Hire-Intelligence

Improving Employee Satisfaction: First the Bad News

Posted on September 20, 2011 by rcullison

Improving Employee Satisfaction: First the Bad News.

I love statistics. In just a few words and numbers I often see meaningful data which I can use to write posts like this. Statistics reveal that employee satisfaction is at an all time low. Statistics that corroborate this statement and also show the damaging effects that poor employee satisfaction can cause your organization include:

Only one in three employees is actively engaged at work. (Blessing White)
The lost productivity of actively disengaged employees costs the U.S. economy $370 Billion annually. (Gallup)
In February, June, and October of 2010, the number of employees voluntarily quitting surpassed the number fired or discharged. (US Bureau of Labor Statistics)
78% of engaged employees would recommend their company’s products or services against just 13% of the disengaged. (Gallup)
86% of engaged employees say they very often feel happy at work against 11% of the disengaged. (Gallup)
Less than 50% of Chief Financial Officers appear to understand the return on their investments in human capital. (Accenture)
75% of leaders have no engagement plan or strategy even though 90% say engagement impacts business success. (ACCOR

So let me sum up all of these statistics for you. Employees aren’t having a good time at work, it’s costing their companies beaucoup bucks as a result, and despite this many leaders are doing little about it.

Here are a few more statistics for you. In a poll of 1,800+ U.S. employees, only 14% felt their company’s leaders were ethical and honest and only 12% believed their employers genuinely listened to and cared about their employees. (Maritz Research) Ouch!

The unemployment rate is the highest it has been in decades and yet in 2010 you had employees voluntarily jumping ship into the icy waters of unemployment rather than toil another day for captains they mistrusted and whom they felt took them for granted.

So what is the solution? Well, the way I see it many organizations have hit rock bottom. That’s the bad news. The good news for them is that they can only go up. In my next post I will discuss a few changes that employers can make to dramatically improve their employee morale, which will in turn lead to higher profits.

Ryder Cullison

Hire-Intelligence LLC

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

How to Determine if your Employees can be Outstanding

Posted on September 14, 2011 by rcullison

Recently I read a blog post titled “9 traits that make great employees outstanding!” The nine traits according to the writer are as follows (for a detailed explanation of each check out the article):

A little bit “off”
Know when to reel it in
Ignore job descriptions
Eager to prove others wrong
Praise in public
Complain in private
Ask questions for others
Start work on time
Tinker

What you may notice about these nine traits even without the author’s descriptions is that not one concerns an employee’s work experience or skill set. No where do you see posssession of a degree from an Ivy League college, or even a degree at all. Exceptional computer skills or twenty years of work experience is not present either. While a college education, deep computer skills and extensive experience are a plus, none of them make for an outstanding employee, a great employee or even a good employee.

The “outstanding” traits listed above are behavioral and can’t be determined by reading a candidate’s work history on their resume. They have to be discovered during the interview process but even skilled interviewers can’t assess a candidate’s personality properly with a series of canned questions. Or worse, with a series of random questions.

The best way to determine if your candidate is a bit “off”, if they have the selflessness to praise others or if they know when to “reel it in” is to evaluate them with a behavioral assessment. Behavioral assessments not only provide a great snapshot of the candidate’s
personality, most provide questions for the hiring manager to ask during the interview. These questions will help you determine if the Harvard graduate sitting across from you likes to air their grievances in public or whether they choose to vent in private.

Ryder Cullison

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Video Interviewing: How do candidates feel about it?

Posted on August 22, 2011 by rcullison

Each year more and more organizations look for ways to make their hiring process more productive by cutting costs and hiring candidates more effectively. One solution receiving a great deal of coverage in online blogs and discussion groups is automated video interviewing.

One-way, automated video interviewing allows the candidate to screen themselves online with their webcam. Their interview is recorded, and upon completion the candidate’s recorded video is forwarded to the hiring manager. The hiring manager can screen half a dozen candidates in the time it takes them to interview one.

While the benefits to employers are numerous, the benefits to job candidates are often overlooked. Allowing candidates to interview at their convenience and from a location of their choice (often from home) improves the candidate’s experience. Consider how many candidates with jobs have to sneak out over their lunch break to attend an interview. A recent Aberdeen Group study suggested that one of the best ways to attract top level candidates was to deliver a quality candidate experience and their suggested strategy was to use a video interviewing tool.

