How to hire the best talent.
Hint: It does not involve Human Rescourses department direction in many cases.
Liberal arts majors hiring, math, science, chemistry and physics majors, especially without extensive testing hires on all the wrong basis points. Unless a company wishes to be schmoozed by incompetents with good paper work.
Live testing is missing with most hiring in my experience.. applicants are judged on paper work, diploma's and references from past employers afraid of being sued.. and if not afraid for that reason, not wishing to hurt the applicant.
None of this helps you.
TESTING however sorts out the wheat from the chaff, fast.
Some of my clients use such tests along with HR profiling to very successful ends.
Thats is fewer than less than 5% of my US clients as a guess. The other 95% hire on the basis of paper work, references and how the person does in interviews... interviews very often conducted by people not at all competent in the skill sets for which the applicant is being considered.
That fails badly for all concerned.... except of course for the entrenched staff.
Competency testing cures that...Used extensively in the EU but not in the US as a rule. (the given reason given is fear of age, sex, or race discrimination). The talent you need can pass a good competency test in minutes, 95% score or better... others will struggle.
Your company will not survive in the current market with those that struggle with competency.. Hire them, but only apprentice positions avoids any discrimination issues, with a given period to become competent and prove it.
That approach is motivating, fair and grows your own talent base. I
ts an appproach used my successful military operations world wide. But not used in US industry as a rule.
Here we hire and promote by other criteria. We now lag the world in education, as our manufacturing infrastucture is in collapse.
We can do better.
"Discriminate in your hiring,.. hire the best, or fail". It is as simple as that.
Another reason testing is not used in many companies is that the senior management and even the senior people in that department often cannot pass such a competency test themselves... hiring ones own competition is thus avoided by many managers and department heads.
None the less TESTING is the solution. Fast, easy, and bulletproof if its timed... then you screen for other desireable characteristics..and you end up with winners, whether hiring from outside or from applicants in-house. The approach drives and rewards competence.
These issues will be covered in my FREE news letters. One featuring my now infamous article published in CE Weekly and reviewed by Business Week and others. "Personnel the Beginning of any Success.... or Disaster."
