I think there are at least three issues we need to get over:

1. Lack of a standard approach to job analysis and job description. Vendors and academics push their proprietary (and typically incompatible) definitions of “job description” methodology with the result that stakeholders are simply confused. It matters little whether the job should be defined by some taxonomy of “traits, competencies and skills” or “knowledge, skills and experience” or some other schema. What matters is “agreement” on some methodology and consistently applying it. The problem is that even within a firm, the recruiters, developers, hiring managers and others often fail to have a common approach. I believe your 1st and 2nd points make this perfectly clear. We can help drive this profession-wide however by pushing standardization of terms and definitions.

2. Confusion over talent versus performance. In engineering “potential” energy has a very clear definition. It’s a theoretical construct that, when translated to “work” or released energy always has a gap. The gap could be that the potential energy was miscalculated (but more often it is due to the loss of energy directed to things other than work). Similarly, recruiting is bringing the “potential” to perform to the plate. Recruiters working with their colleagues need to ensure that the “talent” is theoretically capable of performing but, that expected performance is dependent on much more than the starting conditions. I’m in favor of holding staffing responsible for the starting condition and then jointly with others responsible for how we apply what we learn from the result.

3. Failure to develop a measurement culture in Staffing. Too much data is missing. Too much “gut feeling”. No discipline in collection methodology. Too many “wows” without support. Survey after survey based on “perception” of what is effective or efficient w/o demanding any proof of those beliefs. We need to all stop, pull back and be better BS detectors.

Here are some sample criteria:

Expected Performance per Criteria Rating (1-5)

- Technical proficiency
- Leadership skills and motivating others.
- Interpersonal skills and building successful working relationships.
- Team skills and ability to work interdependently.
- Conflict management and diplomatic skills.
- Self-motivation and drive for results.
- Fitting in to the organization’s culture.
- Seeking/fostering positive change and driving for continuous improvement.
- Representing the organization well to external entities and stakeholders.
- Going beyond formal job description to contribute outside of own role.

Corey

A recruiter’s job is to help them create that definition. The place to start is to unravel the skills, competencies, and traits of the best performers.”

This quote from point #1 should be in 48 bold font plastered on the walls of every recruiters’ work space.

Excellent, succinct article, Kevin – right on the money, again.

My personal belief is that ATTITUDE is the most important criteria and you can’t really do a reliable test for that. This of course assumes that the candidate has the basic skill set needed – don’t want to fill an accounting position with someone that can’t do basic arithmetic no matter how great their attitude is!

Having been around the block for more than one round, I still believe that personal relationships starting with the initial phone interview are what makes good hiring possible. You can’t automate personal relationships!

Anyone that has been around for a while will remember that the “Internet” was going to be the solution to all our hiring problems – how did that work out for you?

Regarding the comments above, we should expect to see upwardly mobile marketers and web developers flood into the market with amazing feats of magic performed by– my favorite– “artifical intelligence” algorithms. I even see the rebirth of the all but extinct “Self assessed skill match solutions”. Einstein once said, “We should make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.” There are dozens of vendors racing into the ’simpler’ space, driven by the long lines of candidates that form up (virtually) when jobs are posted.

Accurately selecting the best talent is not rocket science, but it is people science (Organizational Psychology). There are lots of short cuts that create the illusion of value— just none that actually work. Parsing resume text doesn’t work. Self-reported skill ratings don’t work. Personality-keyed type or trait tests don’t work— if you define ‘work’ as correlating with actual job performance higher than resume sorts and unstructured interviews. And THEY capture only 20% of the Talent Value Potential of a perfect assessment. There are solutions that do work. Validated tests of mental ability, performance constucts, job-related behavioral interviews, and situational judgement tests work, but they aren’t effortless and they take some time. They do capture from 40 to 54% of the Talent Value Potential individually, and as much as 63% when combined.

Those of us who read the published literature on the People Science side of things know that QOH on day 1 does correlate with QOH on day 360, since so much of QOH relates to mental abilities which do not change much over time. Other characteristics related to success don’t change much either. Still, Joshusa makes valuable points concerning the role of factors other than QOH as determining whether someone with great performance potential (High QOH) can deliver value and remain employed when a bad boss or a counter-productive culture prevails.

Therefore, what is really being measured is perceived QOH before these candidates are acted upon by the external environment, variables, type of manager (i.e. autocratic vs. democratic, etc.)

Assuming that someone who is a 5-star QOH on day 1 (perceived) will continue to operate as a 5-star on day 360 . . . is no better than attempting to predict a mutual fund’s performance based upon its previous Morningstar rating. There is little to no correlation — case in point: Consider how 1-star rated (Morningstar) funds outperformed 5-star rated (Morningstar) funds in 2008. Yeah, no kidding.

Let me give you another example: I have, in certain cases, not presented grade-A, *maverick-like* candidates to hiring managers that are highly autocratic. Put simply, an autocratic hiring manager has great difficulty managing a maverick . . . and mavericks resist micro-management. Yes, there is the inverse as well (i.e. maverick hiring managers and candidates that need heavy direction.) Attempting to forecast their future performance based on past performance would be futile due to the different environmental variables. It just wouldn’t be apples-to-apples.

Now consider this angle: If I worked as an Internal Recruiter, and day 1 QOH was a component of my overall compensation, do you think I would push for the hiring of this 5-star day 1 QOH candidate, even though I instinctively knew it would be a train-wreck situation after 6 months? Also, considering that the average Internal Recruiter tenure has dipped to 12 months or less, would it be in my best interest to think in terms of creating long-term value for the organization? As you can see, I’ve laid out several things to consider; none of which are black-and-white considerations.

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