10 Nov How To Evaluate For The Right Hire
How to Evaluate and Assess For the Right Hire in our Organization?
Christopher Hart here from Transforming Lives Coaching and Consulting, so we’re talking about how to lead, how to be strong leaders in different areas and environments, anything from business to organizations to family, et cetera. And today’s post is titled, How to Evaluate and Assess For the Right Hire in our Organization. And so what I want to talk about with this is the importance of having an assessment process for your hiring and your people evaluation processes.
So let’s take a look at this.
One of the things I tend to reference when talking about this product… or excuse me, this understanding of evaluation and assessing is I use an analogy about making a cake. If we were making a cake, and let’s say I wanted to make a cheesecake, I don’t know, chocolate chip peanut butter cheesecake; if you’re making a chocolate chip peanut butter cheesecake are you going to go out and just try and wing it? Are you going to say “Maybe I’ll put some cheese in there… cream cheese, maybe some whipping cream, couple of eggs, I don’t know, maybe I’ll… how many teaspoons? I like peanut butter, put six or eight teaspoons…”
No, you’re not going to wing it, you’re going to go on Google and you’re going to find a model by which you can follow that tells you this ingredient list is one that you can follow to get the result that you’re looking for. And so hiring and evaluation needs to be that as well. You need to have some evaluation processes, meaning what are you evaluating against? You see if you just evaluate against your emotions rather than a certain set of processes by which you’re going to determine yes, this is the right person, or no, this is not the right person, you’re going to be left to your emotions; and if you’re left to your emotions in the hiring process I can promise you one thing, you’re going to lose at the game of business because business is a logical approach not an emotional approach.
And so what tends to happen, we have very limited components of our hiring processes, meaning, “I don’t know, I’ll take a look at a resume and I’ll go, “Ooh this resume looks good. Nothing to evaluate against, I just like what’s in it all right, so let me call them for an interview.” And that person they put on their best dress, they spray themselves with the latest and greatest cologne or perfume and they put their lipstick on and they look their absolute best, kind of like a first date. And you go “Ooh this person looks pretty or handsome…ooh they smell great…ooh I like what they had to hear, let me give them one more interview.”
So you give them a second interview and they BS you or tell you exactly what you wanted to hear, and you “Oh Chris this one’s perfect. They had the experience…they told me this…they told me that…” Well let me say something, that’s their whole job to do that. In the hiring process people’s whole job is to influence you to make you believe that they are the best thing since sliced bread, they’re looking for a job.
But here’s the thing, if you actually had an evaluation process AKA your ingredients list, you see if I’m baking that cake and it says to put in a cup and a half of cream cheese, a cup of flour, two eggs, some salt, whatever, it has some very detailed ingredients. If I follow those ingredients as closely as possible then the likelihood that I’m going to get the result that I’m looking for is highly probable.
Now if I say, “Uh, two eggs like nah. I like eggs, I really like eggs, I usually have two or three eggs in the morning. Let’s put six eggs in this cake. Cream cheese, a cup and a half…nah, let’s two cups…nah, I don’t like cheese that much, let’s do one cup. Oh it calls for four tablespoons of peanut butter…nah peanut butter’s got protein in it, let’s do to a cup of peanut butter.” What’s the likelihood or probability that you’re going to get the end result that you’re looking for? Highly unlikely. Same thing in hiring. When you go and establish your hiring processes …Scott, we want Billy Ray. Hey look, I’m meeting up with Billy Ray a little bit later, he’s running behind today because he’s pretty busy with all this breaking news that’s happening. So stand by Scott, Billy Ray will be around a little bit later, so hang tight… So if we have these hiring processes, we want to have things that we’re going to evaluate against. What does the right hire look like? What’s the personality that I’m going to assess against through different personality assessments like DISK or Wonderlic?
What’s the behavioral profile?
