Hire the Right People

Whether your organization has one critical C-Level position to fill or several entry-level positions SSI can help you effectively target the best person to hire.

The more critical the position, the more important it is to hire the right person. A candidate can have great strengths that are tailor-made to your open position but if they are not in the right environment, they may not succeed. And, once you have hired the candidate, invested in ramping them up to be productive, you do not want them to leave, and you certainly do not want others to leave because of them.

Most companies hire and develop people based primarily on skills and knowledge, and not nearly enough on other, equally important success factors, such as stress behaviors, the motivational needs of the person, what attention or details the person needs in his or her environment to perform effectively.

The SSI, through the Birkman® Profile offers a multi-dimensional look at a person:

1. Passions/Interests - What energizes this person? What keeps them motivated?
2. Strengths - How they deal with process, make decisions, and build relationships.
3. Needs - What support will they require to leverage their passions and strengths? 
4. Stress behaviors - How will that person act when in a non-productive environment?
5. Management style/Characteristics - Do they think independently? Do they have a tendency to be consistently reliable?

Targeting the C-Level Executive or Senior Manager Hire
For executive level recruiting in your business, the measurement becomes more qualitative based on the types responsibilities or decisions that person would be performing in your organization (i.e., how do they make complex decisions, how do they resolve conflict, etc.).  In this case the process is as follows:

• Identify the desired behaviors
• Assign a statistical value to each of the desired behaviors
• Ask candidates to complete the assessment
• Analyze the results and create decision making data points

Discuss with leadership the characteristics that emerge in the profile so a knowledgeable decision can be made.

Targeting the Ideal Performer
Does your organization really understand what separates the best from the rest of the candidates? Having a clear understanding of what defines a successful performer will help assure that you are hiring - and ultimately promoting, developing, and retaining the best people it can be.

SSI’s approach to critically analyzing success helps you define, objectively and accurately, your ideal performer--what that person really wants to do, their natural strengths and what they require to perform to their strengths.

When your organization needs to fill several positions that perform the same type of work the responsibilities are often outlined in a well defined, clearly articulated job descriptions. You have many people who are already performing this function well and the SSI process includes using the information you have put in place as well as people who are already performing well.

While the specific steps might vary based on organizational and project needs, the following steps are typical to the process:

• Evaluation of job description and discussion with key managers.
• Obtain profiles (25 or so) of your successful people and statistically assess the success factors.
• Establish the Performance Benchmark - the success factors within a given job to be utilized by leadership in hiring the characteristics that have already proven successful.
• Draft questions to be integrated in a customized hiring assessment.
• Ask recruits to complete the assessment.
• Perform a statistical gap analysis to determine the ‘fit’ of the recruit within the business-whether there are development issues that could be addressed or whether there are factors pointing to too much of a difference for the culture and environment that recruit would be entering.

SSI’s experienced consultants also work with clients to conduct Talent Audits of a workforce in order to ensure that the business hires and retains the right people for the job.

Targeted Development Plans can be created to ensure that employees attain superior performance.