Welcome to the August 4, 2004 issue of The Total View

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

1. Five Real-Life Lessons MY Clients Learned From Using
Online Personality Tests

2. Best Practice Tips and Resources
3. Perfect Labor Storm Alerts #216 to #220
4. Employee Motivation: It Takes Two to Tango...and Tangle
5. New Interviews with Ira S. Wolfe.
6. Exploring Generational Differences and Interview for Success
7. Summer/Fall Workshop and Speaking Schedule
8. Are You Wasting Too Much Time Sorting Through Unqualified
Resumes?
9. Build a High Motivation Employee Team

1.  Five Real-Life Lessons MY Clients Learned From Using Online Personality Tests

At least once a day I'm asked this question: "Is there an online personality test that can evaluate an employee for everything from honesty to drive?" I love that question. After all, it is my business to know the answer.

For two years, I have enjoyed good fortune and opportunity to assess applicants for positions in sales, management and supervision. Each company that hired me wanted the magic bullet that only hits a bulls-eye when hiring or promoting employees.

I cannot share everything I know because of proprietary and top-secret competitive information. (My clients use the term top-secret.) They believe the information I provide gives them a distinct competitive advantage in recruiting top talent and retaining them. A few clients have agreed, however, to allow me to share five critical lessons learned from working with Success Performance Solutions.

These lessons save time, money and resources for those who use them. How? By teaching employers how to hire and retain employees who exceed expectations. Equally important, employers can learn how to avoid hiring or promoting folks who "talk the talk, but can't walk the walk." First, learn these lessons. Then, for those who missed it, read last week's column, "What You Don't Know About Hiring Costs Can Hurt You!"

Five Lessons to Learn

Lesson 1: Identify complacent applicants before making a job offer.

Sometimes the barrier between being a star and poor performer is complacency. Experience and high-level ability can be overshadowed when the person ranks high on the stability factor. More than 50% of the employees who under-performed in our clients' predictive studies frankly are okay-not-being-okay and lack any urgency to change. Then, there are employees who believe they should be evaluated for effort even though the employers measures success by outcome. These categories of people, tagged poor performers, believe tomorrow is another day meant to make up what can't be accomplished today.

Lesson 2: Always put a round peg in a round hole.
For one-third of employees who failed to meet expectations, factors affecting performance included lack of experience, job dissatisfaction, career mis-matches, and manager-employee personality conflicts. By re-assigning several of these employees to different managers, branches, or jobs, at least half of these employees remained with the organization to become productive employees.

Lesson 3: Learning curves keep employees challenged. Bored employees move on to other companies.
Managers often describe their top performers as smart and intelligent. Our studies show this just isn't true. Although hiring applicants with more skills than necessary to do the job decreases training time, that tactic increases the likelihood for boredom and disenchantment with the job with the predictable result of high turnover. You should hire applicants with the right skills rather than applicants with "excess capacity" just in case you need the additional skills. If you hire individuals with more ability than the job requires, you must have challenging responsibilities or rapid opportunity for advancement. Otherwise, these employees soon leave for more challenges and are likely to be hired by your business competitors.

Lesson 4: Personality tests provide a deeper applicant pool.
Do not fear that personality tests will screen out qualified candidates. Actually, experience proves the opposite. Based on an accurate top performer profile and looking back at screening criteria, our clients now realize they often unintentionally and mistakenly bypassed or overlooked several qualified people in the past. By looking for people with the right abilities and personality trait types, the size of their qualified labor pool expanded.

Lesson 5: Successful hiring decisions hinge on choosing people with the right employee motivation, core competencies, and behaviors, not special people with extraordinary skills and talents.
Hiring the best and the brightest is not as important as hiring individuals with appropriate skills and a good personality job match. Keep in mind, most top performing salespeople and managers had just average ability and a good job match. That's good news for hiring managers. As one manager told us, "We now know that we don't need to be recruiting MBAs on college campuses but setting up a kiosk in the mall."

How can you learn more about the tools and techniques used by our clients? See "Best Practice Tips and Resources" below.

2.  Best Practice Tips and Resources

CriteriaOne® Train-the-Trainer:

Competency Identification, Personality Testing and Behavioral Interviewing.

Special Fee for The Total View readers - save an $500 off our registration fee of $1595. Your fee only $1095.

CriteriaOne is our proprietary employee evaluation process that matches an employee's capability, motivation, and behavior to the core competencies required by the job. Register to articipate in our hands-on CriteriaOne training on August 18-20, 2004 or order
"The Best Kept Secret for Hiring The High Motivation Employee - Job Profiling".

Register a 2nd person from your company at no additional cost.
Register online for CriteriaOne - Competency Identification and Online Personality Tests or call 717.656.4632.

Where can you receive more information about behavior and personality tests?

3. Perfect Labor Storm Alerts #216 to #220

Have you ever heard of The Whizzinator, Klear, Clear Choice, Mary Jane's Super Clean 13? No? Well if you are using or considering employee drug testing, then you better get familiar and fast. The Whizzinator isn't the geeky adversary to the Terminator and Mary Jane's Super Clean 13 isn't the mother of all stain removers. But these are just a few of the products available on the Internet used regularly by employees who use illegal drugs to fool the drug tests. How prevalent is drug use in the workplace and what impact is it having on employers?

