Going through the recruitment process, identifying the strongest candidate for the job, while you know nothing about them is the biggest challenge. It is an expensive exercise to get it wrong. But doing your homework on candidate profiling can save you a lot of sleepless nights.
Picture this.
One of your valued employees just resigned or better, business is picking up. You’re drowning in work and you can’t wait for that extra pair of hands. The temptation to hire the first decent person that comes along is real. After all, the sooner you get help, the better you can all go back to business as usual, right?
Hold your horses!
The Hidden Cost of a Bad Hire
Finding the right staff for your business can be tricky.
Some interesting figures from 2019 suggest that a whopping 98% of New Zealand hiring managers have appointed an employee they later considered a mis-hire. In most cases it took them two weeks to six months to come to that realisation.
Apart from the hidden cost of a bad hire (likely to run into the thousands of dollars!), the result also includes increased stress on colleagues and managers, increased workload for team members, a potential drop in productivity and low staff morale.
I think it’s crystal-clear that it pays to get it right the first time around. The real question is: How to do that?
Image courtesy of seek.co.nz
The Ideal Candidate Profile
Going through the recruitment process, the biggest challenge is to identify the strongest candidate for the job, while you know NOTHING about them. Of course, a CV is an obvious place to start, but there is only so much a CV and a quick chat will tell you about a person that is about to become part of your professional family.
The most daunting part? Getting it wrong has all the potential for serious backlash.
We all know there is no such a thing as The Ideal Candidate, but humour us… imagine there is. So ask yourself, how would you describe him or her?
The answer to this question is so important that it is the key to all the steps that will follow. It requires some brutally honest insight into a wide range of things that go well beyond the shining qualifications that will be essential to fulfil the role.
Obviously, it starts with the skillset. What does the role entail? What past experience is needed? What are the ‘must-haves’, what are the ‘nice-to-haves’? This information is the blueprint for a job description.
But job descriptions are not just a list of responsibilities and skills. It’s also important to consider personality, career goals, the company culture and how the person will fit in…or not.
That’s a lot of boxes to tick in a short span of time. And if recruiting new staff is something you only do every so often, it can be a smart idea to get in some professional help.
Considering the Company Culture and Career Goals
Every company has its own specific team dynamics, vision, strategy and company culture and it’s a non-negotiable for the new person to fit in. Many HR executives believe that you can teach a person new skills, but you can’t change their personality.
So think about your company’s vision and goals. What kind of person would complement that vision and these goals? What kind of person would be successful in your company? What kind of person would help the company move forward?
But we also mentioned career goals.
Rushing the recruitment process may fill the role quickly, but will your talented hire stay for the long haul? It’s one thing to find the right person, but what’s the use of that if employee engagements becomes a problem or worse, if you can’t retain them? High turnover can ruin a company’s reputation.
The Usefulness of Candidate Profiling
On a deeper level, when you discuss company culture and career goals, you really talk about a person’s personality and character. And that’s very hard to accurately gauge in one or two interviews.
A person’s personality is very complex. It’s safe to say that anything that helps getting a grasp on somebody’s nature is an utterly useful tool. What the Greeks started as their ‘4 humours’ has been expanded, revised, researched, tested and catalogued over thousands of years since.
These days organisations have reverted to Personality Profiling or Psychometric Testing as we have known it for over 100 years. In essence, it helps us understand ourselves and others.
Used in the recruitment process, it can provide you with pointers that will help you ask the right questions during an interview, it allows you to discover the candidate’s makeup (things they may not even realise about themselves!) and ultimately it will help you pick the right candidate… saving you lots of money in the end.
The nitty-gritty of Candidate Profiling with Konnect Koncepts
Which leaves us to bust some common misconceptions around personality testing. A few stand-out things to know about the Personality Profile Program we offer:
The Personality Profile Program has been in use for over 20 years. It’s tried and tested.
More than 1.5 million users have completed the profiling questionnaire. Again, it’s tried and tested.
It’s perfect for occasional recruiters. No training. No jargon.
Our psychometric test for recruitment is very affordable.
Candidates will find it very quick and easy to use. You will be up and running in minutes.
No software to install (and no set-up fees). Just answer a few questions.
The program we use provides bespoke reports that are specific for recruitment. (We can also provide reports geared toward staff retention and engagement, team development or personal and career development.)
It’s so easy to get an insightful picture on your candidate, it would be a shame to ignore it.
Long story short….
Hiring, screening and assessing candidates can be a daunting task, but it’s an important one. It’s a wise strategy to take the time to develop an ideal candidate profile on one hand and get the best possible insight into a candidates skills and personality on the other. Ultimately, the result will be better hires—without breaking the bank.
Get in touch today to find out what we can do for your company - 09 392 9868