(THIS IS AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN THE BUSINESS JOURNAL AND READ BY OVER 500,000 READERS) The following Brain Research is in a PDF document demonstrating why we are so accurate with our science. We actually can measure and know that what comes out in our assessment is TRUE!
What Drives Top Talent?
Your car is racing but it can't compete on the track. Like a car with old tires, hiring or developing highly energetic people with the wrong skills, values and behaviors provide no traction to move forward.
You've been there: you read résumés and interview great candidates for a job. You sense enormous potential and possibility with each new hire. When you make the final decision, you have a sense of hope that “now we have the right person who can make things happen.” You feel euphoric!
But then, six to nine months later things aren’t going well. You then devote a mountain of time and resources to help this person achieve average or below average performance. You spend hours trying to figure out why and how to fix the issue, you coach and train to no avail. They are a nice person, but a below average performer.
What do you do? Letting the person go cost the organization tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Letting them stay costs more. The emotional cost is high but you finally make the change. Ugg!
The problem may be in your process for hiring and developing people. First, you have the wrong tire on the car to move ahead at the speed you need. Second, you need to look under the hood to really see what gifts and talent the people possess. This is especially difficult in hiring top sales people.
Here's a set of four ways to assess your new tires, an online, scientific process to hire and manage that has been thoroughly road-tested and will stand up to the potholes and curves you will encounter.
Tire #1 What is their raw talent?
What raw talent are you looking for in the job? Have you benchmarked the job for the talent required? Is it important to have problem solving ability, self-management, high personal accountability, persuasion, empathy, do they think like a leader, have a quality orientation, or are they a strategic thinker? This is where most problems occur in hiring or managing performance. It is not being able to identify what is the “raw” talent needed. So first, have your stakeholders in the job write out a list of three to five key outcomes required for superior performance and look at what is needed.
Tire #2: Behavioral Style
We're talking about the person’s style of behavior here - the how. Behaviors come in four styles:
* Influencing-this type will use talking and gestures in their efforts to win your favor. * Steady- this type will demonstrate logic, patience and a soft sell. This style is concerned with the pace and consistency. * Compliant-this type will work to convince you with facts and data. They think about following policies and procedures.
* Influencing-this type will use talking and gestures in their efforts to win your favor. * Steady- this type will demonstrate logic, patience and a soft sell. This style is concerned with the pace and consistency. * Compliant-this type will work to convince you with facts and data. They think about following policies and procedures.
Which style is the most effective for the job and the position you seek to fill? Or what combination is needed? This is literally the million-dollar question. If you don’t have tools to accurately predict, give them a real situation you have in the company and ask them how they would come to a resolution. The key is to listen to how they think. For current employees, just watch!
Tire #3: Motivating Attitudes and Values
The Why: What are the two major buckets that truly motivate this person and what does the job require? Motivating Attitudes (values) are the internal rewards and forces-the why behind the things people do. Do you have a way of objectively knowing? If you don’t have the tools to do so, ask them targeted behavioral based interview questions like, “what parts of your past jobs were the most rewarding and why?”
Tire #4: Experience and Technical Skills
Your car can't win on only three wheels, so it is vital to assess technical skills and experience, too. For many companies this is most of what they test and technical skills becomes the only tire-they have a unicycle, not a race car!
Several studies have confirmed that only 15 percent of a worker's long-term fit is based on technical skills and knowledge. The other 85 percent is based in people skills, talent and people knowledge. You've got to have the other three!
When people are hired, they come with a behavioral style - individual preferences to think and behave in certain ways. And yet many managers still downplay the impact that this style has on performance (or the lack of it) and continue to rely on experience, education and "gut feeling" as the primary rights of passage for hiring the "right" people.
So What Is the Solution?
You can drive top talent if you put the right talent in the right job the first time and then lead and develop the person.
For fifteen years, we have encouraged clients to compete and “win” by following the above approach. Thankfully, the Nobel Peace Prize committee has recognized the reliability and accuracy of what we are talking about with the new science of axiology that clients can now use to accurately predict talent.
The AMA says that the cost of a wrong hire is 1.5 times the yearly weighted salary. Most companies will save hard dollars ranging from $100,0000 to millions of dollars by following these four keys.
So quit driving without the newest and proven technology. Are you ready to put the pedal to the metal and make real traction? Get our book on Amazon or call us as this will get you or your team going on a path towards going from good to great.