Sonru, a UK based provider of video interviewing tools, recently released a white paper entitled, “The Candidate Experience of Video Interviewing.” Their goal was to measure how positively or negatively the process of video interviewing impacted job candidates.

When asked to describe their attitudes towards the hiring company after receiving an invitation to complete an automated interview, 65% responded very positively or positively with only 7% taking a negative stance.

Sixty-seven percent of respondents were either very satisfied or satisfied after completing the video interview with only 13% stating they were dissatisfied.

When asked how the automated interview process greatly benefitted them, 34% stated “No travel” as a primary advantage with 30% stating that flexibility was its greatest advantage. As one candidate stated, “I was able to relax beforehand in my own surroundings and not be on pins about getting to an interview location.”

Aside from the many benefits provided to organizations, this study reveals how video interviewing greatly enhances the candidate’s experience as well. Often overlooked, providing a positive candidate experience is key to attracting top talent. Automated interviewing tools by vendors such as Sonru and Hire-Intelligence are going to improve the hiring process not just for the manager but also for the candidate.

Posted in Candidate Screening, Video, Virtual Interview | 1 Comment

Finding employees or Making employees?

Posted on August 8, 2011 by rcullison

“Find” your employee or “make” your employee?

Nine percent of the country is unemployed, thousands of very talented candidates are looking for work, yet according to Manpower’s Talent Shortage survey, 52% of employers cannot find people to fill their “mission-critical” positions. This is an increase of 14% from last year! Skilled trades people, sales representatives, and engineers are the
positions toughest to fill.

Cliff Zukin, a professor at RutgersUniversity, suggests that a disconnect exists between the types of candidates the education system produces and what employers actually need. This makes sense. As a student you may decide entering your freshman year what you want to be when you grow up, but that doesn’t mean that job will be available when you get out. I can’t remember anyone, my guidance counselor or otherwise, advising me about the degree I should consider pursuing based on the foreseen availability of jobs in four years relating to my major. Today, as in years past, students choose based on what they want to be rather than on employment that will be available.

So where does that leave employers? Not so long ago employers had the power to be selective in their search for the perfect candidate, but now it seems that with no candidates available they have to resort to Plan B. Kate Donovan, managing director of Manpower Group suggests that rather than “finding” employees, companies must now “make” the employees they require. Provided that the candidates have the personality the company needs, training employees with the exact skills to perform the company’s necessary tasks makes perfect sense if you can justify the training costs.

The question is, with over half of companies unable to fill positions, what choice do they have? Many are now partnering with local community colleges to offer post graduation certification programs to prepare candidates with necessary skills.

So what do you think? Is it better to wait until you find the employee with the required
skills, or should you get a competent individual through the door and quickly
begin teaching them the skills they need?

Posted in Recruiting | 1 Comment

Tony Hsieh Builds The Perfect Working Environment

Posted on August 5, 2011 by admin

There is a great interview over at the Executive Street Blog with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. Tony is an amazing guy and he really gets why building a corporate culture is so important to the success of a business. Check out the video and let me know what you think.

Posted in Corporate Culture, Recruiting, Team Building | Leave a comment

Your employees are leaving, and it might be your leader’s fault!

Posted on August 1, 2011 by rcullison

According to the 2011 Talent Survey by Aon Hewitt, 61% of more than 1,300 business professionals surveyed anticipate an increased focus on talent development in the coming year. Forty percent believe there will be an increased focus on hiring, and one-third predict increased turnover. These numbers aren’t hard to understand in light of the attitudes of today’s employees. Over 50% indicate they are, at most, passively engaged at work, while 42% are not energized by their work and 40% are generally stressed to the point of feeling burned out. What does this all point to? A potential mass exodus of
employees as the economy improves and hiring increases.

Even more surprising than the statistics above, 83% of survey respondents believe that senior leaders play a very important role in motivating and retaining talent, but just 33% say their leaders are effective at retaining talent they need for the future, and less than a third believe their leaders are effective at hiring more productive employees.

I’ll sum up what all these statistics mean.

Your employees are not happy at work,
They’re leaving as a result,
You’re going to have difficulty replacing them, and
Your senior leadership is partly to blame for
all of this.

