Thursday, October 13, 2005
Selecting For Engagement
So, I've decried Skill Based Hiring (SBH) and called for a 'school of thought'. Too much emphasis on skills brings mediocrity to the workforce in exchange for lower onboarding costs. Skills do not correlate with inspiration. And short term costs savings are less important in long term roles. A 'school of thought' is needed because there isn't one. Our hiring processes are little more than a collection of habits (reactions to labor laws designed to protect the disadvantaged) that aren't terribly effective for companies or candidates. Even recruiting teams demonstrating 'best practices' all day long will end up with one winner and a collection of unhappy losers. The fact that this is generally accepted doesn't make it a good practice. And labelling it a 'best practice' shouldn't excuse anyone from looking for a better method.
What would a better approach look like? Let's suppose our theory is that engaged employees are better employees. This is our school of thought . We want to select employees who have this capacity. We’ll call it the E-factor. How might we approach selection?
First, we would define engaged as a combination of motivation and interest in the position (or the product, service, the industry, the mission, or something else). We would then assess candidates' general capacity for engagement and their likelihood of engaging in our particular role. This would be a critical focus of the selection process. Today the selection focuses on skills and experience. A few rote questions about why a candidate wants the job doesn't address the E-factor. (And everybody knows how to answer them anyway.)
Of course, weighting the E-factor against skills & abilities would need to be decided upon. And training costs might rise for those with higher engagement scores and lesser skills. Follow-up actions would test for and benchmark the success (or lack thereof) of the selection process and success would be defined in terms of how productive employees are and how well they have attached themselves to their work. These are all manageble. The real key to assessing engagement capacity is to do it before the candidate has applied for the job. Indicating interests prior to applying for specific roles makes those interests more reliable and avoids political statements of interest. This can be done on a large scale and will be discussed in future posts.
While selection processes would still need to comply with the law, this 'school of thought' approach is not driven by compliance. It is about trying to understand human behavior - what makes people tick - so we can recruit and retain them. Retaining talented people is a by-product of understanding them. We must understand people in order to manage them well. This is what's missing in the human capital arena; we're structuring our initial management task - selection - on constructs like skill-based hiring and legal compliance rather than an understanding of human capital.
What would a better approach look like? Let's suppose our theory is that engaged employees are better employees. This is our school of thought . We want to select employees who have this capacity. We’ll call it the E-factor. How might we approach selection?
First, we would define engaged as a combination of motivation and interest in the position (or the product, service, the industry, the mission, or something else). We would then assess candidates' general capacity for engagement and their likelihood of engaging in our particular role. This would be a critical focus of the selection process. Today the selection focuses on skills and experience. A few rote questions about why a candidate wants the job doesn't address the E-factor. (And everybody knows how to answer them anyway.)
Of course, weighting the E-factor against skills & abilities would need to be decided upon. And training costs might rise for those with higher engagement scores and lesser skills. Follow-up actions would test for and benchmark the success (or lack thereof) of the selection process and success would be defined in terms of how productive employees are and how well they have attached themselves to their work. These are all manageble. The real key to assessing engagement capacity is to do it before the candidate has applied for the job. Indicating interests prior to applying for specific roles makes those interests more reliable and avoids political statements of interest. This can be done on a large scale and will be discussed in future posts.
While selection processes would still need to comply with the law, this 'school of thought' approach is not driven by compliance. It is about trying to understand human behavior - what makes people tick - so we can recruit and retain them. Retaining talented people is a by-product of understanding them. We must understand people in order to manage them well. This is what's missing in the human capital arena; we're structuring our initial management task - selection - on constructs like skill-based hiring and legal compliance rather than an understanding of human capital.
