Prep for the Turnaround: Hire Right the First Time
July 13, 2009
RIGHT FIT = SKILLS + INSTINCTS
You meticulously reviewed the resume. Used your best behavioral interviewing techniques. Checked references until you were blue. But the new hire still turned out to be a dud. What was missing? He looked great on paper and blew the interview out of the water. But once on the job he not only didn’t play well with others and ran with scissors, he didn’t fulfill the responsibilities of the job even though his skills indicated he could. What happened?
More importantly, how do you make sure that never happens again?
To quote an article from Landscape Management — featuring friend and fellow Certified Kolbe Consultant Jason Cupp — “There is solid evidence suggesting that defining an employee’s or candidate’s natural instincts will often provide the information you need to make your best job placement decision. While employers can choose from many assessment tools, the Kolbe Index is a simple and accessible tool to outline and reveal a person’s initiating and supporting instincts.”
Bingo! The missing link: instincts.
When a hiring manager can rate candidates in an unbiased (by gender, age, race, national origin…) way based on matching their natural instincts to the instincts required for the job, they have the ability to identify the required methods of operation of the ideal candidate. In addition to skills listed in a resume or motivators discovered in behavioral interviewing. The power to predict performance — based on those instincts that drive actual, observable behaviors — can save another bad hire, which saves an enormous amount of time and financial resources. Can you afford afford not to do this triple-check?
COST OF A BAD HIRE
I’ve read several articles, blogs and tweets recently talking about hiring and the cost of making a bad choice. Some of the information I read included results from a 2007 survey by Right Management reporting that the cost of a bad hire ranged from one to five times annual salary. Twenty-six percent of respondents reported that replacing an employee that doesn’t work out cost their organizations three times annual salary and another 42 percent said bad hires cost two times annual salary.
“How do they figure that?” I wondered, which prompted me to throw together this perhaps unsophisticated yet telling formula:
Total cost of a bad hire =
% of salary paid
+ portion of benefits paid
+ direct management time (supervisor’s time spent with employee face-to-face)
+ indirect management time (time on planning for arrival, coordinating training, etc.)
+ management stress time (time spent not focused on work, putting off the inevitable)
+ IT time for computer, phone, and other systems set-up (and take-down for security purposes after the firing)
+ HR time setting up benefits, payroll, etc.
+ % salary of colleagues’ time spent/wasted on the time-sucker
+ cost of time to rebuild postpartum team morale
Yes, I’d say this adds up to somewhere between one to five times the annual salary of the departed disappointment. So the question then is…
Is it worth investing a small amount up front to ensure a candidate’s fit with the role, the team, the organization?
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2 Responses to “Prep for the Turnaround: Hire Right the First Time”
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Great advice! You are exactly right!
Excellent points you make, Meredith! We typically see the cost of pre-hire assessment tools such as the Kolbe Index as an added cost rather than a preventive one that will save us hundreds of dollars!
As an agency that uses independent contractors, the Kolbe Index is an excellent tool for determining who is a good “fit” for my developing business in serving my clients through complementary skills that give me a bigger “presence”. I see us better able to more completely “wow” a client with the added depth.