How to avoid hiring mistakes

Albert H. Zinkand, President of Employee Selection & Development, Inc., offers his thoughts on successful management recruitment and provides some ideas as to how to get it right.

You have grown your company, division or operation to the point where you need to hire another manager. You can’t do it all by your self anymore. You’re worried you will hire the wrong person. What’s the worst that could happen? Your boss will fire you. The company will go broke. The new manager will upset everyone and all of your employees will quit. Scared yet? You should be. If employees are the soul of a company, managers are its backbone. Managers are the embodiment of the company. They are what employees, new hires, retirees, stockholders look to for guidance, expertise and competence.

With so much at stake, certainly there must be some guidelines to help us choose the right manager for the position. There are. Over the last 10 years, Employee Selection and Development, Inc. has helped hundreds of companies hire competent managers. This year we crossed the 10,000-manager mark. Here are the four basic guidelines that will help you hire the right manager eight out of 10 times:

• Determine fit to job competencies: Competencies are a combination of intellectual abilities, personality, skills, knowledge, and emotional intelligence. Competencies are what managers must have or develop to do the job. Make sure you measure the needed competencies with an independent and validated competency assessment.
• Determine fit with manager, peers and employees: Our retention research shows that 50 percent of employee turnover is caused by personality conflicts. Will the new manager be compatible with his/her manager? Can the new manager work with the management team to help grow the company as a whole and not just his/her department? Will the new manager be able to work with key personnel in his/her department to increase productivity? We have found that comparing personalities to spot key differences before the hire is made will jump start the new manager 45 percent more quickly and reduce turnover as much as 50 percent.
• Determine fit with company values: White-collar crime is on the rise. As corporate executives we have the fiduciary and ethical responsibility to ask the tough questions. Do the potential managers share your corporate values and ethics? If they do not, the company runs the risk of becoming the next Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, etc. Use a work ethic and integrity assessment to find out if your applicants share your company’s values.
• Spot management talent early: Begin a competency testing program today to spot potential managers after one year of employment. Succession planning is crucial to any organization. If you don’t have the management trainee pipeline full, scurrying to hire or promote a manager leads to costly mistakes. One of the key successes of Toyota is identifying management potential early, developing it, then promoting from within. Use a management competency assessment to spot talent early.

If you are not using the tools or processes referenced above, we can help. We have assessments that measure five levels of management competencies, work ethic, integrity, skills and intellectual abilities. Many predict success in specific positions. Feel free to contact me at President@Employeeselect.com or visit www.employeeselect.com.