Perhaps placing the blame solely on upper management isn’t fair, but you can’t argue with these statistics. Considering how much it costs to replace a departing employee, maybe it’s time to dive in and re-evaluate your employees’ job satisfaction, which is directly linked to employee retention. A recent study suggests two ways for leaders to increase job satisfaction. One, survey your employees’ attitudes more than once a year to take account of changing shifts in attitudes. Two, announce beneficial future changes which will entice your employees to stay on longer.

I’ll go farther with a third suggestion; behaviorally assess your employees
to ensure they are a good cultural fit, not only for your organization but as
well for the managers under whom they will be working.

Implementing all or at least of few of these suggestions
could save your organization time and money!

Posted in Behavioral Interviews, Employee Retention | 1 Comment

Why do 46% of hires fail within the first 18 months?

Posted on July 19, 2011 by rcullison

The answer to the question above could save your organization a good deal of money in employee turnover costs.

As reported in HR Executive magazine, Leadership IQ concluded a three year study of more than 5,200 hiring managers from 312 public and private organizations. During this period the managers hired over 20,000 employees. The results showed that while 46% of new hires failed, only 19% went on to achieve unequivocal success. This is
perhaps not the most startling result of the survey. The reasons for failing were surprising. Just eleven percent of the employees failed because they lacked the technical competency to perform the job. In all other instances the candidate’s
failure was the result of behavioral inadequacies:

26% could not accept and implement feedback from superiors
23% were unable to understand and manage emotions
17% lacked the necessary motivation to excel and
15% did not have the right temperament for the position

During the hiring process, a manager’s natural inclination is to hire based on the candidate’s technical skills. The study however reveals that most hires fail due to a mis-match between the candidate’s personality and the job. Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ, explains that most hiring managers lack the training to accurately read and assess candidates. Though technical competence is relatively easy to identify, the behavioral make-up of a candidate is harder to determine.

Today, many organizations are turning to pre-employment behavioral assessments
to aid in pinpointing problematic on-the-job behaviors. Most assessments provide interview questions for the hiring manager to ask of the candidate during the interview. These behaviorally based interview questions help determine a candidate’s coachability, emotions and motivation to excel. When considering the high cost of
replacing an employee, can your organization afford not to re-evaluate its
hiring process and implement one of these tools?

Posted in Behavioral Interviews, Employee Retention, Interviewing, Job Fit | Leave a comment

Video-View Featured on RateMyStartup.com

Posted on July 6, 2011 by admin

Just a quick note to let everyone know that our enterprise video interviewing tool Interview4 is featured on RateMyStartup.com today. Take a look and let us know how we are doing. If you are not familiar with Interview4, you can learn more about Interview4.

Posted in Interviewing, Video, Virtual Interview | Leave a comment

Bad hire? Stop blaming HR!

Posted on June 30, 2011 by rcullison

I recently read a great article called, “10 Ways to fix a broken Corporate Recruiting System.” Point number six suggests that the person with responsibility over the hiring process should be the Hiring Manager not Human Resources. Each year companies look for ways to improve employee retention by promoting cultural fit through the use of behavioral assessments. Does it not make sense then that the Hiring manager, the individual with whom the candidates need to fit, oversees the recruiting process?

HR is necessary but they are tired of taking the blame for bad hires. They pass candidates on to the hiring manager based primarily on skills. In addition, however, the candidates really should possess behavioral characteristics that not only gel best with the organization but also with the hiring manager. One of the top reasons an employee leaves an organization is because they don’t get along with their manager. It only makes sense that hiring managers should take responsibility for determining who makes it through their recruitment process.

Now of course many hiring managers, especially those in sales, would rather focus their time on making money than on managing the recruitment process. Isn’t that why we have an HR department some might say? Well HR has plenty to do without trying to figure out whether their candidates will sync with the hiring manager on an emotional and personality level. When you consider that the cost of replacing an employee can be two to three times the employee’s salary, don’t you think it would be wise to invest a little more time into what types of candidates roll through your screening process? Plenty of tools out there are designed to help you hire not only the best candidate, but to do it faster. Put them to use, get involved, and stop blaming HR!

Posted in Behavioral Interviews, Candidate Screening, Recruiting | Leave a comment