There was a time in the world of work when, if you placed a recruitment advertisement in your local newspaper, the greatest challenge would have been finding the time to sift through the 30-40 applications you received.
Nowadays, there is little possibility of too many people applying for a position. In today’s employment market, if four or five people apply you can consider yourself very lucky. Often, companies advertise several times and get no applicants at all.
When organisations ask why that is, the usual reply is that there is a shortage of skills. And they are right – we do have a shortage of skilled people – but there is another, much bigger reason for the dearth of applications.
Between 60 and 70 million children were born in the year to eighteen months after the end of World War II – the beginning of the ‘baby boomer’ generation referred to in the cover story of this magazine. But in the 1960s, the contraceptive pill was introduced to the world and in the year to eighteen months after that momentous event estimates are that between 15 and 20 million children were born (the baby bust!). The birth rate has never again risen to those dizzy post-war heights. So if you do the maths, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that the reason not many people are applying for positions is that the bulge has moved on and there are no longer as many job-seekers out there.
So what we are facing is not just a shortage of skills (though we are facing that as well) but a world-wide shortage of people!
The result is that franchisors and franchisees nationwide are having more difficulty recruiting and retaining good staff than ever before. If they want to stay in business, they have to overcome the challenges presented by these changes.
The Cost Of Staff Turnover:
There are wide variances on the estimated cost of staff turnover. Expert opinions vary between a starting point of around 75% of the annual salary for that position up to a staggering 24 times that person’s salary!
There is a tendency for people to think that the only investment required to find a new person is the cost of the advertisements and someone’s time to interview the candidates. You will see how and why the costs can escalate to such an alarming degree if you factor in any of the following:
The deterioration in the incumbent’s productivity once they decide they want out.
The cost of their lost productivity once they start sneaking out for interviews.
The knowledge they may take with them once they go.
The clients that may follow them.
The cost of retraining the new person.
The time it takes to bring the new person up to the speed and productivity level of the former person.
The mistakes they will make until they are up to speed.
Now you are facing the hidden costs of recruiting. If you are accountable for the bottom line and have high turnover, you now have a very strong business motivator for getting this recruiting thing right.
Skill vs. Attitude – the 80/20 Principle
“I ask people who know American business well to name three or four chief executives who really made a difference. Not short term, but people who really sustained superb performance. Almost never does anybody mention a Harvard MBA, let alone any MBA.”
- Henry Mitzberg, Professor of Management, McGill University
Mitzberg addresses what I believe is the fundamental principle of recruitment – 20% skills and 80% attitude. For example, if you have a person in your team with a negative attitude, it will take approximately five positive people to overcome their energy!
Yes, we need a person with the right skills to do the job, but even at senior levels of the organisation (in fact, especially at the senior levels) we need the right skills plus a great attitude.
For example, a busy manager is down to the last two candidates for a position. One has the perfect skills and can start straight away, but is brash and arrogant; the other doesn’t yet have all the skills required but has an amazing ‘can-do’ attitude. Which candidate should the manager choose?
The answer is always the person with attitude. Yet in real life, most managers would select the candidate with the skills because there would be little or no training required; they can apply their skills immediately.
The problem is what might happen in the long term. If there is an attitude problem, it will surface sooner or later and it will cost the company further down the track.By far the better solution is to take the person with the great attitude and be willing to invest the time and training to bring them up to speed.
Finding Out About Attitudes
Always ask candidates to complete an application form. Yes, invite people to send in their CV’s, but mail or fax or email an application form to them as well. This gives you the opportunity to gather a lot of vital information before you even start the interviewing process.
There are a number of specific questions which you will need to ask (included in the book – see below). You are able to ask, and candidates are required to answer, questions that are relevant to the position. Any deliberate untruths by the employee which are uncovered later may justify dismissal.
Once you get to the interview stage, you will want to discover more about each applicant’s attitudes.
Here are some general questions which will encourage people to open up:
What are the things that stress you, and how do you manage those stressors?
What motivates you to do your best work?
What aspects of your previous jobs did you like the most?
What management style are you most comfortable with?
What management style are you least comfortable with?
What are the qualities you believe you bring to this job?
Tell me about the worst co-worker you have ever had and why were they so bad?
What excited you about this position?
When glancing through a newspaper or magazine, what type of articles usually leap out at you?
What is the greatest obstacle you have had to overcome in your life?
