Throw the Little Ones Back

By Rebecca Matchette

Continuing with our fishing theme from last month, what should an organization do when it become obvious that a bad hiring decision has been made? Every business wants and needs employees who can contribute to the organization in one way or another. It is important to have the technical skills, the behavioral traits and the interest to do a job well. How is this measured?

Last month we gave facts and figures on reducing turnover and increasing revenue by putting a hiring program in place that will increase the odds of hiring employees who are good fits for their jobs and the organization. What if this did not happen? It’s best to cut losses by corrected the problem. Chances are an underperforming employee is not going to improve on his/her own. The reasons employees ‘fail’ is not because the want to. Sure, there is a lunatic fringe out there who find it fun or beneficial to ‘milk’ the system whether that system is a company, the legal system, their family or whatever. Studies have shown that human beings prefer to make a contribution. We as human beings need to feel useful and one of the most important ways we do that is through our work!

So that hotshot salesperson you hired in January has not performed up to expectations in September. What are the possible reasons assuming the requisite experience and other base qualifications were there upon hiring? This is the risk when hiring by resume and experience alone, particularly in sales. Those initial qualifications should be used for 1^st and 2^nd line screening for phone and in-person interviews but what about after that? The problem may be a bad job fit. Much the same way we analyze our incoming candidates, job- fit assessments can be used to identify a bad job fit after the hiring has taken place. It can also be used to determine if an employee can be coached to a higher level of performance or if she/he should be moved into another department (or, in some cases, out the door!).

In sales, if you replace top performers with bottom performers, the scenario may look like this:

• Quota is reached or exceeded consistently thus increasing revenues

• Salespeople are firing on all cylinders consistently

• Coaching and supervision time is reduced
• Turnover is reduced because there is close job-fit for the employees

You can do the math yourself, but just in case, next month we will show some historical figures that prove how job fit consistently contributes to the bottom line!