June 2015

Employee motivation and job satisfaction

Jun 26, 2015 Comments

We all want employees to be motivated in their jobs and if we’re the employee we want to enjoy our work.

The employer’s responsibility is to make sure that the work being performed by the employee is for the most part the type of tasks that interest them. The employer also needs to provide the proper working conditions, support, compensation and rewards that meet the needs of the employee.

On the employee’s side it is the responsibility of each person to find work that interest them and choose a company that will provide the type of conditions that are motivating. You must understand yourself and know how your personal interests translate into jobs in the workplace.

Just because somebody has a skill for something doesn’t necessarily mean that they are passionate about the work. If you want to get the best out of people you need to align what they’re good at with what they most enjoy doing.

For example a classic error made by many companies is to promote the best employee to be a manager or supervisor. Take an employee who sells complex computer hardware solutions to large companies and whose interests are mainly associated with selling, technology and creativity. This person might excel at their job of helping clients solve complex problems, but put that person into a management role and he or she might fail. The management role in this case would require someone with high interests in people, as one of the main tasks of a manager is to develop others so that the department can perform and grow. Without the people interest the new manager might continue to override his salespeople because his skills and interests lie more in problem-solving in creative ways that produce a sales result rather than and coaching and training the salespeople to perform at a higher level.

Self-understanding

To better understand ones key interests requires some self-reflection or an assessment tool. When hiring people an assessment tool can be extremely useful to get a quick and valid understanding of what someone’s interests are.

I use the Profile XT and the Profile Sales Assessment to provide greater understanding of people. These tools cover six interest areas; enterprising, people, technical, financial / administrative, creative and mechanical. The assessment tool determines the top three interest areas of the person and compares that to the requirements of the position.

Take Stock of your Interests

Another approach to understanding your interests is to write down the things you do that interests you the most and the things that you dislike the most at work or at home. For example I enjoy anything that allows me to be creative both when it comes to business as well as artful pursuits. I also enjoy business and have turned hobbies into businesses. I know I dislike administrative work as I tend to procrastinate and avoid those tasks. I particularly like to help others solve problems that will help them be more successful. Thus it makes sense for me to be a coach and trainer helping people solve business problems in creative ways.

Although it is extremely important that we have the right skills for the job if we really enjoy and are passionate about the work, we will be much more fulfilled and successful. This will translate into better performance and rewards for ourselves and our company.

Stephen Goldberg

New Employee Reference Checking for New Hires

Jun 11, 2015 Comments

Once you have been through interviews and are satisfied that you found the right person, reference checking will help you validate the information from the interviews and the resume. This may lead to a final interview or job offer. If a candidate is presently employed, you might want to make a job offer on condition that you can speak with their present boss to validate your information.

Performance Based Questions

Brad Smart, author of Topgrading recommends letting your candidates know throughout the interview process that you will be validating the information provided by them with their former employers. This will remind the candidates to be frank in their answers. He also recommends asking performance based questions that highlight specific accomplishments in task or responsibilities that are crucial for job success.

For example if you are hiring a sales representative for selling software services, you might ask the candidate “tell me about your methods for prospecting”. Another way to ask this question to elicit measurable performance would be “tell me about a prospecting method you used to develop new clients and what the measurable outcome was of a specific campaign”? The second question will provide measurable results that can be verified with the former employer.

This line of questioning takes more time and preparation and the level of difficulty to generate measurable performance metrics will vary depending on the job. For example in more routine type jobs this would be more difficult to generate specific examples so your goal would be to check that they actually performed the important tasks of the job and the level of skill and quality of work.

Tests & Assessments

In my last article on interviewing candidates I suggested using assessments, one for the first interview and another for the finalists. Once I choose my best candidates from the first interview I use the Profile XT assessment to gain better insight. The Profile XT is a total person psychometric assessment as it measures thinking style, behaviour and occupational interests.

Furthermore, it matches the person to a customized performance model for the position, thus you have more data to predict future performance and gain deeper insight into what may not be obvious about the person. Assessments should only contribute to one third of the hiring decision. The other two thirds should be their knowledge, skills and experience and their fit with the culture of the company.

Brad Smart also recommends asking the candidate to contact their references to arrange the phone interviews for you. I have used this method and it really works well, because in the past I often had difficulty in reaching the references.

Questions for References

Here are a few good questions to ask the references and also a relevant article containing more questions and suggestions.

What were this person’s main responsibilities when he or she was hired? And later?

What were the person’s strengths and weaknesses?

How did this person perform in comparison to his or her colleagues?