What has been your greatest achievement?
Who has inspired you the most during your life?
Given the multi-cultural, mixed gender nature of the New Zealand workplace, another sensitive question you may need to ask at the face-to-face interview stage is:
Q. In this position you may need to take instructions from male and female co-workers. Is there any reason why this would be unacceptable to you?
And two questions I think every candidate for every position should be asked are:
Q. Do you have any additional skills or attributes that we haven’t explored which may be of relevance to the position or useful for the company?
Q. What do you know about this company?
If the prospective recruit hasn’t taken any time at all to find out about the company, what does that tell you?
Conversely, there are people who go too far. They will have found out everything about the company from the date it was formed to the flavour of the CEO’s favourite toothpaste. Look for a balance.
Use only one or two of these general questions at the very most, carefully choosing the most appropriate for the position you are advertising. Remember, the main point of such questions is to get the person talking about themselves.
If it is obvious that the person talking is totally unsuitable, end the interview as quickly and respectfully as you can by saying something like: ‘We are simply doing quick face-to-face interviews at the moment and plan to be in touch with those people we would like to come back for a more in-depth interview. Thank you for your time; I will be in touch over the next few days.’ And then do get in touch.
When interviewing, it is important that you stick to times and dates. Also make sure that while you are interviewing you will not be disturbed (franchisees are often best to conduct interviews away from their own premises). It is also courteous to ask the applicant if it is all right to take notes.
Never, during the interview, give a person the impression that they have been successful in securing the position, no matter how well they come across. It is possible that you may change your mind or that a better applicant could come along further down the list. See everyone before you even begin to evaluate. First impressions can be wrong.
I always like to spend a few minutes between interviews to summarise my thoughts on the applicant. Interviewing is a bit like house-hunting – after a while, the houses start to blur.
Interviewing School Leavers
School leavers can present a real challenge because they have had no previous experience in the workplace. The best way to handle an interview with a school leaver is to adapt the ‘manager’ questions to ‘teacher’ and ask them to talk about projects they have completed or holiday jobs they have had. Checking references is still important.
Ending The Interview
It is often worth ending the interview with a light-hearted, more relaxed question. Questions like these will often tell you much about the interviewee’s values. But ask only one:
If you could spend a day with a famous person (living or dead), whom would you choose?
If you won $5 million, what would you do differently?
If you were elected prime minister, what would be the first thing you would do when taking up office?
And my personal favourite:
What would your best friend say is your most irritating trait?
I have often found out more about a person by asking this simple question than all the other questions put together.
Attracting The Right Person For The Job
In order to find absolutely the right person for the job you may need to go outside conventional recruitment processes. You could:
Involve other members of your team to consider what the ideal candidate would think/act/behave like.
Involve those who will work directly with the new person.
Analyse the current strengths and weaknesses of the team and then look for a person with the strengths that are lacking in the current team.
Talk to a person who already does the job well – perhaps in another outlet of the same franchise.
Ask them what are the skills and aptitudes they bring to the position and therefore the skills and aptitudes you need to look for.
Finally, gather as much information as you can about the job. Decide who would be the ideal person for the job, and who would best fit with the organisation and the direction it is going. You will then be able to make better decisions and employ the best person for the job.
Did I Really Employ You? - To learn more about this author, visit Ann Andrews's Website.
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Ann Andrews
(Visit Ann's Website)
Ann Andrews, Dip Bus (Pmer), CSP, is the
author of four books:
"Shift Your But", "Finding the Square Root
of a Banana", "Did I Really Employ You?"
and "My Dear Franchisee".
She is also a contributor to four other
books:
"You Don’t Make a Giant Leap Without
Taking A Gulp", "Best of the Best", NZ
Entrpreneurs", "The Power of More Than
One", and newly released, "Mum’s The
Word".
Ann regularly works with teams and is
passionate about waste. Waste of people in
particular. She estimates that 40 - 60% of
employees fall into a
bored-and-see-no-future-this-place-of-work
category.
Ann is also a professional speaker,
consultant on team and franchise issues.
As the founder of the "Teams From Woe To
Go" franchise Ann realised that teams and
franchises were a lot alike – the problems
were the same, the solutions were pretty
much the same also.
To find out more about Ann’s teamwork go
to www.woetogo.
com .
To find out more about her books go to
www.thecorporatetoolbox.com
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