By Dean Klovens
Human resource assessment programs throughout the world are designed to enhance job prospects and employment opportunities, while identifying skilled professionals and top talent for business. Assessing skills coupled with the need to understand cultural fit between the candidate and company is essential to avoid extra cost and slowdowns in production. We believe that business leadership, both domestic and foreign, need to know the risk factors when they fail at identifying the “right” person for the position. The point here is how to avoid this costly and time consuming problem.
Risk Factors in Human Capital Investments
We want to emphasize there is uncertainly and unpredictability in hiring that can adversely affect business planning and subsequently hurt a company’s profit margin and bottom line. Bad hiring leads to increased recruiting, legal, and insurance costs, a potential slowdown in productivity and a hit on business reputation. In addition to the aforementioned, the overall expense in making new hires can range anywhere from $250,000 to $350,000. Therefore, having a strong recruiting plan requires time and effort in order to ensure the right individual is selected.
In today’s world we are witnessing more competition amongst companies in order to identify, interview and hire the best talent for the best price. We do this in order to avoid the problems we encounter when a new employee just doesn’t work out. This may occasionally be unavoidable, but companies need to have a plan in place to limit future such situations as much as possible. Prevention is key and a strong knowledge of placing people in the right culture and fit is what it takes to make that hire successful and a good investment in human capital development.
Word to the Wise: It’s the Culture
Companies can’t afford to risk the high price of poor performers. The importance of culture and fit cannot be stressed enough. Leadership must include culture fit as an effective factor for hiring people, one at least as important as skills and education. For example, if you work in a time sensitive industry, one aspect to consider when interviewing is to determine how a candidate would perform in a fast paced environment. Someone who is too slow to get work done in a reasonable time frame isn’t going to be a good hire no matter how well they may otherwise do the job. One must have a good idea of factors like these in considering whether a person is fit or not before making a hire.
Another tool used by businesses to determine the capabilities of the candidate is to conduct a personality test such as DISC or Myers-Briggs; these programs provide insight into a candidate’s strengths as a leader and his or her capabilities as a decision maker.
Hiring the Right Person Prevents another Headache
The discussion here briefly focused on the risks American companies, big and small, domestically or internationally, confront when a person they believe is a good hire ends up being just the opposite. There is an adverse impact on margins, company reputation, expenses, and productivity, to name a few, if bad hires occur.
If you’re company is ready to commit to having a first class recruiting program email John Ruh (john@johnruh.com) or call him at 773-775-6636 and ask him to run a free 1 hour session on Recruiting Like A Pro at your business.
Written by John Ruh
John M. Ruh and Associates are mission based business advisors who partner with growth oriented leaders to create the right P.S.T. support: the right People, the right Structure and the right Tools.