Difficult Conversations:
New program based on the book by Stone, et al. of the Harvard Negotiation Project.
Leading Productive Meetings: Added a funny video clip and segments on making video and phone meetings more effective.
to find out more about these or other programs.
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Recommended
Resources
CCL Publications: "Developing Political Savvy" by Bill Gentry and Jean Leslie
Click here
to find out more.
 HBR Blog Network:
"How to Manage your Smartest, Strangest Employee" by Jeff Stibel
Click here to read article.
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Our Services
Training
Coaching
Teambuilding
Team & Organization Development
Surveys/Assessments
Strategic Planning Facilitation Click here to learn more.
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Tips, Tools & Tactics
Welcome to our newsletter! Starting with this issue we're sporting a new logo and look. We hope you like it, and as always we want to know what you'd like to read about and how the ideas here work for you. - Diana
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Two Ways to Avoid Making a Terrible Hire
It's common knowledge that companies that are hiring have their pick of candidates these days. According to mobbly.com the average number of applicants per job has risen in the past year from 15 to 20. Some hiring managers tell me they receive as many as several hundred applications for a single advertised position.
In spite of this, a recent Harvard University study says that 80% of turnover can be blamed on mistakes made during employee selection and hiring.
So even though companies can have their pick, they often pick wrong. Why?
The short answer is that those of us involved in hiring sometimes focus too much on the wrong things, like the candidate's charm, their stellar resume or their academic credentials. It's true we value likeability, mostly for good reasons, but we can also over-value it. A veteran Human Resources Director says, "For some reason we are always surprised when a charming candidate with a killer resume reverts to their default work style and becomes much less likeable, even problematic."
Why not find out that work style and the behavior under stress beforehand? How? In addition to checking references, the best two ways of increasing hiring success are:
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- Assessments
- Behavioral Interviewing
Assessments - The thought of giving a "test" to a job candidate may be off-putting, but it also may be the best insurance against a bad fit. And: It can be done online in just a few minutes, customized for desired attributes, and followed by an instant report.
For assessing work style, I prefer the DISC Profile (Manager-Staff), and for cultural fit, I like the PIAV assessment (Personal Interests, Attitudes and Values). Used in 50 countries and validated by extensive research*, these are reliable, objective resources that can help balance out our tendencies to "like" our way into a terrible hire. Best of all, such assessments are relatively inexpensive-especially compared to the costs of re-recruitment and hiring.
Behavioral Interviewing - With traditional interview questions such as "What would you do if you disagreed with your manager's directive?" a hiring manager invites a lot of "ideal self" description from the candidate. Savvy interviewers now conduct behavioral interviewing. For example, a behavioral version of the question posed above would be: "Tell me about a time in a past position when you disagreed with a manager's directive. What did you do? How did that turn out?"
You'll find out a lot more from this kind of questioning, including whether the candidate learns from his or her mistakes.
And you may just avoid a terrible mistake yourself.
*For a look at the validation research for DISC and PIAV, see The Universal Language DISC by Target Training International, or visit ttiassessments/why-tti.
Copyright 2012, Diana Brooks Associates. All rights reserved.
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Can Email Get Any Goofier?
A Comedian's Perspective
Click to watch stand-up comedian Greg Schwem riff on just how goofy email can be.
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And finally...
Diana Brooks Associates helps people and organizations improve leadership and communication.
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