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BUILDING THE RIGHT STUFF: A PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT VIEW ON SELECTION AND NEW HIREES PROGRAMS
By: Mariano Bernardez, PhD.
The fast track of change on the corporative scenario of our days has new faces, mostly young, recently graduated, walking down nervously the aisles of the old companies, becoming the ideal image of "the right stuff" that promises to launch old business into new, global, highly competitive scenarios.
Many companies are experiencing mixed feelings about this process and suffering its early pitfalls. But the quest for a superior kind of performers is getting stronger as competition gets stiff.
I’ve been a consultant for more than 20 years in Argentina; as many people knows, the country’s economy has been booming for more than 5 consecutive years at a very fast rate, creating a growing demand of new hirees form outside and of retraining and cultural change from inside all the top companies…(any resemblance with other countries reallities are pure coincidence; nevertheless, as we have an office in Europe, my colleagues told me that even in the very cautious and conservative France was happening something quite similar…).
In the last two years, I had two kinds of repeated experiences at consulting on top clients: first, I found in one company, during different kinds of performance improvement interventions (consulting, training or CBT/EPSS design, all requiring line participation as subject matter experts) , familiar faces of high potentials coming from…other clients that claimed proudly to have almost the best of young professional programs (and it happened with one person ..on three companies in a one year period …).
The second and harder experience was noticing that the same was happening with HR staff: younger and even younger people were seating at each time more complex positions: and the most disturbing for me of all that was that the only one task they all have in common (i’m talking about half a dozen top companies) were precisely…being in charge of new hirees or introductory programs…just driven by of people who had less than one year in the same company !
The shock of this two repeated experiences (like Groundhog Day’s -the movie- nightmares) led me to start proposing a set of tools and principles that I’ll intend to expose on this article.
The key issue is: the companies need high performers for the future, and that goes far beyond merely recruiting young people for campuses: it requires a deeper look on the goals, targets and ways to get it done right from the beginning.
The purpose of this article is to expose some proven tools and strategies and share some reflections about the myths and realities underlying all the process.
These are some key points to address the challenge in a successful way:
Assessing real business skills in the work scenario is a major task requiring both line and HR commitment to look both on skills and attitudes.
The classic test or interview are no longer enough to measure all the dimensions and get the indispensable cross-examination and commitment of HR and their internal clients.
The assessment center method, developed in England during WW II , allows to observe all kind of dimensions of behavior, both individual and interpersonal on a real scenario to the eyes of the potential supervisors and/or mentors.
For those not familiar with the technique, the Assessment Center consists of preparing dimensions and behavioral indicators very concrete and observable definitions to be assessed by a mixed jury of observers integrated by line managers, technical experts, probable mentors and HR staff and consultants.
During a period that can last from one entire day to a week, the attendants are required to perform a wide variety of activities, ranging from individual paper and pencil specific technical matters related tests and problem solving proposals to group activities like the already mentioned, carefully designed to make emerge the desired behavioral dimensions to be observable to the eyes and ears of the jury.
The BARS system allows to weight each factor separately and sort the attendant’s performances in accordance with it.
The assessment ends by informing separately the results and provide formative feed-back to each attendant on their strengths and weaknesses.
The assessment center avoids the classic interview deviation (although some previous interviews should be taken) that comes fro the hard fact that many times the interviewed are more experienced at doing the "right stuff interview actuation" than the interviewers skills to detect it.
As the change pace gets more and more demanding, experienced interviewers get scarce and over demanded, so the assessment center provides a unique alternative to control that variables and get the facts just in time.
Designing a good assessment center requires all levels participation to be sure that the goals to be achieved at defining "the right stuff" are really right and consensuated.
Top management knows best and therefore has the main responsability to draw an ideal vision upon which core competencies and needs (viewed as gaps between the current and the desired situation) could be defined for the high performers of the future.
Experienced line managers and expert HR staff are essential to develop a detailed list of core competencies to be developed by the candidates in order to make the business grow.
This competencies will also require to be written down and cross checked with external and reliable sources (main clients, strategic suppliers) that have also a different vision of the strengths and weaknesses of the current organization but also a vision of the desired future.
As we are looking for assessing skills and attitudes through assessment centers, the key factor is the quality of definition and validation of behavior indicators that could be recognizable during the assessment center processes for all the observers and evaluators.
Both line managers and HR staff experts must share the definitions and the idea of what they are looking for.
As far as this entire issue deals with prejudices and misconceptions, trait and cultural and fade oriented biases, is essential to make an assessment center for high potential candidates truly effective to observe some "rules of the thumb" learned in the battleground (with some casualties and scars ,I must say)
On skills, keep the performances during the assessment center anonimous; on attitudes and values, go for the pictures and keep in mind the image of each person throughout the entire process (being that a game, a group discussion or simulations)
Give Feed Back to all the attendants (selected or not)
Give the unselected candidates specific feed back and make them part of the prospects database
Begin the coaching process with the selected by introducing them to their mentors.
Is no mistery that the "cult of youth" is a clear society trait:: it generates a number of myths that, paradoxically, conspire against the good development of the coming generation.
Lets compare Myths with Realities:
| Myth | Reality |
| Young = change agent | Young or middle are just age descriptions: change needs a personality |
| Young people are more flexible | Personality traits, education and environment culture creates that attitude |
| X Generation likes to be on his own, with little or no guidance | Everybody needs a mentor to develop a career path and resents not having help |
| New hirees is a two days program | Introducing somebody to the culture and organization until it achieves high performance standards takes from 6 to 12 months of training (on the job), mentoring and coaching |
| We need young blood, quick movers, progress eager young people to make things change | There’s going to be a "blood bath" unless you have clear goals, shared values, a common mindset and team - driven requisites |
| Look outside | Look at both sides of the fence |
The ages of the person:
Each age group has a unique contribution to make: look at the balance and keep these key points in mind:
Being forever young could be a curse and an expensive sport: make a good sell of yourself, take quick decisions, reorganize everything to the verge of chaos, open multiple battle fronts and try to obtain soon some immediate results to show , pick the bonuses and get prepared to run for the next job…
Bibliography Recomended:
Kaufman: Strategic Thinking
(ASTD/ISPI, 1996)
Kaufman , Rojas & Mayer : Needs Assessment (Englewoood
Cliffs, 1993)
Moses - The Assessment Center Method (Jossey Bass, 1987)
Houze - Career veer (McGraw-Hill, 1985)
Storey, Walter: Career Dimensions I, II, III (Pfeiffer & co,
1986)
Dawes, Robin: Fundamentals of attitude measurement (Willey &
Sons, 1976)
Mager, Robert: Goal analysis (The Center for Effective
Performance, 1997)
Shrock & Coscarelli: criterion referenced test development
(ISPI, 1996)
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