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

• Hire Competence with Confidence - June 22, 2004 in Lancaster, PA
• Pre-employment Screening Tests Save Manager’s Time and Money
• Test your Interviewing IQ
• Summer/Fall Workshop and Speaking Schedule
• Perfect Labor Storm Alerts #181 to #185
• Ethical Shenanigans: How Secure is Your Business?
• SELECT - A Pre-employment Screening Tool
• DISC Behavioral Style Indicator/Sales Style Indicator
• The Whole Person Approach To Competency ID and Employee Evaluation

A special 3-hour workshop on June 22, 2004 at The Hampton Inn, Lancaster (PA)

Hire Competence with Confidence - Participation is limited to first 20. Join Ira S. Wolfe as leads this hands-on workshop - perfect for small business owners and hiring managers. Only $49 which includes credit for valuable assessments and books valued at over $250.

Call 717.656.4632 to reserve your seat or email - mailto:allisond@super-solutions.com

HELP! Please Bail Me Out (and help Jerry's kids too). I will be arrested and put in jail for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) Lock-Up. Don't even bother asking what crime I have committed  it's not really that important. I just have to raise my bail of $3,000 before the Lock-Up and they will go easy on me, but I need your financial assistance to post my bond. Please lend your support during the: Lancaster North Lock-Up at The Eden Resort and Conference Center.

Your 100% tax-deductible donation will help MDA continue research into the cause and the possible cure of the 43 neuromuscular diseases they cover. Your support of the MDA Lock-Up will also help MDA provide wheelchairs, clinic visits and summer camp for the families served by the Association in our local area.

Bail-out Ira form

What Motivates Employees?

What employer isn't looking to motivate employees more while paying them less? Thanks to new research just released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private group in Cambridge, Mass., economists David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College and Andrew Oswald of Warwick University in England, employers may have found the Holy Grail of motivation.

Mr. Blanchflower calculated that going from having sex once a month to having it at least weekly is roughly equivalent to the amount of happiness that an extra $50,000 of income would bring to the average American. "The effect of sex on happiness is statistically well-determined ... and large," the authors conclude. "This is true for males and females, and for those under and over the age of 40."

The paper is titled, "Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical Study." It is based on data from the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Surveys.

For those of you who might not agree that sex is the best motivator in the workplace - or at least not the most appropriate, I might suggest you order your copy today of Understanding Business Values and Motivators instead.

Continued from June 2, 2004 - Putting Observation to the Test  and

June 9, 2004 - Employee Interviews - Looking Through Rose-Colored Glasses?

To view Part 1, go to http://www.super-solutions.com/tv060204_personalitytest.asp;
To view Part II, go to http://www.super-solutions.com/TV060904_BehavioralInterview.asp.

Pre-employment Screening Tests Save Manager’s Time and Money

The sole purpose of evaluating job candidates is to predict – or forecast – how they will perform on the job before they are hired. Over the past two weeks, I’ve written about two time-tested techniques for hiring and promoting candidates into jobs - observation and interviewing.

The biggest problem with these unstructured “tell me a bit about yourself” methods is that they are becoming less and less effective at evaluating a candidate.

Research shows that traditional interviews have a predictive validity of just slightly better than flipping a coin or playing “eenie-meenie-minie-moe”. Businesses that place a heavy emphasis on traditional interviewing are at a terrible disadvantage in today’s war for talent. It’s not that managers still can’t pick a good fit with the interview but more and more bad hires are slipping through the door too.

So, how do you combat this unreliability?

Personality assessments have been used for employee evaluation since World War I. Recently many organizations have begun to use personality tests, or more appropriately called personality or performance assessments, to help screen out individuals who are not qualified or will not fit well within the company culture. But selecting the right assessment is not always that easy.

At one time, employee evaluations required the services of an industrial psychologist. Thanks to technology, many high quality, state of the art assessments are now available online. In fact, the market is now flooded with assessments. While availability and variety are no longer a problem, the difference between assessments can be really subtle enough to drive anyone crazy.

Often a pre-employment screening test or personality assessment is selected based on referral from a friend or just heresay. Many but not all tests are validated and reliable. If an assessment isn’t validated and reliable, it may not be providing information that is predictive of success or related to the job. While the reports provided may be interesting reading, they are not very defensible if an employer is ever challenged.

With the advent of the newest generation of assessment tools and the delivery via the Internet, assessments for behaviors, values, cognitive abilities, interests and personality can now be incorporated into an evaluation process that looks at the whole person, the model recommended by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for fair, unbiased selection. These newest generation assessment tools now can put predictive information about how well candidates will fit the position with considerably more accuracy and lower cost than ever before. This level of specificity has elevated talent selection and team building from a science to an art.

What assessments should you use?

Out of the hundreds of assessments available, I advise clients to divide them up into two big categories: those that screen out the highest risk candidates and those that job fit the right person to the job.

If you have ever been face-to-face with a candidate and thought for even a moment, “why you were wasting your time with this clown”, you know what I’m talking about. For managers interested in weeding out candidates right from the outset, several assessments are available such as Counter-Productive Behavior Index™ (CBI), SELECT™ Associate System, and FirstView™ Job Fit.

Both CBI and SELECT evaluate a candidate’s work ethics including dependability, honesty, aggressive tendencies and drug use. SELECT adds several dimensions including if a candidate has a positive work attitude, accepts diversity, is willing to accommodate others and has the energy to do the job. FirstView screens for basic personality traits and cognitive skills.

