The point of this mini course is to encourage you into systemising your hiring process. The selection of new employees are about legal discrimination. Firstly, we start with a large group of applicants who are then filtered based on the Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes, Mental ability and Experience (KSAMEs) required for the job. We then end up with what we 'hope' is the right person for the job. From experience, most hiring managers do just that, rely on 'hope'.
If selecting a new employee is about discrimination, then it is imperative that we discriminate fairly. The way to ensure this is to systemise the hiring process so that all applicants get treated the same way. For example, all applicants are subjected to the same interview questions, same interview panel and the same psychometric assessments. This leads to better hiring decisions because the process has been standardised; in other words we are always comparing "apples with apples".
A helpful analogy for the selection process is to think of an iceberg. 1/3 of the iceberg sits above the water; this represents the observable Knowledge, Skills and Experience (KSE) of the applicant; "can" they do the job? Such information is teased out of the applicant through the application form or CV/Resume, referencing and interview. KSE's are often behaviours that can be learnt, and as such, are trainable and coachable.
The remaining two thirds that sit under the waterline is what most hiring managers will fail to assess - "will" or "how" they will do the job. This two thirds represents the applicants mental abilities, motives, personality traits and values; or in simpler terms - their attitude. It is really only through psychological profiling that this can be assessed. More information can be found at Tip #5.
Most managers hire on KSEs, but will usually terminate, or end up having problem employees, because of their personality, attitude and mental ability.
Having the right mix of personality traits and mental ability applicable to the job will insure the candidate applies their knowledge, skills and experience in the most productive way to the benefit of both the organisation and themselves.
Just as a note of caution, there are various ways of systemising the selection process dependent on the job itself. The tips to follow in this mini-course are generalised and designed to make you think about what elements you require to develop your own peace-of-mind selection system.
What are the problems with the traditional selection process?
1. No planning. Has a job analysis been done for this position? Do you have a written list of the Skills, personal Attributes and Knowledge required for this position?
2. Hiring managers generally hire on emotion. Thus gut feelings and emotional judgement will lead them to hire people who are much like themselves. They are good at hiring people on what they can do, yet they are poor at judging the applicants character.
3. Most managers hire based on experience instead of ability. For example, you could teach someone how to sell, how you can't teach optimism, motivation and resilience to persuade.
4. Interviews are nothing more than unstructured one-on-one chats.
5. The majority of talking is done by the interviewer.
6. Interviewers are never trained.
7. Seldom are the candidates' personal characteristics tested through personality and critical reasoning tests.
8. No thorough referencing and/or background checking.
There are more; but the issues listed above are some of the main areas we would like to cover in this report. - 16755
If selecting a new employee is about discrimination, then it is imperative that we discriminate fairly. The way to ensure this is to systemise the hiring process so that all applicants get treated the same way. For example, all applicants are subjected to the same interview questions, same interview panel and the same psychometric assessments. This leads to better hiring decisions because the process has been standardised; in other words we are always comparing "apples with apples".
A helpful analogy for the selection process is to think of an iceberg. 1/3 of the iceberg sits above the water; this represents the observable Knowledge, Skills and Experience (KSE) of the applicant; "can" they do the job? Such information is teased out of the applicant through the application form or CV/Resume, referencing and interview. KSE's are often behaviours that can be learnt, and as such, are trainable and coachable.
The remaining two thirds that sit under the waterline is what most hiring managers will fail to assess - "will" or "how" they will do the job. This two thirds represents the applicants mental abilities, motives, personality traits and values; or in simpler terms - their attitude. It is really only through psychological profiling that this can be assessed. More information can be found at Tip #5.
Most managers hire on KSEs, but will usually terminate, or end up having problem employees, because of their personality, attitude and mental ability.
Having the right mix of personality traits and mental ability applicable to the job will insure the candidate applies their knowledge, skills and experience in the most productive way to the benefit of both the organisation and themselves.
Just as a note of caution, there are various ways of systemising the selection process dependent on the job itself. The tips to follow in this mini-course are generalised and designed to make you think about what elements you require to develop your own peace-of-mind selection system.
What are the problems with the traditional selection process?
1. No planning. Has a job analysis been done for this position? Do you have a written list of the Skills, personal Attributes and Knowledge required for this position?
2. Hiring managers generally hire on emotion. Thus gut feelings and emotional judgement will lead them to hire people who are much like themselves. They are good at hiring people on what they can do, yet they are poor at judging the applicants character.
3. Most managers hire based on experience instead of ability. For example, you could teach someone how to sell, how you can't teach optimism, motivation and resilience to persuade.
4. Interviews are nothing more than unstructured one-on-one chats.
5. The majority of talking is done by the interviewer.
6. Interviewers are never trained.
7. Seldom are the candidates' personal characteristics tested through personality and critical reasoning tests.
8. No thorough referencing and/or background checking.
There are more; but the issues listed above are some of the main areas we would like to cover in this report. - 16755
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