Have a think about this question, for a moment. If you’re struggling to answer it straight away, have a think about this: There’s 3 types of employee, in our view:

  1. The “Linchpins” – the people the business relies on
  2. The “Presentees” – hey, at least they turn up and try
  3. The “Mood hoovers” – those people who suck the life out of the business.

Now categories your people against these 3 headings.

For most businesses, the answer to the question is usually 25%. Yes, that’s correct. Only 1 in 4 of their current employees would they hire again if they had the chance. Just think, at 25%, about all that disruption, lost time and lost opportunity. There’s another statistic that comes into play here, which is that 80% of management time is spent dealing with poor performance in a business.

How do you stack up against this? Even if it’s higher than 25%, we still bet that your wishing you could make better hiring decisions.

So where do you start?

For us, it starts by understanding and properly defining the type of person you want. We define this type of person as “the complete individual”.

Too many businesses, in our view, focus exclusively on previous experience – what someone did in a previous, similar role elsewhere.  The majority does it this way, wrongly in our opinion, relying too much or exclusively on CVs – or CV based interview – for hiring decisions.

Evidence shows that previous experience is actually the least possible predictor of future success in a role.  CVs have a role, but are only part of the process.

We believe that other factors are as important, if not more important, than experience, depending on the job. If, for example, you were to identify the Linchpins in your business, we bet that what makes them great isn’t their experience, it’s other wider characteristics – possibly their commitment, their resourcefulness, their adaptability – those other things that make up “the complete individual”.

For us, it is these other characteristics that define what you really need from your new hire.

A great example of how employers get this wrong is, at its most simplistic level, when a pub or restaurant is hiring for bar staff or waitresses. Almost always do they say, “Experience required”. Does previous experience really make someone a great bartender or waitress, or is it, perhaps, other factors, like, a warm and friendly personality? If you get the right personality, surely they can learn to pull pints or take orders? We saw a great advert the other day at a pub that simply said, “Happy people required. Apply within.” We think they’ve got it right!

You might well say, that’s fine, but at least you know if someone’s got experience – it says so on their CV or we can take up a reference. How on earth are we going to validate someone’s personality traits? Surely, they’re just going to tell us what they want us to hear at the interview. Aren’t they just going say, “of course, I am resourceful, of course, I’m adaptable, blah, blah, blah…”.

Well, here’s the exciting part. Once you’ve identified the characteristics of what the “complete individual” looks like, you can objectively measure people as to whether they are like that or not, using a range of psychometric tests. Yes – you can actually test whether someone is likely to behave in a particular way or not.

As a result of hiring this way, the accuracy of your recruitment shoots up, because not only are you testing for the right things, you’re using facts rather than hunches to test whether candidates are actually like that.

Please, please, please… don’t leave your recruitment to chance…. because the chances are that it’s not going to work out for you. The odds are stacked against you at 3-1 – 75% chance of a mis-hire, 25% chance of the right hire.

Why not change those odds, for yourself and your business, by understanding what characteristics the complete individual possesses, then objectively assessing your candidates against those characteristics.

And if your current recruitment process or agency doesn’t do it that way then may be it’s time for a change?