Why did this person leave your company?

Would you employ this person again? Why?

Reference checking interviews are an essential component hiring candidates and will validate the information collected during the various stages of the selection process.

Stephen Goldberg

Conducting Interviews for Hiring Top Employees

Jun 02, 2015 Comments

Have you ever hired the wrong person for the job? I’ve made my share of hiring mishaps and this has cost me greatly in several situations. I remember hiring a salesman who interviewed well and turned out to be an alcoholic. He ended up badly injured in a car accident and totalling the company car.

This shocked me into learning how to hire smarter. Conducting good interviews is an important part of the process.

In my last article and video on hiring top candidate I talked about screening resumes and conducting a brief phone interview. I also suggested using a pre-hire assessment, the Step One Survey to check for integrity, reliability and work ethic amongst other things.

Once you have selected your top prospects the next step is to schedule in-person interviews. This can be done by the hiring manager alone or a hiring team, which helps provide diverse observations.

Preparation

The purpose of the in-person interview is to validate the information on the resume and see if the person fits with the company and team.

Prepare a list of questions based on the most important tasks and skills for the job. These questions should be open-ended, meaning they should require an explanatory response rather than just a yes or no or factual response. Ask questions that will have the person explain in detail how they performed specific job responsibilities and what they achieved over time for those crucial tasks.

For example if a person in a sales job was to prospect for new clients by attending conferences you could ask the question, tell me about how you worked conferences to generate new leads. However a better question or a follow-up to that one could be, tell me about a conference that you chose to attend, the goal you had for generating new leads and the outcome?

The second question allows you to note down crucial performance based information that can be validated with the candidate’s references. Brad Smart of Topgrading, recommends telling the prospect that you will need to validate their answers with the references they will provide. He says to remind the candidate of this throughout the interview and this forces honest answers from the candidate.

Types of Questions

Formulate questions to generate answers that will allow you to determine the knowledge experience and skill level of the candidate for the most crucial aspects of the job.

Questions should cover work experience, education and personal factors. Here are examples of some good questions.

Work experience

What makes you think you would be suitable for the job?
Tell me about your personal progress when you worked for ABC Corporation?
If you are to join our company, what personal improvements do you think you would need to work on in order to make the best possible contribution?

Education

Why did you choose that particular field for your studies?
How has your education prepared you for this position?

Personal Factors

Generally speaking, how would you describe yourself?
What are your long-term professional and personal goals and objectives?
What features or qualities do you admire most in the person who is or would be your immediate supervisor?

There are many more questions you could ask for each of these categories. Here is a good article containing excellent questions/ Research books and articles on the web as there is an abundance of information. We also offer a training program that contains a complete list of recommended questions.

The Structured Interview

The best approach for an interview is first to plan and be prepared. This will make for a more productive and comfortable interview session.

If possible, have someone greet the person upon arrival and hand them at information sheet about the position or a role description, which they can review while waiting for the interview to begin.

As you greet the candidate make him feel at ease by showing real interest and warmth and by discussing general topics of interest that you may have noted on their resume. You want to make the person feel comfortable.

State the goal of the interview and begin your introductory questions. You should be listening 70% of the time, but allow the candidate to ask questions as well as they also need to know if you are the right company and manager for them.

Rating the candidate

I like to create a table where I list in one column the knowledge skill and experience and then in the column next to it I write a question. In the next column I assign a rating on a scale of 1 to 5 for how well that person demonstrates that specific criteria. I fill in the rating column once the interview is completed and if you are doing the interview as a team the rating system works well as it allows you to compare perspectives and discuss where there may be gaps in perception.

Tests and Evaluations

I suggest adding testing and assessments to the hiring process. I mentioned earlier and in my last article about using the Step One Survey to prepare for the first interview. The resume and the job interview will help you determine skill and Company fit. I use the Profile XT to help predict job fit. I covered this tool in the video How to Hire and Select Top Employees.

Skill testing is also recommended as it can play a role in new employee training as well as validating the skills level of the candidate. Just because someone claims to know how to operate a certain software program does not mean they have the skill level you are expecting. eSkill provides a vast array of skill testing in multiple languages that can also be customized according to your need.

Second Interview and Reference Checking

In most cases I suggest conducting a second interview with your final candidates especially if you are using tests and assessments. The profile XT also provides interview reports that generates questions to probe into specific areas of concern.

Reference checking may also be done at this stage to help you in your decision or could be done after the second interview and evaluating the results of the assessments.

I will cover reference checking in a future article and video.

Stephen Goldberg

Monthly Archives: June 2015