Subject: October Hire Score Newsletter

Hi, Barry Shamis here and welcome to the October edition of the Hire Score Newsletter. This month I am going to discuss Strategic Staffing exclusively. I have received many inquiries about this subject and how you can use the information to gain a greater return on your investment in your people.

The key to building a winning organization is to understand that your hiring process must be driven by solving business needs as opposed to getting good people. This may sound strange but it is fundamental to strategic staffing. There are lots of good, talented people who will not satisfy your business needs. There is a train of thought that says you should hire the best available person. I couldn't disagree more.

You need to hire to your business model. For example, if you have a team approach to solving problems, don't hire independent people regardless of how talented they might be. Instead, hire the best teamplayer who can contribute to solving your problem.

Let's start by giving you a hiring mantra. This simple concept should drive all your hiring activities. Here goes:

"We will only give you a job if you give us something that will either benefit us or solve our problem. Give us exactly what we want, and we will return the favor."

This is the essence of the behavior rental agreement. If you keep this simple concept in mind when hiring (or making any employee related decision) your outcomes should be much better. So where do you start? Glad you asked!

Quick Note: I am sitting at my desk Wednesday morning typing this newsletter and my phone just rang. The person on the other end opened the conversation by saying that he felt like he knew me because he had listened to a tape of one of my speeches 5 or 6 times. He needs to hire a critical person in his growing business and wanted to order my How To Hire The Perfect Salesperson product. He went on to tell me that he is finally tired of making mistakes and now wants to do it right. Please don't you fall into this trap. Do it right the first time!

OK, back to business. I will assume you have determined your business needs, your reason for hiring. Now you have to build your performance-based success profile. I talk about this document all the time because it is vital. Here is a simple way to build this document.

To build your performance-based success profile answer these two questions. First, what does this person need to accomplish to satisfy my business need successfully? And, what knowledge, skills and abilities does the person need to meet those accomplishments? Answer these questions, in detail, and make certain your responses pass the reasonability test. Use this information to build your performance-based success profile.

Do it -- right now. Don't wait. If you need to hire an employee, build your performance-based success profile.

Once you have a draft, review, revise and refine. And don't do this in a vacuum. Talk to other people on your team to get input. Keep working the document until you are absolutely convinced you have a complete definition of success for the position.

There is double good news about investing all this time in developing your performance-based success profile. First, you have a roadmap to the successful person. You have a template of the successful person. And second, you have a scoreboard for measuring the success of the hire. Because, "Hiring quality is measured by the success rate at effectively solving the business problem".

This is another concept that is critical to a strategic staffing program. Most people measure the success of hire by how much they like the person or how well they get along. Now you can see that success is measured by meeting the outcomes defined in the performance-based success profile.

You now have some specific steps necessary to get you started implement a strategic staffing model in your organization. Next month I will talk about how you predict if the person will succeed.

A Dual Rant
I attended a luncheon today where the keynote speaker said you can't be held accountable for knowing whether or not a person will "fit" in your company. What a lode of crap!! You can easily interview for and predict a successful fit if you translate "fit" into the specific behaviors necessary for success. Don't let uninformed people put limitations on your success.

And while I was listening to the presentation I was also reading an article in a leading HR publication. To my surprise, I came across an article that told you how to get the real information in an interview. It listed the questions you must ask in an interview. One of these questions I discussed in a previous newsletter so I will list the other questions here. As a matter of fact, I just got the idea to have a little contest.

Here is the deal. There are 7 questions that this leading HR magazine says are used by the best practitioners in the field (what an embarrassing statement). I will list the 7 questions below and I want you to tell me why they are absolutely horrible, ineffective questions. Pick as many questions as you want to respond to.

For every person who responds with a correct answer, I will send you a free, autographed copy of my "Smartass Answers To Stupid Interview Questions" book. If you already own a copy, you can give this copy to a friend for the holidays. For the person that provides the most and best explanations, I will provide as a grand prize a two-hour consulting session (worth more than $1000) where I will help you with any staffing related problem.

All responses need to be sent to staff@selectingwinners.com.. OK, here we go:

1. What will your employer tell us is the area where you could use improvement?
2. Tell me about a time you identified a problem and came up with the solution.
3. What's been the most difficult obstacle you have ever overcome?
4. What are your goals?
5. Where would you like to see yourself five years from now?
6. What specific personal qualities do you think are necessary to have success in this position? How many of these do you have?
7. Tell me about a time when there were objections/differences of opinion to your ideas. What did you do to convince the parties involved of your ideas?


Have fun and remember to submit all entries to staff@selectingwinners.com.

Announcements
I still have space available in my Selecting Winners Workshop next week October 10 in Seattle. Please visit http://www.selectingwinners.com/open.html to register. Don't get shut out.

As many of you know, from time to time we rent our house in Hawaii. We just put up a new website at www.ehokulele.com that shows you the place. If you are interested in experiencing Hawaii the right way, send in your inquiry and mention that you are a subscriber to my Hire Score Newsletter and you will receive a 10% discount off the published rates.

Have a great month recruiting!

Barry Shamis

PS. As Always, forward your questions and comments to staff@selectingwinners.com.

Please feel free to pass this along to your colleagues. They can register for their own free subscription by sending an email to join-hirescore@mh.databack.com
If for any reason you choose to cancel your subscription, send an email to leave-hirescore@mh.databack.com