Your friend is an entrepreneur with a background in sports medicine who has star
ID: 1091210 • Letter: Y
Question
Your friend is an entrepreneur with a background in sports medicine who has started his own business. He now has 50 employees and his business is continuing to grow. Consequently, he is constantly hiring new employees such as therapists. Currently, he takes candidates out to dinner and if he likes them he hires them. He knows that you are taking this course so he asks you to recommend 3 hiring methods that have been shown to be effective in predicting future performance of job candidates.
For each method that you recommend, he then asks you for 1 or 2 practical tips or additional information regarding each of the methods. In other words, in these 4-6 points please give him specific, practical advice that will help him implement and use the hiring methods.
Explanation / Answer
Four hiring practices of highly successful organizations
The study revealed that the organizations with the most effective hiring policies were more likely to use the following four practices:
"Organizations should be using the four key hiring practices more, because they make it much easier to find the best candidates," Burton says. "The current news of layoffs may be creating the illusion that it will be easier to hire good people, but that's a mistake. It may be easier to get a mound of resumes, but it will continue to be difficult to find the right people for the right job."
Effective hiring practices
Job interviews in which candidates describe specific examples of their skills: The survey reported that 94% of the organizations already use this kind of interview, which a variety of studies have shown is the form of interviewing that most accurately predicts future performance. In fact, according to the DDI/ERE survey, such "behavior-based interviewing" is so successful that nearly 40% of the organizations in the study are planning to do even more in the future.
Automated resume screening and search: In the next three years, nearly half of the organizations surveyed will increase their use of automated resume screening and search, a process which has made it much easier to screen, organize and find resumes. In addition, 12% of the organizations will make greater use of computer-assisted interviewing to further streamline the selection process.
Assessments: Though assessments and simulations have proven their effectiveness, the survey revealed that a majority of organizations do not use any form of assessment, and less than 30% reported extensive use of testing and assessment methods. In the next three years, however, organizations will make greater use of testing methods, including assessments and simulations that measure job knowledge and abilities, and also how well a candidate's motivations match up with the company culture and the job.
At the same time, it is important to realize that an organization must use the right kinds of tools for each job. "An ability test for a worker in a manufacturing plant is a far cry from the complex assessment tools needed to evaluate top executives," Burton says.
Growing leaders
The survey did point out that when organizations filled a mid- or senior-level leadership position, in general, external candidates were selected more often than internal candidates, a practice that may hint at a weakness in selection practices. "Although there are times when external candidates have skills internal candidates do not, our research at DDI has shown there are many benefits to 'growing your own leaders," Burton says. "Internal candidates have knowledge no outside candidate can have, and it's easier to get an accurate and in-depth assessment of internal candidates' strengths and weaknesses."
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