, the stronger the candidate. In areas where the candidate does not match the benchmark, you are now able to interview in more depth. In fact, a good benchmark will have a library of interview questions for you to use in the interview process. These will target the most important areas for success in the job. These questions alone are a benefit of creating the benchmark, but the real value comes in improving the quality of your hiring process. Unstructured interviews are reported to be about 30% effective in making a good hire. A simple personality assessment will give you additional information on the candidate, thereby pushing the likelihood of a good hire toward 40%. However, a benchmark comparison can increase your hiring hit rate to 70%. That means if you are hiring ten people this year, seven of them will be highly likely to succeed in your organization--whereas in the past, without a benchmark, perhaps three of them would have done anything to enhance your organization. The implications here are obvious: you do a better job hiring people, and your turnover rate drops. This makes you money. Bringing on better-suited employees allows them to make a bigger impact from Day One. This makes you money. You are more efficient and effective in your hiring process, and the process itself is more streamlined. This, too, makes you more money. Some folks worry that it will take too much time to set up. Actually, it only takes a few hours to create and review a benchmark for a job. Others tell me they already know how to hire; they don't need this. But their hit rates on successful hires are no better than anyone else's. Why not make them better? Some complain that it is too expensive. But, if you consider that the cost of a new hire is a two to five times multiple of base salary, I find that argument pretty weak. In other words, there are plenty of weak reasons not to consider doing this, but several strong ones to actually do it. The benchmark will look at personal attributes, values and behaviors. Personally, I find the values part pretty compelling, because it helps me know what makes a person tick. They may have all the "right" attributes and behaviors. But if they're driven by something that has nothing to do with your firm, that will hurt you in the long run. For example, "Joe" may have a history as an outstanding salesman. So, you're wondering why he is not having success selling widgets for your company. What you don't know is that Joe has a very strong social drive. He would be a much better fit selling products for Greenpeace. Sure, that's an oversimplification, but you get the idea. The point is that if I can understand what drives someone, I can better motivate them--or better realize that they won't fit in my organization. I can get similar information about attributes and behaviors. You may have a job that requires a high degree of customer focus and interaction, and find you have someone who does not share your commitment to that attribute.The traditional hiring process used an application, an interview filled with personal bias and baggage, and poorly-done reference checks. Today, fewer people do reference checks, so they are losing an important data point. The addition of a benchmark adds an entirely new set of data to the hiring decision, and enables you to compare candidates to make the best decision. Bill Bonstetter, President of TTI, a pioneer in creating job benchmarks, puts it this way: "Ultimately, the process leads to a complete understanding of the knowledge, intrinsic motivators, personal attributes, behaviors and hard skills required for each key accountability in the job." I put it this way: You figure out what you are really looking for, and then you find it. If it works for the Marines, it will probably work for you, too.
