Innovative organizations cannot sustain their achievements without fresh ideas and new approaches that are often brought by new employees. Companies that foster innovation not only need highly-skilled labor; They need highly engaged employees: people who love working there, who are motivated to be creative, and whose personal values fit well with the organizational culture. Dan Pink, in his talk on Engagement and Motivation in the Workplace, outlines three main elements of motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy motivates us because we all want freedom and flexibility in our work, mastery drives us because we naturally want to get better at what we do, and purpose is the most vital component in any of our creative endeavors; there’s nothing more discouraging than working on something that doesn’t make sense, lacks direction, or has no real need. Highly motivated and committed people, driven by these elements, are the best for sparking creativity in organizations. Creativity, in turn, serves as the most vital component for the development of innovations.
Finding these “right” people for the organization is a challenge that cuts across all stages of a recruiting process, from generating candidates for an open position to extending a job offer to a selected candidate. Each stage plays an important role in the process of hiring the best available candidate, however this article focuses on generating a pool of qualified candidates as the initial stage of the hiring process. After compiling this pool, the number of available applicants can only deteriorate; therefore, this early stage creates the greatest opportunity for hiring managers and HR professionals to make the most effective selection decisions (Carlson, Connerley, & Meacham, 2002).
HR researchers have long argued that hiring a successful employee not only requires a combination of relevant experience, technical skills, and candidate skills, but also depends on a match between a candidate’s personal values and the culture of the job. an organization (also known as person-organization fit or PO fit). Making a prediction of how the candidate would potentially fit into the work environment is an organic part of the traditional hiring process. However, in most cases, these predictions are quite unstructured and open to personal bias (Grigoryev, 2006), which paves the way for potential hiring errors.
A typical job application includes information about a candidate’s knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA), their relevant experience, and their education. On their resumes or CVs, applicants may also include information about their so-called “soft skills” such as the ability to work independently or as part of a team, leadership aptitude, communication skills, etc. This information is intended to demonstrate to the potential employer how this candidate will fit into their organization, but is rarely taken into consideration until the later stages of the hiring process when more face-to-face communication occurs.
Instead, current recruiting procedures initially use the computerized keyword analysis system, matching a candidate’s experience, technical skills, and abilities (also known as a person-job match or PJ match) with the requirements of the employer. worked. This system produces an initial pool of candidates that is used by hiring managers and HR professionals to invite applicants for an initial job interview. The other important “intangibles” of job suitability are likely to be assessed during the later stages of the hiring process, or in some cases not at all.
Frequently, an applicant, perceived as the best fit for the job during the selection process (based only on technical skills and experience), is unable, or unwilling, to stay on the job due to other non-technical factors. For example, research shows that 46% of twenty thousand new hires at 312 companies left their respective organizations within the first 18 months. Follow-up interviews with more than 5,000 of the hiring managers found that only 11% of employees who left their organizations did so due to a lack of technical or professional competency. In fact, other “intangible” issues, such as motivation issues (15%), temper issues (17%), lack of coachability (26%), and low levels of emotional intelligence (23%) accounted for the reason why the new hire left the company (Grigoryev, 2006). This high number of employees not staying in a job for more than 18 months due to culture-related reasons suggests that companies could benefit from improving recruitment processes to minimize the impact of employee turnover.
Is there a better way to select candidates? In my recent PhD study, I argued that not applying the concept of matching a candidate’s personal values to the organizational culture until late in the recruiting process can potentially weed out a candidate who has a higher PO fit but a lower matching KSA or PJ. as your resume may not even be considered for selection for an initial interview. In this study, I attempted to analyze whether the candidate’s person-organization fit information provided to hiring managers would affect their decision to invite this candidate for an initial job interview. The study was designed as a simulated real-life experiment, where respondents were provided with hypothetical information about a recruiting company, a job description for an open position, and the job applicant’s resume.
The research sample included 57 hiring managers or HR professionals from various companies, who currently have, or have had in the past, the responsibility of screening job applicants and inviting them for personal interviews. All participants were randomly divided into four groups with approximately the same number of members in each of the groups.
The first, “control” group was supposed to mimic the current selection process by reviewing only the applicant’s resume and matching it against the job description. Other, or “treatment” groups were also provided with additional information on the results of a Situational Judgment Test (SJT), demonstrating the appropriate person-organization level for the hiring company. In total, participants were given three versions of the PO Fit level (low, medium, and high), one for each different treatment group. After reviewing and comparing all the documents provided, participants in each group were simply asked to decide if they would invite the applicant for an initial job interview and optionally explain their decision.
To minimize any potential bias, participants were not provided with any data on the scope, objectives, or design of the study; they were also not given any information regarding other treatment groups.
The results demonstrated that the pool of candidates invited to an initial job interview can be significantly changed if hiring managers have knowledge of a job applicant’s PO match in addition to information about this applicant’s knowledge, skills, and abilities. currently derived from the curricula.
Specifically, 69 percent of hiring managers interviewed for this study indicated that information about a job applicant’s PO fit served as a primary reasoning in their decision-making process for inviting the job applicant for an interview. initial. Furthermore, 77 percent of the participants were not going to interview a job applicant who had a low PO fit, even though this applicant had a strong resume. This leads one to believe that if PO suitability information was considered during the selection process, even a resume that demonstrates a strong match of knowledge, skills, or experience to the job description, may not warrant an invitation to a initial interview without a strong match. of the candidate’s personal values and organizational culture.
In summarizing the results of the study, a more integrative approach is needed to select candidates. PO suitability assessment can be performed electronically as part of the application process, before initial information about the candidate reaches the human eye of the decision maker. As an example, innovative organizations may want to assess a candidate’s creative problem-solving skills, associative fluency, or decision-making ability in atypical situations. Additionally, companies may assess a candidate’s openness to differences, her ability to work independently and in a team, or other intangible skills. In general, this approach adds another dimension to applicant data, complementing hiring managers’ subjective input during the interview process with more objective and structured information.
Investment in developing and implementing this approach would not only pay off by obtaining a more balanced pool of candidates who are a better fit for the organization and stay with the company longer, but would also improve objectivity in hiring processes. , further defining hiring requirements and raising awareness. of corporate cultural values among employees and hiring managers.
Making the initial screening of job candidates more comprehensive is just a first step in getting the “right” people involved. However, if that first step fails to bring in these “right” people, the entire hiring process may prove fruitless.
References:
Carlson, KD, Connerly, ML & Mecham, RL (2002). Recruitment evaluation: The case for evaluating the quality of attracted candidates. Staff Psychology, 55, 461-490.
Grigoriev, P. (2006). Recruitment models by competencies. Magazine for quality and participation, winter, 16-18.