You have advertised a job and the CVs are arriving thick and fast. Amongst the CVs is a candidate with exceptional qualifications and a stellar career to date. You hire them only to find out within a few months that they fail miserably in the role. Why is this?
Most businesses fall into a trap of believing that hiring the right people means hiring highly skilled people. So a highly qualified person with a poor attitude can be the wrong person for the role.
Top performing businesses hire for attitude and must have skills. Most new hires do not fail due to lack of skill but because of attitude. So how do you hire a top performer and most importantly, keep them?
If you need anything else to convince you to look out for a high performer, a comprehensive review of selection methods by Frank Schmidt and John Hunter reveals:
- Top performing unskilled/semiskilled workers perform 38% better than poor performers.
- Top performing skilled employees perform 64% better than their poor performing colleagues.
- Top performing managers perform 96% better than poor managers.
- Hiring failures can be prevented if you focus your interviewing energy on
Coachability– top performers talk about wanting to learn and progress, they have the ability to accept and implement feedback.
Self motivation -drive to achieve, tenacious and persistence – they never give up even when things are really hard.
Emotional Intelligence– Top performers have the ability to understand and manage their own emotions and accurately assess others’ emotions.
Want to be valued/recognised for what THEY are capable of.
People whose attitude fits into your culture and want to do the work, as well as being qualified to do the work.
So that is how to spot a top performer, how do you avoid a low performer? Look out for people who:
- Are Negative.
- Blame others for their mistakes and gossip.
- Don’t take initiative and only do the bare minimum expected of them.
- Procrastinate and resist change.
- Like to be really really busy and have lots of variety.
Also remember when interviewing experienced and also inexperienced candidates you might be interviewing people who are very good at selling themselves and have been coached on how to interview and think that they know how to answer.
This is a huge topic and I have only scratched the surface here. If you want help in recruiting top performers, we will be happy to assist.
