Which presents the bigger risk (and expense) to your business?  Making the wrong judgement call on a few management level candidates, or making repeated and multiple mistakes at the junior ‘volume hire’ level?  Are you only investing in getting the right candidate fit at senior level, or have you stopped to consider the impact of mistakes at the mass recruitment end? 

Making a bad hiring decision is the pits.  Leaving aside the obvious cost issue, there’s also the time and energy involved in performance managing an employee who isn’t up to the job in hand, or struggling to integrate an obvious poor fit into an otherwise happy and engaged team dynamic. But, which presents the bigger risk (and expense) to your business?  An ill-judged hire at management level, or multiple misfits at the junior ‘volume hire’ level?  There’ll be a tipping point in this equation that is unique to every business, but, while you’re busy investing heavily in the senior level recruitment process for the elite few, be careful not to take your eye off the volume recruitment ball.

Of course, budgets only stretch so far, and for most businesses the natural order of priority is to invest more heavily in the recruitment process at the more senior end, whilst sticking to the basics for the rank and file.  But is that the best way to build and maintain a thriving business? Sure, your management are making business critical decisions, determining its strategic direction, and carrying the weight of some of the most important decisions that could make or break your reputation.  But, as much as they’re valuable, you also need a loyal, committed and productive army of ‘worker bees’.  Without them the mainstay of your business just wouldn’t happen.  Whatever you make, sell or produce depends as significantly on the output as it does on the strategy and leadership.  This is, after all, why strike action is such an effective collective bargaining tool.

The HR profession already recognises the value of proper, detailed candidate assessment, and the role of HR in any recruitment process is to ensure that it is legally compliant, fair and (as far as feasibly possible) a valid assessment of the required skills and fit for the role.  Hiring decisions that are based on a wing and a prayer just won’t cut the mustard. Poor judgement at the recruitment stage, whether around skills or fit, will have consequences that could be costly and extremely visible. That’s why there’s a very successful market out there for a variety of tools and services all designed to increase the predictive value of the hiring process. Executive search firms, pre employment assessments, personality tests and ability tests are all ‘insurance policies’ that are considered worthwhile investments, and at senior level few companies stop to question the expense.

But ‘getting it right’ should matter at all levels in your business.  So, it stands to reason that the same sort of rigour ought to be applied when hiring throughout the business, from the ground up. Especially when what’s triggering volume recruitment is volume turnover. To coin a phrase, if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.  This can be very aptly applied to the process of recruitment.  If what you’re getting out of your interview process (barring the inevitable occasional ‘bad egg’) is the best talent and fit for your business, then all power to you.  By contrast, though, if your resulting hires are a bit wide of the mark, perhaps the process itself needs some fine-tuning, including at grass roots level.  Hiring by interview alone may be more cost effective on the face of things, but you will pay the price in the end, because low engagement levels and high staff turnover don’t come cheap.

But one major consideration tends to get in the way of implementing psychometric assessment into more junior recruitment processes: cost.   With companies like CEB and Towers Watson charging eye watering sums for their assessment tools, many companies simply can’t extend their budgets to this kind of expense for the mass workforce population. At least, that’s the wider perception.

The first mistake here is to view assessment as a cost. Assessment forms part of a bigger financial picture, within which sits the value of an engaged and performing workforce versus the cost of a vicious circle of employee turnover. Do the maths on the return on investment, and you may find that the money saved by increasing the accuracy of hire and improving business performance might well outweigh the cost of implementing more thorough assessment, even at the volume recruitment level.

More importantly, though …  assessment doesn’t have to be expensive and it doesn’t need to be an administrative behemoth unsuited to mass application.  At least, not our way. At great{with}talent, ‘person – organisation – fit’ is our mantra, and here’s what we believe matters when it comes to assessment:-

• reliable, valid assessments, available to every organisation
• processes that are simple and quick for users/administrators

• a positive and professional experience for every candidate
• great design (it matters and reflects on your brand)
• great technology… that just works
• high quality reports and insights

Anything more than this is just ‘frills’.  We could blind you with the intricacies of the organisational psychology that goes behind our questionnaire construction. We could insist that you spend a large chunk of your valuable budget being ‘accredited’ to administer our tests and interpret our reports.  We could send a delegation of representatives to your offices to take up over an hour of your limited time and drink your coffee, while we ‘sell’ you our products.

Or we could do what we’ve done.  Keep it simple, keep it user friendly and keep it accessible.  By doing that, we also keep it affordable, and we place it back within the reach of all the people that should matter in your business.  That’s everyone.

We’re not saying there’s anything wrong with our competitors; after all, we form part of their alumni.  But we firmly believe we compete on quality and rigour of process, with an unrivalled level of service, a far more affordable suite of products, and above all, insightful data and reporting which points you towards the candidates most likely to fit seamlessly into your organisation.  Take a look at our website.  On www.findingpotential.com you should find all the information you need about our products – what they do, how they work and what they cost. Our ability tests are up to 50% cheaper, and our personality and 360 tools as much as a third of the price of our competitors. And, where there is large volume we are happy to set up contracts that are a single charge for unlimited usage.  We are so confident you will love the service that we give you the opportunity to try it free of charge  (no catches, no annoying subscriptions that you have to cancel, and no credit cards).

 Our products sell themselves, in plain English.   But if you’d like to call us for more information about how we can help you find the best potential at every level of your business, get in touch and we’d be happy to start the conversation.