During a time when the local unemployment rate was just 3.2 percent, a financial services organization was struggling to finding quality candidates for its customer service department. While the recruiters were doing a great job attracting candidates, the ones who applied for the positions were not scoring well against the PXT Select™ performance model. Positions remained open for way too long, which required managers to bridge the gap. As burnout began to take its hold across the entire team, the hiring managers began making poor selection decisions out of desperation. When these newly hired employees inevitably failed, everyone jumped back on the dreaded hamster wheel. It was clear that a revised hiring strategy was necessary.
Long-time, committed users of pre-hire assessments, the management team knew the performance model that Human Capital Advantage developed over the course of several years was proven and verified in determining job fit. From past experience, they knew hiring someone who wasn’t a good fit overall would eventually be terminated or elect to resign. This taught them to set a very high bar for potential new employees and only consider those who were a strong match to the performance model. The management team no longer settled for candidates who were borderline fits for the position and the culture.
But with the talent shortage becoming a real threat to their growth trajectory, the President asked Human Capital Advantage for a solution that wouldn’t undermine his company’s brand and culture but would allow the hiring managers to begin making new hires before everyone was over-burdened.
It’s all in the details.
The performance model was strong, but by reviewing the key requirements of the position, as well as the profiles of top performers and unsuccessful hires, we were able to identify the non-negotiable traits from the ones that allowed for some “wiggle room.” Some traits that were extremely strong (the top performers were very similar in their scores) were not open to compromise. But some traits had a lot more variation, which suggested that those traits did not affect overall job fit quite as much.
We also looked at the other team members in that position. Since they all had taken the assessment, we were able to look at traits that might create more conflict with other team members, or traits that might add to the strength of the team. Another aspect we reviewed were the traits of each manager of the different teams. Each manager was unique and that also influenced traits that might be more important on one team versus another.
What was the bottom line?
By identifying the most important traits for each position and customizing that information from team to team, we developed a modified performance model for the customer service roles that could be trusted when the talent pool was shallow. Even though the client wasn’t always able to hire the “perfect” fit, they were still able to follow their high standards. The client was able to confidently begin hiring once again knowing that its brand and strong culture would remain intact.
Growth continued.
Need help hiring hire during this period of low unemployment? We can help you benchmark your top performers to give you a guide for better hires going forward. Contact Valerie Oldre at 952.470.0162 or email [email protected] to learn how our pre-hire assessment tools can help you identify the right talent.