Insights Into Hiring Practices

When traditional thinking doesn’t serve business success

Sometimes, long-standing conventions disguise themselves as best practices — when, in fact, they constitute dangerous risks. For example, the traditional protocols of hiring consist of learning about candidates’ experience and education through their résumés and interviews. This path to filling a position is so ingrained in our business psyche that many of us don’t question its effectiveness.
 

Did you know that 72 percent of résumés are overstated, 61 percent omit pertinent information and 31 percent contain untrue information? This résumé fraud alone is a strong predictor of workplace non-cooperation and reduced job performance.
 
How’s that working out for your business?
 
There is a better, more scientific means of selecting employees that will boost your bottom line. It’s called competency-based hiring, and it brings major success to companies of all sizes and across many industries.
 
Assessing overall attitude and aptitude for a position, competency-based hiring tools yield powerful results in selecting candidates based on the soft skills proven to comprise 75 percent of why people succeed (or fail) in a job. Competency-based hiring prioritizes an applicant’s ability to perform like the company’s existing top performers. Instead of focusing on education and experience, competency-based hiring evaluates the soft skills required for a position. It’s also long-term hiring because these skills are changeable and can be developed. So, it’s hiring based on potential, not just a snapshot in time of where someone is today. 

Part of the human condition is that we’re imperfect. Encompassed in that limitation is the fact that we all develop preconceived opinions in an attempt to navigate our way through the world. Bias is universal, and a particular bias may be favorable or unfavorable toward someone or something. It’s when we’re oblivious to our biases that our company’s profitability suffers and our risk increases. Biases that stem from unconscious origins are, naturally, outside the awareness of a person who expresses them. These biases can undermine the logic of hiring the right candidate for the right position when they are present in the hiring process, resulting in bad decisions and significant financial impact to companies.
 
Diversity in the workforce allows a company to better understand various market sectors and psychographics. Companies develop superior methods of tailoring sales approaches, product development and customer service tactics. It’s common sense as well as good business sense: a varied employee base is better suited to deliver to a varied marketplace. The best way to override our human imperfections and increase all forms of diversity in the workplace (and thereby compete successfully in the marketplace), is to supplement human involvement in your hiring practices with science. The easiest way to do this is by using modern technology and competency-based hiring practices. 

Placing a premium on the diversity of all types — ethnic, gender, generational, neurodiversity and more — attracts employees who are motivated and loyal. The atmosphere in a company that creates real teamwork produces mutual trust and increased productivity.
 
When a competency-based tool is used as the first step to prioritize applicants, employers frequently find their optimal interview candidates within the first five to 10 applicants, rather than analyzing hundreds or thousands of résumés. Companies who use competency-based tools to hire people who are more like their top performers decrease hiring time and reduce turnover. They become more efficient in the hiring process. They also increase their brand effectiveness and relevance in the global marketplace.
 
Recruiting and retaining the right talent makes it easier to nurture and fine-tune their skills as these employees move into senior leadership roles. In a diverse workplace, a wealth of perspectives and views flourishes — and fresh ideas are valuable assets to any growing company who wants to raise its levels of innovation and become a leader. 

Hispanics, African Americans and Asian Pacific Islanders will reflect 54 percent of the U.S. population within the next few decades. Companies would be wise to ready their leadership and workforce with a comprehensive cultural intelligence strategy. To strengthen their overall value proposition, they will need to apply the resources that ultimately create new revenue streams. That means hiring people who reflect the complexity and richness of our society.
 
Right now, companies are losing top diverse talent and consumers to emerging small businesses and mid-market companies owned by Hispanics, African Americans, Asians and other groups who possess the cultural know-how to nurture relationships with their colleagues belonging to the demographic shift.

Companies can meet their need for diversity by measuring the soft skill competencies required of top performers while eliminating susceptibility to unconscious bias. Using a competency-based hiring tool decreases unconscious bias. It identifies common behaviors among top-performing employees in a given job role based on objective and measurable performance data. It calculates mindsets and behavioral proclivities that differentiate top performers from low performers.
 
Employers select the top performers in a given position based on metrics related to abilities, not on like ability or any of the other insidious variables we can unwittingly fall prey to. When companies identify performers based on scientific data, unconscious and subjective issues are minimized. When applicants with top-performer mindsets and behavioral proclivities are moved to the next phase of the hiring process, the pool of applicants broadens and the applicant pool is naturally more likely to be diverse.
 
Discover your own implicit associations about race, gender, sexual orientation and other topics through the Implicit Association Test (IAT), the most popular tool for measuring implicit bias, at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/.