Purpose: Learn about the new Polygraph for management hires
His heart dropped when he saw his boss from his current company
walk into the interview room with his prospective new employer.
In a flash, every exaggeration on his resume was known. All of
the excitement of a new and better-paying position instantly
vanished.
That meeting ended quickly with an exchange of courtesies and a
kind rejection. The interviewer walked back to her office
frustrated at the amount of time and effort she had invested
into this candidate. She had been excited about his strong
resume and test results and happier yet that the exhausting
search process was nearly over. At the same time, she was glad
to know now about his weaknesses. They certainly would have
cost her company a great deal more time, money and frustration
if she had hired him.
70% of Resumes Can't Be Trusted
Research shows that 70% of the resumes on your desk right now
contain fabrications and exaggerations. And it's not just for
that sales or middle management job. An executive search firm
reported that after reviewing thousands of resumes the top
three lies were the number of years in a position, personal
accomplishments, and the size of the organizations they've
managed. Look at the people you've already hired to staff your
company. I'm not suggesting that you distrust them, but that
same 70% applies to the resumes you looked at last year too.
It is no wonder that the 80/20 rule is in effect at your
company and on your team. Despite all of the testing,
analyzing, interviewing, screening, background checks and gut
feels, you would still like someone more effective in 80% of
the positions of your company. That is true for your upper
management also. You'd like to see 80% of them hit the road and
be replaced by people with abilities and values that mirror
those of the 20% that produce 80% of the results.
Avoid The Costly Hiring Mistake You're About to Make
It's enough to make you cry, because you simply want someone
who can handle the responsibilities of the job, and you'll
gladly pay well for their services. To complicate the matter,
when considering upper management and executive staff, a great
deal of their responsibility is as a leader. You are no longer
looking for a technical expert, whose abilities are easily
graded; you are now in that horribly grey area called
soft-skills. Can you truly evaluate leadership skills and a
person's ability to operate effectively under stress from a
resume, interviews and personality tests?
Look around you for the evidence.
What's worse is that despite the gross volume of different
paper tests, interview techniques and evaluation tools, you are
still making mistakes in your hiring decisions. Yet, these
mistakes are easily identified in advance, but not by using the
existing passive methods. The wrong hiring decisions cost you
enormous amounts of money and frustration and resulting
inefficiencies. Studies show that the cost of turnover is three
times the annual salary of the replaced employee. However, if
you could make more informed hiring decisions, especially when
filling your higher-paid leadership positions; it will have the
opposite effect. You begin to reap monetary and efficiency
benefits in an upward spiral.
What is needed is an advanced evaluation tool. You verify that
someone can swim by putting them into the pool. You verify that
someone can lead by putting them into a real leadership
scenario. Like the pool the characteristics of the leadership
scenario don't have to match the job exactly. To swim, you need
enough water over a long enough distance. To lead, you need a
task, a team, real stress and real consequences like the kind
found in the Leading Concept's Ranger TLC Experience.
Use This Polygraph to Identify the Real Leader
This leadership scenario is your new polygraph, and it's legal.
It's like having the candidate's old boss sitting at your side
pointing out exaggerations and lies. Putting your top
management candidates into this leadership scenario and
evaluating them gives you the ability, in conjunction with the
other tools, to avoid costly mistakes and have trust and
confidence in the people you do hire.
To learn more about how immersion team building and leadership
training can help you visit: http://www.leadingconcepts.com
Brace E. Barber works extensively with
Leading Concepts, Inc. (http://www.LeadingConcepts.com) in the
field of immersion soft-skill training with a focus on how to
develop leaders, who are prepared for and can succeed under
stressful circumstances. He is the author of the book No Excuse
Leadership. (http://www.NoExcuseLeadership.com)
