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"Thank You For Stopping By"
Not Another Revolving Door
By Jim Corra
Do you feel like you are constantly replacing people within your organization? At times it may feel like it is a revolving door. This pattern is quiet frustrating and exhausting. You spend a majority of your time and efforts repeating activities such as hiring and training new associates when you could better spend your time on growing your department or organization. This is a common problem that plagues almost everyone involved in the hiring and staffing of an organization. We seem to always be searching for that “savior”, the “golden one” that will take all of our problems away. Anyone who has been responsible for staffing for any period of time knows that the “golden one” rarely exists. The “golden ones” typically do not leave their current organization, so we continue our search.
Revolving Door can be Costly
The revolving door complicates our lives much more than just the expenditure of our time and resources, it impacts our bottom line, much more than one might think. Every time that we replace a position we need to consider the cost associated with that turnover.
Such costs include:
- Lost production or revenue while that position is vacant,
- Expenses associated with recruiting via job boards, newspapers, career fairs or any other avenue that you may utilize.
- Time, which correlates to your salary to screen, interview, and conduct any background inquires as well as offering the position. These expenses do not include the time and salary to train the new associate whether the training is conducted by you or one of your associates,
- Lost production or revenue or any other resources consumed to add this new hire to your organization. Most positions have a learning curve and the training time varies however; a good average for a new associate to be self-sufficient is three months. How much money will it cost you or your company while this person is in training?
The Solution Starts Here
We have identified the problem that many of us have been contending with, now how do we fix it? The answer is easier than you think. We need to improve our skills. We need to evaluate how we are recruiting, screening and interviewing. Most important is our decision making abilities and what we are basing our decisions on. Is it facts and data or is it our gut feeling or intuition?
How to achieve hiring success
Have you ever asked yourself this question: What happened to the person I hired? I believe that a majority of us have hired someone who did not turn out the way that we thought they would. What happened? How did I not see this during the interview process? They must have gone sideways, "I hired a good candidate. They are the one who did not live up to what they led me to believe." Does this sound familiar?
The truth is that we can discover this information and behavior tendencies during the interview stages if we know how and what to ask. We can no longer rely on our gut feeling and intuition to make our decisions; we must rely on better techniques. The technique that I find most successful is known as Behavioral Based or Situational Based Interviewing.
The first step to achieving hiring successes is to dissect the position that you are looking to fill. You will need to determine the key competencies needed for the position and divide them into two categories.
- Soft or performance skills - These are the qualities that the individual chooses or is willing to do rather than can do. These qualities are more of the intangible or inner personality attributes such as team orientation, organization, and attention to detail, communication skills and other character qualities.
- Technical skills - These are the physical skills needed to complete the job duties. These “can-do” skills include anything from using certain computer applications, operating a multi-line phone system, word processing, data entry, and other physical duties of the job.
The skills, both performance and technical, are like the wheels on a bike. The rear wheel is associated with the technical skills. This wheel or skill set powers the bike. Strong technical skills will take that rider a long distance. The performance skills represent the front wheel of the bike. This is the direction that the bike or your associate is going to follow. If the front wheel is too small or missing the power behind, the bike will never get to the final destination that you are trying to reach.
Staying on course
To ensure that our bike is running in the right direction, we must dissect the position by conducting a job analysis. The job analysis helps you to see the position from a factual data driven perspective as opposed to the emotional or intuitive side. Most interviewers spend eighty percent of their interview determining technical skills to do the job when technical skill deficiencies only account for about twenty percent of associate issues.
Another key component to the job analysis is the work environment. You need to place the right candidate in the right environment for them to be successful. Evaluate the department or area to determine the atmosphere. With the right skill sets linked to the right working environment your hire should become a valuable asset to your organization.
Skip the Hypothetical
Once you have determined the skills associated with the job, you have to determine if the candidate is capable of performing them. The problem with most types of interview questions is that we ask hypothetical questions like “How would you”, “What would you do” which often produce a hypothetical answer. This creates a dilemma for us as to whether the candidate is capable of the required skills or just knows what the correct answer that you would like to hear.
Behavior or situational based interviewing can help you develop questions that solicit past behaviors in situations that the certain skill was needed and accomplish the task at hand. Remember: “Past behaviors or performance are the best predictor of future behaviors or performance”. We have all heard the saying that history repeats itself. This usually holds true with job performance. Ask the candidate to give you a specific event that they have encountered and have them give you a very detailed and specific description of how they handled the situation. This will help you accurately assess their skills to complete the job and the duties associated with its success.
Get more out of the interview process
A typical interview question would be “How would you address an angry customer”? We all know that anyone who has spent time in the service industry will know what to tell you and what you are looking for. This does not always mean that they will follow that same path. A candidate may answer along the lines of “I would listen to the customer, find out what the real problem is and come to a solution together” This answer sounds great but we all know that if the answer seems too good to be true it probably is.
A behavioral or situational based question will give you the same information you are seeking but a more finite verdict as whether or not they can handle certain situations. In this scenario we would ask the applicant “Tell me about a very specific situation where you had to address an angry or upset customer? What was the situation? What did you do to handle the situation? What was the outcome? When you ask this style of questioning you will be surprised what your interviewee will disclose to you. You may hear something like this. “I had a customer come to my station and they were screaming at me because we were out of the product. I told them to calm sown and they kept yelling so I told them until they can act like an adult I would not help them. They kept yelling so I called the manager and had them handle it. I do not get paid enough to deal with that and that is what the manager gets paid the big buck for. It’s not my job”. The way they handled this customer is a good predictor of how they will handle future situations like this.
One item to remember with behavioral or situational based interviewing is that you can not be timid or reluctant to hold the candidate accountable to answer with very detailed and specific answers. Many times you will hear “Any time that happened… That always happened…” You are in control and this is your interview so make sure that you get the information that you are looking for. The easiest way to convert your current interview questions is adding,
• “Tell me about a specific time that you…” (What ever you are trying to determine that the applicant can accomplish) or
• “Give me a specific example of a time…”
Close the revolving door
Behavioral or situational based interviewing will give you a consistent and more accurate overview of the candidate and help you to make a better hiring decision based on the same criteria. This consistency will ensure that you are rating every applicant on the same scale and their past performance will help you to decide whether they can fill the void in your organization. Behavioral or situational based interviewing will decrease your exposure to potential legal matters by evaluating candidates with the same interview and rating system. The applicants past behavior can be used to prove a non-discriminatory reason for no offer presented to that candidate.
This style of interview will help you decrease or possibly eliminate those “What happened to the person I interviewed,” situations. This style of questioning will assist you with hiring the best candidates that will fit in your organization and possess the skills needed to complete the duties. When you make better hires your business is going to be more successful. Think of all of the extra time you will have now that you are not wasting time being the greeter at the revolving door.
“Thanks for staying; it has been a great 20 years”
Jim Corra is Director of Corporate Training for the Park Automotive Group in Akron, Ohio. In his role, Jim is responsible for sourcing, pre-screening, interviewing, hiring, and training the staff of over 150 associates in three major dealerships. Through his experiences he has developed a unique situational approach to interviewing candidates that has resulted in above average associate performance and retention. He also conducts regular management training courses for both new and experienced managers focusing on setting goals, tracking results, motivating associates, and mentoring for success. More information is available by contacting Jim directly via email at jimc@parkautogroup.com.
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