This is Part 2 of the Talent Integration Series
In the 1989 movie Field of Dreams, Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner) hears a voice as he walks through his cornfield – “if you build it, he will come”. Over the years it has since become part of our lexicon of misused quotes and has morphed into phrases like – if you build it they will come.
We see this kind of thinking seep into talent integration – if you hire them (or promote them) they will contribute. Well, to use another well known phrase – “not exactly”. Why would we honestly believe that hiring or promoting a person into a new job will result in immediate success? The hiring retention success rate is dismal, with some studies reporting a rate lower than 50%. Without knowing the job requirements, what needs to be done, what skills, behaviors and attitudes are required for success, you might as well spend your money on a trip to Las Vegas to roll the dice. The chance of winning is about the same – or maybe slightly better in Vegas, and likely you will have more fun.
The standard ingredients for selecting candidates are: your application and /or resume, the interview and references. And these tell you only what the candidate wants you to know. (Good creative writing and strong impression management skills do not necessarily equal the most suitable candidate.) Have you ever hired someone who appeared perfect for the job only to find out they did not have the ability to do the job? Costly mistake? Exactly! Let’s look deeper.
Just because someone can report experience on a resume does not mean they have the personality to do the job. For example, we saw one of our clients hire a department director who was charged with turning around an underperforming department. He appeared to be well qualified, coming from a department that recently had undergone a very successful turnaround. He was the assistant director. He failed in the new job. One of the reasons is that he was too empathetic and had a very high interpersonal sensitivity toward others. Simply, he could not make the tough people decisions. Nowhere on the resume, during the interview nor with the hand picked references did this come out.
To integrate talent well, you need to start with talent integration potential. Just as you cannot fit a square peg in a round hole, you cannot make successful a person who does not have the basic ingredients for success in the job you need done. This does not mean the person cannot be successful; it just means they cannot likely be successful in a particular job.
How do you know? Consider having all of the selected candidates take a personality-based and job performance indicator that measures a candidate’s potential for success in different business environments. Such an assessment should never be used as the sole criteria for selection. But as part of a selection set, it can be an invaluable tool to avoid hiring the wrong candidate for the job. It can also be used as a tool to coach the new employee in areas that need to be addressed to ensure a fast and effective integration into a new job. We all have derailers (personality traits that can sabotage our success). When we know them, we can deal with them. The better we deal with them, the better we perform in our new job. Everyone wins.
Copyright 2009 Kubica and LaForest
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