The first question I ask a business owner is “What’s your biggest challenge?” Invariably the answer is usually, finding qualified people.
Why?
Some jobs require highly specialized skills that are no longer taught in school. For example, tool and die makers, body shop technicians, and CAM machine operators to name a few.
However, Rassoul Dastmozd, President at Saint Paul College is changing the tide and bringing focus back to a curriculum geared towards manufacturing, construction, and industrial machinery jobs.
What about traditional jobs like accountants, middle managers, and IT?
I saw a friend on Facebook ranting he couldn’t find qualified IT technical help for his thriving service business. Yes! Even in this economy, there’s a shortage of highly qualified “A” players.
Photo courtesy of Amit Gupta
Let’s take a look at the typical hiring process. This means placing an ad, searching job boards, sifting through dozens if not hundreds of resumes, scheduling interviews, checking references, and making an offer.
When an employer brings on a new hire, most of their criteria is based on experience. They hire for experience and fire for attitude. Business owners need to reverse this equation.The emphasis should be based on behaviors, values, and skills.
Hire for attitude and train for experience.
I spoke to a client, a BMW dealer in the south, who had an interesting take on new hires. “I never hire a salesperson that’s been in my business. They’ve developed too many bad habits. I hire based on attitude and train them our way.” Interesting, don’t you think?
OK Steve, ok. What’s a better solution? Let’s do a job benchmark.
A job benchmark will take the personal bias out of the hiring process. You’ll get an accurate assessment of what the job wants in terms of behaviors, motivators, skills, and emotional intelligence.
If you’re bringing on a new hire without doing a benchmark, you’re rolling the dice in regards to whether or not they’re a good choice for your team.
What if you had a user’s manual for every new hire? I know, I know. You never read the user’s manual.
Would you be willing to read the user’s manual if the instructions gave you insights on how to increase the performance of an employee from day one? Read this client’s experience.
An instruction manual is one of the byproducts of the job benchmark. You’ll get insights into what makes the team member tick as it relates to the job. In addition, you’ll understand their behavior style, their values and motivators, skills, and emotional quotient. PLUS, there’s an onboarding document to help the new player see what they do well and where they need to improve.
This manual will have a huge return on investment. The benchmark and manual will help you hire, retain, develop, and promote the best employees for the job and the culture of your company.
The beauty of the benchmark is you do it once for the job and get to use it over and over again with each applicant.
End Game Business conducts benchmarks by phone. So whether you’re across town or across the globe, we can handle every aspect of your hiring process.
Contact us for more information on how a job benchmark will help you hire “A” players the first time.
I like the attitude of the BMW dealer, hire the ones without prior experience and train them their way Steve. Of course that’s not a technical trade or something you really need some previous knowledge on but most people are eager to learn if they have some basic skills.
I agree that attitude has a heck of a lot to do with it. But most people coming into this have a fabulous attitude because they need the job. Unfortunately it usually doesn’t take long for the real one to shine through.
Glad I’m not in corporate America any longer. Interesting post Steve.
~Adrienne
Glad I’m not in corporate America either; as an employee.
I became disenchanted with the corporate grind and what management was doing to the people in the field.
I’m so excited to be helping management build teams that enjoy working for their companies.