SubjectiveHiringCriteriaCutsDownEmployers

1. Subjective Hiring Criteria Cuts Down Employers

2.  Perfect Labor Storm Warnings

3. The Leader Within

4. The Leadership Difference

5.  Speaking Schedule

6.  New Book: Coming Job Boom

7. Quotes from the Hire Authorities

The U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) "loathes subjective hiring criteria," say employment law attorney Michael Moore in a post this week on his PA Labor and Employment Blog.

Mike and I have had many discussions about the subjective hiring criteria used by too many managers in too many businesses. We aren't always heard.

But maybe this will wake up a few people: "For the Fiscal Year 2007, the OFCCP obtained $51,680,950 for 22,251 workers who had been subjected to unlawful employment discrimination." Subjective hiring criteria, like we've been saying, can be a costly and embarrassing mistake. A settlement with the OFCCP for discrimination in the hiring process will include back pay plus interest and job offers to the affected class, internal mandated and OFCCP approved training, follow up reporting to the OFCCP and publicity in the form of an OFCCP Press Release. That's enough to shake up a few people especially if your business is doing business with the federal government.

Mike provides an excellent example of how subjective criteria got one of his clients in trouble. "I had a client who required that its customer service candidates be "personable and friendly". The OFCCP started out with the position that this was not a "job-related" criteria." You might ask how is personable and friendly not job related.

If you've been reading my columns, you're likely tired of reading what I'm about to say. Behavior and personality traits aren't predictive of job success unless you can demonstrate that people without these traits or style have a poor track record and employees with those traits are successful. In the case Mike described above, the client would have had to define personable and friendly and then prove that employees who weren't personable and friendly performed significantly worse than those employees that were.

Just today I had a conversation with a marketing manager who said he'd never hire an "introvert." I'm not sure I persuaded him how an introvert can be as successful as an extrovert in sales, marketing, and even speaking and politics but I do know one thing. He's hired quite a few extroverts who have failed and missed out on quite a few super-stars by his subjective criteria of introvert.

By now you might be asking: what good are pre-employment tests if they can't predict job fit? The answer is quite simple. They can as long as you can show job-relatedness.

By relating these assessments back to job-related skills, you begin to apply some level of objectivity to the hiring process. For instance, let's go back to the example of personable and friendly. As stand-alone criteria they didn't meet the test of predictive and reliable hiring criteria.

But what if you identified customer focus as an essential core competence instead of just personable and friendly. And based on that competence, you could determine your top performers had patterns of personality traits and behavioral styles distinctly different from those who under-performed. The assessment has now provided a level of objectivity, another leg onto a 2-legged stool. You are not rejecting the candidate because he or she wasn't personable and friendly but because they didn't possess the innate talent to focus on the customer at a high sustainable standard.

But that's not all that went against the client. The OFCCP interviewed every hiring manager and asked them to define how it applied the "personable and friendly criteria". When the hiring manager responses weren't exactly the same, the OFCCP found adverse impact because the hiring procedures weren't uniformly applied to all applicants. It is not enough to just identify traits and behaviors you feel sound good - you need to define and standardize them. Managers must be evaluating the candidates using the same criteria PLUS a clear understanding about what they mean and measure.

As I've said dozens of times before, it's not the interview questions that get companies in trouble - it's the hiring managers. Different people will view the same candidate through their own biased lens and hire or reject him/her based on his/her personal viewpoint, unless the employer provides specific and measurable criteria. The interview is highly subjective, even with structured interview questions, because we are all human. The interview remains the most subjective and unreliable hiring assessment managers have at their disposal.

1. First things first. I ask every client: what is it that you expect this candidate if hired to have accomplished one year from now when you're sitting with him toe-to-toe evaluating his performance. You need to be specific and keep the list to no more than 5 essential tasks. And before you offer me "that's in the our job decription," I guarantee you that it's not. The job description covers responsibilities but rarely includes specific criteria for evaluation.

2. After listing the essential expectations, you can now identify as few as 3 but no more than 10 core competencies required to meet or exceed your expectations as they relate to these essential tasks. That doesn't mean the competency list can't be longer. But what it does mean is that if the candidate does not demonstrate the ability or potential in an essential area, you as the manager are likely setting him up for failure.

3. Now that you know exactly what skills this candidate needs, you begin the assessment process. Based on the competencies you can create structured interview questions which explore how well the candidate has performed these skills in the past or suggests the potential to develop them in the future. In addition, assessment(s) should be used to provide some validation to your screening and objectivity to your process. The assessments are not substitutes for the interview but corroborate face-to-face findings and expose weaknesses or challenges you might have missed because you were looking for them or the candidate was skilled enough to cover them up.

The solution I just described ever so briefly is our CriteriaOne: The Whole Person Approach to hiring and retaining top performers. This process is well-suited for large employers as well as small micro-businesses. If you're looking for a predictable, valid and job-related hiring process, look no further.

U.S. and U.K. employees are costing businesses $37 billion every year because they do not fully understand their jobs, according to a new IDC white paper commissioned by Cognisco.

Employee misunderstanding is defined as actions taken by employees who have misunderstood or misinterpreted - or were misinformed about or lack confidence in their understanding - of company policies, business processes, job function or a combination of the three.

Purchase the NEW Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 books (soft and hard cover versions) at PerfectLaborStorm.com.

Song now available for easier viewing on YouTube.

Best-selling authors and Fortune 100 consultants, Dr. Drea Zigarmi, Dr. Ken Blanchard, Dr. Michael O'Connor and Dr. Carl Edeburn reveal the results of an in-depth, seven-year statistical study of leadership in Corporate America. Their new book, The Leader Within, Knowing Enough About Yourself To Lead Others, shows how leaders exert influence and how disposition, values, beliefs, and persona contribute to their very success-or failure.

The focus in The Leadership Difference series is on people leadership and how that impacts how effective you are in your organization. Great leaders are capable of creating synergy among their team and motivating them to achieve great results. What is the Leadership Difference:

August 20 (tentative) - President's Circle Summer Symposium, Mt. San Antonio

September 8 - Electrical Generation Systems Association - "The Perfect Labor Storm"

6. Hot Off The Press! "Coming Job Boom" - Buy Today!

Ira recently collaborated with Bonnie Kerrigan Snyder on a new book, The Coming Job Boom. Bonnie is the author of The Public School Parent's Guide to Success. The Coming Job Boom is the "ying" for the "yang" of The Perfect Labor Storm. While the Perfect Labor Storm is beginning to make managers feel like storm chasers looking for qualified workers, high school and college students must be smiling at this Upcoming Job Boom. For those young workers with the right skills and motivation, the job market will make these kids feel like - well, like kid's in a candy store!

"As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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