Selection of right employees key to success in management
Location, location, location.
This is a tongue-in-cheek answer to the question, "What are the three
most important factors for success in retailing?" The point emphasizes
the utter importance of site selection for retail success.
Similarly, one might ask, "What are the three most important factors
for success in management?"
I suggest the answer is:
Selection, selection, selection.
Employee selection is so crucial that nothing else -- not leadership,
not team-building, not training, not pay incentives, not total quality
management -- can overcome poor hiring decisions.
Some companies now place so much emphasis on selection that it takes
three to six months to complete the process. Instances where a person
interviews one day and comes to work the next are about as rare as the
sighting of a white elephant.
Application forms still initiate the hiring process. But the forms ask
for much more detail.
Experts analyze the data and match it to research-determined profiles.
This narrows the list to people who have a high potential for success in
the company.
Prospects who clear this hurdle are then subject to extensive
paper-and-pencil testing.
Practiced interviewers then grillcandidates who make the "select
list."
The aim of selection to find the best person for the job may not have
changed. But today's consequences of making a bad hire can be severe.
Management quiz
In your typical hiring process, do you:
- 1. Ask employees to complete extensive application forms?
- 2. Compare application-form data to research profiles?
- 3. Require testing?
- 4. Use experts to do in-depth interviews?
- 5. Stress attitudes and teamwork more than skills?
- 6. Take as much as three to six months to complete the process?
- 7. Refuse to hire a person who does not meet your standards?
- 8. Make use of "hiring professionals?"
- 9. Avoid selecting talented but uncooperative people?
- 10. Spend at least double the time and effort as you did 10 years ago?
Three or fewer check marks may suggest a need to improve your hiring
process.
Source:The Tampa Tribune -December 4, 1995 - GERALD GRAHAM of Knight-Ridder Newspapers
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