Recruiting and hiring are tough. There's no doubt about that. It's nearly impossible to please everyone on the hiring team, let alone come to a unanimous decision on who is the best candidate for the job. Lately, it seems the "skills gap" is always to blame for every bad hire. Combine this with the fact that HR and Hiring Managers can rarely agree on the "must-haves". It seems like a never ending coin toss decides the fate of the company. Everyone hopes for the best. What's the worst that could happen?
I'm going to try my best now to NOT insult anyone's intelligence here by stating the obvious. But, that coin toss could be a recipe for disaster. And so begins the never ending domino effect of a bad hire...
For starters, the candidate; let's call her Sue, was convinced to take this JOB primarily because of the extraordinary compensation package dangled in front of her face. Turns out, that Sue has learned money actually doesn't by happiness because despite her bank account being quite healthy, she dreads going to work everyday.
She hates her job and can't seem to build any kind of rapport with her team. She can't stand her manager. He is never there to help guide her when she has a question. Little does she know, the feeling is mutual. Her manager does his best to steer clear of Sue. He knew she wouldn't be a fit for his team. HR insisted that since Sue's skill set checked off every skills requirement box in the job description, this had to be luck! That, coupled with her 10+ years of experience at a direct competitor she was the best they were going to be able to find because of the "skills gap" and low unemployment rate making it hard for anyone to hire.
Not only were they fortunate enough to get approval from compensation to offer a salary well beyond the band's mid-point. But, they wouldn't have to hire anyone sent from the 3rd party recruiter saving them nearly $20K in fees. What an amazing turn of luck!
End result: Sue gets fired (and she's glad), due to her inability to thrive and stay motivated in this culture doing the same thing day in and day out. BORING. She was used to a close knit, hands on, team environment where brainstorming and solving problems as a group was part of their culture. She quite preferred tasks being delegated to her than to wonder if she's ever doing anything right.
Sue's boss and the HR department were back at square one, wondering how in the world they were going to find someone who met all the skills requirements AND had the personality to thrive in a culture like theirs. Enter, the dreaded 3rd party, contingency recruiter (insert evil laugh here). They were almost positive Ms. Recruiter was probably just conducting their version of a coin toss hoping one would stick. They were sure, they'd identified every possible good match. Sounds hopeless, I know. Ms. Recruiter came through though and it ended up being worth it in the end.
It turns out despite the "skills gap" theory, there are plenty of high performing candidates capable of exceeding expectations in this role and others just like it. HR and Hiring Managers just have to set asied the standard Job Description and turn off the keyword filter on that archaic applicant tracking system to find them. Imagine, a solution for the question that has forever filled the hearts of young professionals with dread: "How am I supposed to get the experience if no one will give me a chance, because I don't have the experience"?
Lou Adler is a genius, I tell you. His performance based hiring methods are tried, true and proven successful. Sure, us recruiters tend to have a bit of luck when it comes to selecting candidates based on our intuition and best guess. But, who wants to live like that? Not me. Not anyone here at AGP. Who knew there was a strategic approach capable of identifying high performers by their soft skills?!!? Crazy, yet definitely worth it (just like Ms.Recruiter).
That's why we have invested in learning and implementing performance based hiring into every step of our recruiting process. To some it may seem counter intuitive. To others (like myself) it will feel like such a common sense approach you might wonder how we hadn't thought of this ourselves. We don't plan on keeping it a secret either. Our client's are already benefiting from it in so many ways.
We want everyone to have the same success! We believe in it so wholeheartedly because it completely aligns with our core values; being centered around Advancement through Guidance with a People-centric focus. We here at AGP knew something that seemed so right, couldn't be wrong.
Lucky for you, we have dedicated ourselves to passing on this magical, and somehow measurable methodology for hiring success, to anyone who will listen. Let us know if we can help prove it works by filling one of your hard-to-fill positions.
We hope if nothing else, this tediously long blog post opened your eyes to all the performance potential right under our noses.
Your success is our success. Together, we are Avant-Garde.
Questions? Comments? Need a little guidance? Let us know :)
P.S....What's a "skills gap"?
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