What’s the behavioral profile? Whether it’s an activity vector analysis, any of the other personality or behavioral assessments that you’re going to use that’s out in the corporate world today.
What experiences are you looking for?
What’s the resume…what’s the ideal resume look like before you even look at a resume? Could you fabricate that ideal resume to evaluate against saying if this type of pattern, if this type of experience shows up like that’s one I know.
And then can you build a process by which each stage has a red light/green light element and component to it? Meaning if I’m going to establish like a DISK personality and I’m looking for a high D and a high I, if anything other than that shows up in the particular range that I’m looking for on that scale then that’s a red light, like I don’t move any further. But if it shows up in the scale that I’m looking for then I go, “Okay go to the next step, green light, go.” And I ask them for their resume.
And let’s say I’m looking to hire a salesperson, well guess what? In a resume I’m looking for some sales experience. If I have someone that’s applying for a sales position in my organization and all their resume has to show me is nothing but admin, data entry, being somebody’s assistant, that’s not the ideal candidate, especially if I’m looking for someone with a little bit more experience and not so much coming into my organization just to look to be able to be trained.
So I understand I have one assessment that tells me to move to the next stage, if they pass that stage, the resume stage, then I’m moving to a little bit more in-depth assessment which is what I call the behavioral assessment. And then they have to fall in a particular range that I establish that determines that their behavior patterns best lend to a successful… or the success in the role that I’m hiring towards. And if they match that then I’m going to bring them in and we’ll evaluate them; I’m going to do maybe a little bit more of a comprehensive interview. I have some stages along the way that dictate red light/green light. And I don’t make it a whole big process, I make it individual stages, each stage dictates and determines whether I move forward or I stop and I move somewhere else.
See here’s the thing, if you create those that basically becomes your ingredient list, and if you follow your ingredient list to the tee then what happens is when you get done with putting all the ingredients in then it’s just a matter of what do I need to do next which is bake the cake; and baking the cake is kind of like your training processes, we’ve kind of talked about that.
You have to have something to evaluate against.
So here’s what I want you guys to understand about assessing and evaluating hires of people in your organization, you have to have something to evaluate against, it cannot be just your emotions. You can’t wake up one day and say “Hey I want to fire everyone,” you have to have very specific components you’re evaluating against. You cannot tell a coach, a mentor, or consultant like “Oh this person is to the right person,” based off of what? If someone tells me “Chris I think I found the right person,” I tell them, “No you haven’t because if you only think then you don’t know, you don’t have evidence.”
But if you have evidence that you’re measuring against then you don’t think, you know you found the right person. And then all you have to do is defend that with some logical approaches and saying “Look I said the perfect person was XY and Z, and XY and Z showed up.”
So that’s some… that’s kind of a way that you can look to grow your organization as far as assessing people to determine what is the right hire; and even people who are already in your organization. Go back and establish some things that are going to be concrete evidence that are going to dictate whether or not that person stays or goes in your organization. So hopefully this brought some value to you guys.
To my Marine friends out there, happy birthday to the Marines. I don’t know the birthday song otherwise I’d sing it but maybe one of my Marine buddies will get live on Facebook this evening and sing the song and let us all enjoy. And to all those veterans out there, tomorrow is Veteran’s Day, just understand something, this country is awesome because of you. We thank you, my family thanks you and I know the United States of America thanks you for your service to this great nation. So continue to serve on, lead strong, remember one thing you’re a child of God. God loves you, so do I. Have a blessed rest of your afternoon, lead strong. Take care.
About the author:
Over the course of 8 years, Christopher Hart went from an enlisted Private First Class to a Commissioned Officer-Captain. In 2005, Christopher chose to move on from his military career to focus on starting a family and embarking in the world of entrepreneurship. Christopher’s passion is now working to help others be the BEST version of themselves and helping them Lead others to the same!
To learn more about Christopher Hart or to get in touch with him regarding a coaching program you can email him at Chris@TransformingLivesCoaching.com
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