In an un-settled environment, it is tempting to rush to fill open positions and bring relief to often overworked existing employees. But the need to hire well-qualified people ready to hit the ground running must be balanced by the fact that this decision must serve the longer term.
So, how can you anticipate how someone will perform down the road?
It is critical to take a close look at the specific role you are hiring for and determine what it takes to succeed in that role.
Here’s a simple three step approach you can follow:
- Identify and assess your top performers. Look at your current stars for a specific role to gauge what attributes make them top performers.
- Create a model for the job. Once you’ve identified top performers and critical attributes, you can build a performance model/objective picture of what it takes to succeed in the role.
- Evaluate future candidates against the performance model. Through assessment, you can gauge each potential candidate on how strong they are in the attributes identified in the model you just created.
PXT Select is an example of a data driven assessment that works this way. It measures for “job fit” to a unique performance model (created by assessing top performers and job analysis survey) and provides benchmarks on the candidate’s thinking style, behavioral traits, and interests. Measures proven to be the strongest determinants for potential long-term success in a role.
In addition to an overall job fit score and breakdown on critical attributes, it suggests specific interview questions based on the candidate’s strengths and challenge areas and what to listen for in the answers.
Hiring Successfully for Dummies delves deeper into this topic and how to improve your hiring practices using data driven insights on candidate fit. Click here for a free copy of this resource.