Fact #216: Nearly 67% of people entering the workplace have used drugs, 44% have used them in the past year(N.I.D.A.)

Fact #217: 35% of all cocaine users sell drugs to co-workers to support their own drug habit (D.E.A.)

Fact #218: More than 75 percent of all drug users are employed somewhere. (SAMHSA, a division of the Health and Human Services Department (HHS)).

Fact #219: About 9% of Americans abuse alcohol. (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism)

Fact #220: Sixty-five percent of all work related accidents are the direct result of substance abuse(O.S.H.A.)

<Next week: More facts about the effect of drug and alcohol abuse in the workplace>

Don't be caught in storm without all the facts. "The Perfect Labor Storm Fact Book: Why Worker Shortages Won't Go Away" is a must-read leading edge forecast that predicts workforce trends for decades to come. Order your copy today - $7.95 includes no shipping costs for limited time only.

Get the forecast LIVE at your next meeting or conference. Now scheduling 2004-2005 keynotes - Ira Wolfe, What's Ahead In Hiring Trends or Generations in the Workplace - You can't work with them, You can't work without them.

4. Employee Motivation: It Takes Two to Tango...or Tangle.

Sustained productivity and profitiablity doesn't just happen. Employees have varied needs. Managers have preferred leadership styles. These needs and styles don't always match.

But managers and leaders can now get the results they want with a revolutionary new approach to leadership. It's called Strategic Leadership.

Strategic leadership gives leaders the knowledge and insights to adjust their approach to match the varied capabilities and commitment of employees.

To schedule Strategic Leadership training in your company for the Fall 04/Winter 05, contact us today.

New! Strategic Leadership Type Indicator.(SLTi)
Help leaders understand their own leadership habits and learn how they can respond more effectively in the future. The first part of the SLTi is a self-assessment that gives leaders feedback about their use of multiple leadership strategies. The second part guides them in selecting the best strategic leadership style to use, and the third part illustrates how leaders can develop their direct reports using these strategies.

Each Strategic Leader's self-scoring workbook is only $25.


Strategic Leadership Facilitator's Guide - $497

Email for more details.

5. New Interviews with Ira S. Wolfe

Ira was interviewed on Phildelphia Focus/Empower Half-Hour, a Philadelphia public affairs program hosted by Lehronda Upshur. Lehondra interviewed Ira Wolfe on The Perfect Labor Storm and how to motivate employees.

Order a copy of this 30 minute interview on How To Motivate Employees and The Perfect Labor Storm

In August, Ira wil be a interviewed on CN8 TV - Money Matters on August 23 at 8 PM and WHP Radio in September. . Watch for more details.

6. Schedule Your Fall/Winter Workshops Today

Exploring Generational Differences is designed to explore the differences between the four workforce generations and how to build bridges between them. If you've ever heard "what's wrong with the younger generation" or "I'm too old to learn this stuff", this is the perfect program for your workforce. Half-day or Full-day.

Learn more about bridging generation gaps


Interview for Success: This disciplined approach to interviewing candidates, identifying competencies and developing questions and target behaviors for specific positions, is nearly 50 percent more effective than traditional interviewing at hiring the right employee. Half-day or full-day.

Improve your behavioral interviewing skills.

Speak with Ira or Marilyn about scheduling Exploring Generational Differences or Interview For Success.

7.  Summer 2004 Workshop and Speaking Schedule

Just announced! Ira will be a presenter at the 2005 International Builders Show in Orlando, FL at the end of January. Watch for more details.

August 18-20, 2004 - CriteriaOne Train-the-Trainer: How to Identify Competencies and Use Assessments for Hiring, Promoting, and Managing Performance. The Hampton Inn, Lancaster, PA. Call 717.656.4632 for more information and to reserve your seat. Limit - 10.

September 1, 2004 - Ethical Shenanigans: How Susceptible Is Your Business? Small Business Group Breakfast. To reserve your place, call The Lancaster Chamber at 717.394.3531. Speaker: Ira S. Wolfe

September 13, 2004 - What is This Thing Called Emotional Intelligence
….And Why We Need It In The Workplace?" Sponsored by Clemson University; Location - Harrisburg, PA. Speaker: Marilyn Walker

September 27, 2004 – Best Practices in Performance Consulting, Atlanta, GA. Sponsored by International Quality and Productivity Center. Speaker: Ira S. Wolfe. Ira will join leaders from Dell, Microsoft, HomeBanc, Harley-Davidson,Hewlett-Packard, Putnam Investments, EDS, Synovus and Internal Revenue Service.

8. Are You Wasting Too Much Time Sorting Through Unqualified Resumes?

Eliminate The Hassles and Headaches Associated With Screening Candidate with Total APS.

The Total Applicant Processing System enables the small and medium sized employer to do online recruiting and screen applicants with customizable and scorable filtering questions with a click of the mouse.

Use Total APS to recruit and screen applicants for your next job opening.

9. Wondering if you have the right people on your team?

Everyone wants to build the High Motivation Employee Team. Do it with team building activities packaged exclusively for small businesses and home businesses.

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

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