The advantage of these pre-employment screening assessments is that they identify which candidates early in the selection process shouldn’t be considered. Little time is wasted on interviewing and background checking candidates who clearly don’t have the right attitude and work ethic to do the job. In addition to the employee evaluation, all three assessments provide structured interview questions personalized to the candidate’s responses.

Our client results indicate these types of assessments predictably eliminate two to three out of ten high-risk candidates very early in the hiring process, saving the manager hours of time and valuable resources.

These pre-employment tests are cost effective, easily administered and often are translated into several languages, including English and Spanish. Little training is required to interpret these as well.
But what happens to the remaining seven or eight candidates? How can a manager improve his or her chances of selecting the right person after he or she has narrowed the pile of resumes down to the final few?

Next week: Job Matching – Assessment That Fit The Right Person To The Job

To learn more about hiring best practices, download the U.S. Department of Labor publication, TESTING AND ASSESSMENT: AN EMPLOYER'S GUIDE TO GOOD PRACTICES.

Reduce your risk and hire competence with confidence. Visit our assessment center at http://www.super-solutions.com/assessmentcenter.asp.

Not sure which assessments to choose. View on our online employee assessment guide including DISC, Business Values and Motivators, and TotalView at http://www.super-solutions.com/selecttherighttest.asp.

Test your Interviewing IQ here.

Then visit our Behavioral Interviewing Center at

http://www.super-solutions.com/behavioral-interviewing.asp

Perfect Labor Storm Alerts #181 to #185

Fact #181 – In 2002, an estimated 22 million Americans suffered from chemical dependence or abused drugs, alcohol or both.

Fact #182 – Illicit drug use is highest among adults 18 to 25 years old.

Fact #183 – 15.9 million American s considered themselves to be heavy drinkers.

Fact #184 - Treating the short-term and long-term medical complications of addiction costs $133 billion a year.
Source: Department of Health and Human Services; National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Fact #185 – 15 percent of all full-time workers and 19 percent of all part-time workers – about 23 million workers – used an illicit drug in the past year.

Source: 2002 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse

Yes - there are workers for hire. Just like during the late 1990's, prisons have an ample supply of candidates. But do they have the skills and work ethics you want? As employers begin to hire and expand, many will be unprepared to survive The Perfect Labor Storm. Will you?

"The Perfect Labor Storm Fact Book: Why Worker Shortages Won't Go Away" is HERE! 

Order your copy today - $7.95 includes no shipping costs for limited time only.

Schedule Ira Wolfe today to speak to your organization about What's Ahead In Hiring Trends.

Ethical Shenanigans: How secure is your business?

Every day, employees are faced with moral dilemmas at work. Ethics involves determining what is right or wrong in the workplace, then doing the right thing. How do you know if your employees know the differencebetween right and wrong and how do you know if they will make the right choices when confronted with difficult decisions?

Schedule Ira Wolfe today for ethics training. During these workshops, Ira will highlight ethical challenges faced by today's employer and employee, followed by small-group discussions about how managers and small business owners are dealing with:

• E-mails and the Internet
• Proprietary Information
• Conflicts of Interest
• Intellectual Property and Copyright
• Gifts from Suppliers, Vendors and Subcontractors
• Forced Ranking Performance Reviews
• Hiring and Promotion Practices
• Sexual, gender, race, and cultural discrimination
• Target-based incentives
• Whistle-blowing

Ira is currently enrolled in the graduate degree program in Leadership and Business Ethics at Duquesne University.

SELECT!
A pre-employment screening tool to identify work-related behaviors such as Positive Service Attitude, Accountability, Frustration Tolerance, Acceptance of Diversity, Multi-tasking and more.... plus a Validity Check and Integrity Index.

Each customized report includes a step by step interview guide including recommended interview questions.

SELECT is scored on-line but can be administered on paper or computer.

The following report versions are available:

• Customer Service
• Administrative Support
• Retail Sales Associates
• Entry Level Retail Management
• Call Centers
• Production & Distribution
• Healthcare
• Personal Service
• Convenience Store Associates
• Hospitality
• Office Staffing
  

To learn more about SELECT and other pre-employment tests, click here.

DISC Behavioral Style Indicator and DISC Sales Style Indicator reports assess how an employee will deal with problems, interact with people, comply with rules and procedures, and the pace at which he or she will work. To view a sample report, click here.

How do your employees fit on your team. MAP your entire team on our Style Insights Wheel. Identify strengths and minimize conflicts easily.

Get the wheel online. It's included FREE with each DISC Behavioral Style Indicator and DISC Sales Style Indicator Report.

NEW Article Published: Online Recruiting Cuts Time to Hire

CriteriaOne.: The Whole Person Approach to Competency Identification and Performance Management

Become a certified CriteriaOne consultant. Learn to identify competencies, complete a job analysis and interpret behavioral, values and personality assessments. The next Train-the-Trainer will be held from August 18-20, 2004 in Lancaster PA.

View the agenda and register online

Contact Information:
Success Performance Solutions 2481 New Holland Pike, Suite 2, Lancaster, PA 17601

email: iwolfe@super-solutions.com
voice: 717.656.4632
web: http://www.super-solutions.com

To learn more about Success Performance Solutions or read back issues of The Total View, stop by our website at www.super-solutions.com.

Order your personal copy of Understanding Business Values and Motivators at
http://www.understandingbvm.com

Order your personal copy of The Perfect Labor Storm at
http:/perfectlaborstorm.com

Ira S. Wolfe. 2004 - All Rights Reserved. Reprints and other distribution by permission only.