Welcome to the March 28, 2007 issue of The Total View

Published by Success Performance Solutions, Written by Ira S. Wolfe

Visit our Human Resources Blog and Perfect Labor Storm Blog where we can post daily (and more often) human resource updates, news, and Perfect Labor Storm facts. 

What's Inside:

1.  Hiring Key Employees Hits Brick Wall

"The biggest problem with job growth right now isn't too few new jobs.  It's too few skilled workers," was the opening line in a column published on CNNMoney.com, January 5, 2007.

The column reported that employers are having a hard time hiring the skilled workers they need. Many people might dismiss that trend when it seems every day another company is laying off employees or closing down. This argument is very naive. What managers and bureaucrats still fail to do is differentiate between the quantity of available workers and the quality (aka ability) of available workers to do today's jobs.

Executives and HR managers read the unemployment statistics and see 4.5%, a full employment milestone just a few years ago, and equate that to millions of unemployed workers looking for jobs.
What they need to do is probe a bit further to uncover the unemployment rate for college graduates today is a mere 1.9 percent.

Filling key positions has reached crisis proportions. In the past month, clients have shared with us how they are scaling back operations, postponing strategic plans, and even delaying openings of new services and production lines because they can't find the managers to run their operations. In one case, the inability to hire qualified staff cost the organization nearly $5 million in revenues. Even worse, their competition gained market share due to the delay. In other organizations, a lack of nurses has delayed new services from coming online, a lack of project managers forced one construction company to pass on a new business opportunity, the hiring of an inexperienced quality control manager resulted in an entire pharmaceutical line being shut down and the plant coming under the scrutiny of the FDA.

In contrast to the late 1990s when employers were hiring anyone who could fog a mirror, organizations this time around are becoming more selective. As a result, the utilization of pre-employment assessments in businesses doubled between 2005 and 2006.   Based on our business growth during the first quarter of this year, this trend is not only continuing but accelerating.

Nearly all the clients calling our office are looking for pre-employment tests. A few are hoping to assess internal candidates for the potential to move up the career ladder or assume new responsibilities.
Whichever the case, there's a lot of confusion about what assessments to use. Let me try to untangle the web.

Screening tools work best at weeding out candidates with high risk behaviors or traits or skills that do not meet job competencies.  Selection tools pick up where screening tools' accuracy starts slipping:
job fit. In other words, screening tools identify candidates who DON'T fit the job; selection tools identify candidates who DO fit the job the best.

A common question asked by first time callers is "do we recommend DISC or Myers-Briggs?" The answer is simple. YES-but, DISC and Myers-Briggs are highly predictive of behavioral style, how an individual approaches work and people. Most publishers are explicit in NOT supporting the use of DISC and Myers-Briggs as stand-alone tools in hiring.

While DISC is quite accurate at assessing how a candidate might approach problems, people, pace and procedures, it is not predictive of job performance or abilities, despite a few publishers claims to the contrary (and managers desire to make this connection). The criteria for using assessments legally in the workplace requires that they be job-related (as well as validated and reliable). We strongly discourage clients from using DISC as the sole assessment in a selection process.

The solution we recommend is to use CriteriaOne DISC in conjunction with a normed assessment like JobClues, TotalView and ASSESS.   Combining DISC with a personality assessment, employers can view the "whole person": can a candidate do the job and how they will do it.

We recommend the following normed assessments: JobClues and CandidClues for screening, TotalView(Prevue) and ASSESS for selection. All three of these assessments are validated, reliable and predictive.

Click here to read more about online personality assessments.

2.  Perfect Labor Storm Alerts: "Did You Know?"

New to The Perfect Labor Storm website:

"Did You Know?" is a POWERFUL 8-minute presentation about how the world is flattening. I first viewed this at a High School Career Night last November. It's phenomenal. I showed it today before a keynote address and you could have heard a pin drop. Take a few minutes and listen and watch this fabulous presentation, created by Karl Fisch, Director of Technology at Arapahoe High School in Colorado.

The presentation lasts just a little over 6 minutes.   I'd like to call it: The Perfect Labor Storm Boot Camp!

To view "Did You Know?", click here.

Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 is now available. The year 2007 will see an increase in skilled worker shortages and more competition. The result will be higher salaries, more training and career advancement opportunities, and more flexible work cultures. How prepared is your company to find skilled and dependable workers?

Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 is the newly updated and revised 2007 edition of best-selling book first published in 2005. You can now download an advance copy of PLS 2.0. a $10 value with every purchase of the original Perfect Labor Storm, still a great value at $7.95.

Don't miss day-to-day updates on Perfect Labor Storm.   Save the Perfect Labor Storm blog to your favorites.

3.  New! Upcoming Webinars, Workshops and Training Dates Announced

April 12, 2007: Interview for Success (Call for information)
April 17 - 18, 2007 - ASSESS Expert System User Certification

"ASSESS Expert System Certification"

For the first time ever, Bigby Havis and Success Performance Solutions have partnered to sponsor a 2-day ASSESS User Certification in Central PA. (Bigby Havis is one of the top U.S. organizational psychology consulting firms with domestic and international clients.)

Date: April 17-18, 2007
Time: 8:30 - 5:00; 2nd day ends at 12:30PM
Place: Lancaster, PA
Tuition: $1500 per person; $1000 for 2nd person, same company

Assess Expert System is a premier psychometic employee evaluation tool that will take the guesswork out of hiring and promoting key employees.  A state of the art web-based system, ASSESS produces job specific reports linking key personality traits to managerial and executives competencies.  Every selection report comes with a customized behavioral interview guide and every development report includes performance improvements tools and tip customized to the employee, based on his/her responses.

ASSESS Expert System assists management in the selection of outside candidates and in the promotion, placement or development of internal managers, supervisors and professionals. The assessments provided are industry-standard, and each item has been carefully validated and documented.

Participation is limited and over half the seats are already filled.
Don't wait. Call 800-803-4303 for information.

4.  New Self-Scoring Leadership Assessment!

Now for the first time you can assess leadership and plan development in one continuous classroom style exercise.

This new self-assessment is the perfect solution when you don't have the time or resources to conduct a multi-rater assessment project.

PS Leader is an 82 item, assessment that gives leaders an objective self-assessment of their leadership proficiency in 24 competencies. PS Leader is brand new in this self-assessment format.

Leaders identify highest development needs from 5 critical performance clusters: Strategic focus, Business focus, Workforce focus, Interpersonal focus and Personal focus.

The assessment helps leaders identify development priorities and job strengths by using self-ratings of proficiency in 82 discrete leadership behaviors. Scores are produced for 24 critical competencies that have been shown to be critical to effective leadership.

Click here for more information.

5.  NEW! DISC Self-Scoring Assessment

The DISCStyles self-assessment (paper version) has been crafted specifically to assist organizations in understanding how behaviors impact the success of their employees--and how it all links to the bottom line. DISC is based on theories originally developed by Dr. William Marston in the late 1920's, and adapted for professional development and training including sales, leadership, team building and customer service.

This easily administered 30-item assessment includes use of three interpersonal settings to maximize contextual authenticity (work, home, social). Each of the standard interpretive graphs are plotted enabling a complete view of your preferred style. The DISCStyles assessment can be completed in only 10­-15 minutes. Perfect for training and development when budgets or technology rule out our online assessments.

Click here for more information.

6.  Quotes from Hire Authorities

"Without everybody embracing what we want to do, we haven't got a prayer."
Jack Welch

Ira S. Wolfe Copyright 2007 - All Rights Reserved. Reprints and other distribution by permission