Many companies hire and develop people based primarily on skills and knowledge, and not nearly enough on other, equally important success factors, such as whether the job, the atmosphere and the team are a good fit.
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 identify, evaluate and engage the right person. Candidates 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 candidates and invested in ramping them up to be productive, you do not want them to leave, and you certainly don't want others to leave because of them.
SSI, through the Birkman® Profile, offers a multidimensional look at a person:
Passions/interests – What energizes this person? What keeps him or her motivated?
Strengths – How does the individual deal with processes, make decisions and build relationships?
Needs – What support will this person require to leverage his or her passions and strengths?
Stress behaviors – How will this individual act in a non-productive environment?
Management style/characteristics – Does this person think independently? Does he or she 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 of responsibilities or decisions that person would be performing in your organization (i.e., how does he or she make complex decisions or resolve conflict). 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 the best people – and ultimately promoting, developing, and retaining them.
SSI’s approach to critically analyzing success helps you objectively and accurately define your ideal performers – what they really want to do, their natural strengths, and what they require to perform to those 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 description. 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 that gleaned from people who are your current top performers.
While the specific steps might vary based on organizational and project needs, the following steps are typical to the process:
Evaluate job description and discuss 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 used by leadership in hiring the characteristics that have already proved to be 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 between what the recruit needs and the culture and environment he or she 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.
Our consultants then help create targeted development plans to ensure employees attain superior performance.
