Do you find yourself continually engaged in the vicious circle of hiring talent, working towards retaining them, finally to lose them or to fire them? Have you paused and thought what is wrong where?
In this blog, I share the secret to hire the right talent that stays with the organisation and grows with the organisation.
In most of the cases when we are hiring we consider the skills and the competencies of the candidate. For example, if one wants to hire a salesperson one usually looks for evidence of charm, smart talk, inclination to travel, attractive personality, strong persuasion skills, and the list goes on. However, all these attributes can easily be acquired and accentuated through training and experience. Even considering this scenario, a recruitment specialist hires a candidate with all of these traits yet can he/she be assured of superlative performance by this salesperson? The answer is most likely to be negative.
Therefore, instead of hiring for what an executive should be doing while performing a particular role, one should be hiring for why an executive would perform the responsibilities attached to that role.
In the above example, if the salesperson is a people’s person who likes to solve their problems, he/she will be able to present those features of the product/service that help to overcome a challenge in the life of the customers. His/her affinity to spend time with people will naturally encourage him/her to be a better listener, to use his/her charm to maximum advantage and persuade the customers. Thus, the salesperson performs better because he/she resonates with the role and responsibility of his/her job.
The next why that one should be considering while hiring a new employee is the reason for that employee to join one’s organisation. There should be a confluence of the personal ideology of the candidate and the ideology, vision or mission of the organisation. Only such employees demonstrate belongingness to the organisation, ownership for their role and responsibilities, and confidence and satisfaction in their work.
Simon Sinek has talked extensively about employing why for hiring and for everything to do with leading in his book ‘Start with Why’. The Service Selection Board for recruitment of Officers into the Indian defence services employs a comprehensive methodology for extracting the why at the time of recruitment. The training for combat and other operations is imparted after the selection of the Officers.
So, how does one find out the why at the time of recruitment? There are many simple ways of extracting the intrinsic reasons for an individual to be motivated to take up a role and of determining if these are in alignment with the organisation’s reasons.
The first is to administer a questionnaire seeking answer to questions regarding the drive and motivation of the person. The responses should be supported by evidence or sharing of episodes from the applicant’s life. This questionnaire can be shared as an easy Google form with the applicant.
The second method to know the correct why is through a deep behavioural interview by an expert that encourages the candidate to share openly about himself/herself.
Finally, a well planned and executed on-boarding programme can closely examine the alignment between the new employee and the organisation. The final appointment can be confirmed after evaluation and performance in this programme.
I hope this blog is helpful in hiring better and curbing attrition.
Link to the video: