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PUBLICATION
| Title: | The Key to Hiring the Right Person – Behavioral Event Interviewing |
| Source: | Chicago Hospital News |
| Publish Date: | 01/01/2006 |
| Author: | Deborah Taber |
In a recent meeting with the Vice President of Human Resources of a hospital, I heard a familiar complaint: "Last year we hired a new CFO and it turned out to be a real nightmare. He interviewed great and everyone liked him. He had all the right financial and hospital experience we were looking for. We spent $50,000 to relocate his whole family here. But, within six weeks we knew it was a mistake. He said he was a team player but he alienated almost everyone on the senior management team. He turned out to be completely different from the guy we thought we hired."
How often has this happened in your organization? This hospital’s selection process was typical of most organizations. They advertised or used a search firm to generate a list of qualified candidates. They interviewed several, and hired the one that the boss liked the most or that they all felt most comfortable with.
Is there a better system that could have helped avoid such a fiasco? Definitely yes!
Research has shown that traditional interviewing processes have almost no correlation (less than .2) with performance. Interviews using the traditional "Tell me about yourself" approach are woefully inefficient. That’s because this process is based on emotional attraction – "Who do I like best?" – rather than an assessment of the traits and characteristics that might actually predict performance – job competencies. For example, in addition to the technical knowledge and skills/experience required for a CFO position, there are a set of personal traits and characteristics that each candidate needs to exhibit in that position and in that organization that will drive the ultimate success of the individual.
Here is a summary of the most successful steps for hiring the right person.
1. Develop a list of Behavioral Competencies
A few of the competencies that might be critical to the success of a CFO include:
3. Identify Potential Answers and Ratings
For each of these competencies, identify the range of potential answers and assign a number rating from 1 (does not exhibit this trait at all) to 10 (exemplifies this trait at the highest level) for each candidate’s answers. It should be noted that it is not necessary to spend a great deal of time here. It is important to know – and have everyone agree on - what outstanding behavior for each competency looks like.
4. Provide Training to Your Interviewers
Everyone who interviews the candidates needs to be trained in the Behavior Event Interviewing technique. This training includes exercises in which all the interviewers practice using the behavioral event questions and rating the answers.
5. Conduct Interviewer Debriefing Sessions
After the interviews are completed, conduct debriefing sessions to obtain interviewer feedback and ratings. Group discussions provide a rich array of insights and observations that are more closely aligned with the critical competencies of the job. Selecting the final candidate that most closely matches these competencies becomes a much easier job.
In conclusion, the high cost of recruitment combined with the lost opportunity or destructive impact of hiring the wrong person into any management job can easily offset the modest investment of time required to develop a behavioral event interviewing process. And, by using an effective process to assess competencies, skills and traits, you can reduce your hiring mistakes and better acquire the leaders you need to help take your organization where you want it to go.
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