Orienting the New Hire into Your Firm Part 4 in our series “Building a Successful Business One Employee at a Time.” Matching the Right Person to the Right Job is the third article in our series, Building a Successful Business One Employee at a Time. Attracting Quality Candidates and Conducting the Successful Interview can be reviewed in Issues 3 and 4 of our newsletter. In those articles information was provided to help you attract quality job candidates and then how to conduct a successful and effective interview.
Once the best candidates are determined the next step is to find your new hire by administering the Simmons Personal Survey. Survey results are analyzed here at Staff Development Services to determine if the candidate’s character tendency levels match what is needed to succeed in a particular job.
The information provided by the analysis of the survey results is more important to employers today than ever before. Interviews often produce inaccurate results. The survey shows that many people are very outgoing and can make a good “first impression” during the interview. But this high sociability often masks significant performance shortcomings while other people may perform better than they interview. There are actually classes to help people “interview well.” Information from references is often misleading. Negative information is often withheld or the former employer chooses to say little about the candidate. Resumes are often exaggerated, claiming successes that did not occur or inflating small tasks to look like major accomplishments.
Following analysis of the survey our clients receive a customized written report with recommendations. The accuracy of our recommendations is based on the effectiveness of this amazing assessment tool, the information the client provides to us about the job, and our expertise in analyzing the results achieved through years of study and practice.
The Simmons Survey is an assessment that measures a person’s emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is a function of the brain that is made up of emotional drives and behavioral tendencies that are motivated by our feelings. Research has shown that emotional intelligence, in most cases, is twice as important to job success as IQ or skills! The survey measures 13 character tendencies or areas of emotional intelligence using a bipolar scale for each. These areas are emotional energy, stress, optimism, self- esteem, work, detail, change, courage, direction, assertiveness, tolerance, consideration, and sociability.
But why is it important to be able to measure these character tendencies? By doing so we can match a potential candidate’s behavioral tendencies to the needs of a particular job environment. Or, with this accurate measurement, the areas of a person’s behavior that are sound or the areas that need improvement can be identified to help an existing employee operate most effectively in their present position.
The best way to explain how this works is by example. Consider this. A law firm is trying to fill a case manager position. Although there are 13 character tendencies intertwined to determine a person’s true behavior there are three key tendencies evaluated for the “ideal” case manager. This person must possess a high level of detail as they spend most of their time entering data that must be accurate, have moderate courage (i.e. this person is content doing work that they are comfortable and secure with as opposed to doing work that is risky) and moderate direction (i.e. they prefer to follow the procedures established by others as opposed to setting their own course of action.)
However, in this particular law firm it is determined that the case managers actually work more like a paralegal. This law firm gives their case managers more autonomy. Case managers must be able to set their course of action for each workday and work without close supervision. They are also expected to communicate with insurance adjusters, doctor offices, etc. Therefore, this particular case manager needs to have a stronger level of courage and direction than the “normal” case manager. Also, assertiveness becomes a key tendency to consider due to their need to communicate effectively with many different people. The more we know about the job environment the more successful we can be in matching the right person to the right job.
This is not a test that you can fail. Every human being is different and the survey is like an x-ray machine that lets us look inside a person to accurately assess job related strengths and weaknesses. Is he a hard worker or irresponsible, a loner or sociable, patient or impatient, positive or negative, careful or impulsive? In just a few minutes you can learn more about a potential candidate’s ability to perform from reading one of our hiring reports than you can by observing them for several months.
As one of our clients said, “Over the years your services have proved invaluable. When we hired in line with your recommendation every new hire was a success and when we hired against the test it turned out to be a painful experience.”
On the Lighter Side
A lady walks into a drug store and tells the pharmacist she needs some cyanide. The pharmacist said, ” Why in the world do you need cyanide? The lady then explained she needed it to poison her husband. The pharmacist’s eyes got big and he said, “Lady, I can’t give you cyanide to kill your husband! That’s against the law! They’ll throw both of us in jail and I’ll lose my license.”
Then the lady reached into her purse, pulled out a picture of her husband in bed with the pharmacist’s wife, and handed it to the pharmacist. The pharmacist looked at the picture and replied; “Well now, you didn’t tell me you had a prescription.”
