Nature vs. Nurture: The Debate Over Skills or Competencies
by Kellye Whitney
Talent managers have battled this question for as long as employees have had employers: Is it better to hire for skills or competencies?
The answer might seem obvious. Hire for competency and train for skill, but there's still some rather heated discussion floating through the business space about the best way to acquire and manage talent.
"It's the age-old question: If you had an employee, would you rather have someone you could teach the skills to who had all the innate traits you were looking for, or do you need someone who can come in from day one who has specific experience and skills and can do the job without teaching?" said Michael George, product evangelist for Vurv Technology.
The more traditional school of thinking advocates bringing people into an organization fully equipped to execute tasks for a specific job, thereby avoiding the costly investment of time and resources in training and development. In that scenario, George said talent managers are not as concerned about cultural fit, adaptability or flexibility, but things are changing. Business is moving from a predominantly skills-based economy to a knowledge-based one, and within that knowledge economy, George said companies are struggling to bring in talent that can help them not only meet their goals today, but help them meet some future challenges during the next two to 10 years.
"At the same time we're seeing a move toward a much younger population who, when they look at their own career development and advancement, think 'What else can I contribute to and do and participate in within the organization? ' There's been this shift from advancing in your job or getting better at what you do to advancing in your job and getting to do different things."
Talent managers are starting to find that when they develop employees around competencies versus skills - self-direction, adaptability and problem-solving ability versus how to perform a specific task - those employees become much more transferable across different parts of the organization. Further, George said talent managers are often more willing to invest in training around teachable skills.
"If I have somebody that I can't rely on or doesn't have the aptitude, I can never teach those things," he explained. "Technology can help companies do all this. Skill assessment has not gone away. Every company wants to know the level of skill their employees have to be consistent in the way we attract talent, evaluate that talent and what they can do for the company, how we on-board and socialize them, how we develop that employee, how we compensate that employee. There needs to be a consistent thread between each one of those pieces of the talent management puzzle."
Systems that allow talent managers more freedom to adopt a consistent, competency-based approach to hiring and performance management also are important because today's employees are increasingly mobile. George said they're not staying in one particular job or career path, let alone in one office or country.
Technology has been an asset for various kinds of skills assessment for quite some time for pre-employment, as a part of a performance review or in a development capacity, but competency assessment is a little different.
"It requires a different level of interaction, " George said. "You can assess someone's skills by putting them through a test. On the competency side, it really takes an interaction between a manager and an employee because in the performance review world, it's no longer a check box. Now, most things have to be backed up with behavioral examples." Technology can enable the increased level of involvement between manager and employee by providing everyday tools they can use to catalog different interactions.
"The next evolution we're starting to see here is, Where do you put the money? In certain industries you're going to pay a premium on highly skilled individuals, but are we going to pay for skills or competencies? We're facing some serious workforce shortages over the next couple of years as baby boomers move out," George said. "Gen Y is coming in, and companies have to find a way to see what competencies have made them successful in the past and be willing to pay for the potential those competencies are going to make employees successful in the future. Where do we invest? Let's hire people for competencies at a premium to skill sets because they haven't done anything yet."
[About the Author: Kellye Whitney is managing editor for Talent Management magazine.]
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
How Effective Are Your Company's Strategic Talent Management Initiatives?
How Effective Are Your Company's Strategic Talent Management Initiatives?
by Sir Andrew Likierman and Dr. Douglas A. Ready
Yes... finally... interest in talent management has reached the appropriate level - fever pitch.
No longer solely the domain of HR departments, CEOs have come to realize they need talent management to execute their strategic objectives. The time has come for HR professionals to move from talking about the need to become strategic business partners to delivering by designing and executing talent initiatives that are strategic in nature and focused on building and sustaining competitive capacity.
This is an historic opportunity for the HR function to deliver value at least equal to any other functional expert on the CEO's team. Yet it is this same fever pitch condition that worries us HR might rush to offtarget programs, processes and metrics characteristic of the competencies craze of the mid-1990s. Thus, we feel compelled to say: "yes, seize the moment, but take the time to get it right."
But what does getting it right mean when it comes to a company's talent management initiatives? Sooner or later, you will be asked, "Are our talent management processes working? Are they effective?" These are valid questions, and it's essential to think through them in advance to avoid that "deer in the headlights" look when your CEO asks you. We want to offer six questions for talent management professionals to consider in thinking how they might go about measuring the effectiveness of their companies' initiatives. Whenever possible, we have included examples of what some leading companies are doing in response to these questions.
1. Have you framed your organization' s talent management agenda correctly?
This question is an invitation to put all of the problems, issues, concerns and challenges involved in measuring talent management into an appropriate perspective for your company. Get the issues on the table, but don't be overwhelmed by them. Help your CEO create your company's talent manisfesto. Capture the high ground, and then follow up with specifics that will reinforce your policy statements.
For example, companies such as GE have talent manifestos that are unambiguous about people being central to their organizations' competitive advantage. This framing puts CEOs out in front by their statements linking people to the creation of "an undeniable competitive advantage," as GE's CEO Jeff Immelt said concerning his company's talent practices. If employees know the CEO is firmly behind getting talent management right, they will quibble less about whether or not the measures and metrics are perfect; they will get down to work on doing the right things and doing things right.
2. Have you engaged all key stakeholders in clarifying your organization' s views on talent management?
Answering this question will help you "take action before getting started," as New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra might have said. Instead of succumbing to the temptation of offering a variety of talent initiatives immediately, HR professionals would be well served to engage their line counterparts in an intensive dialogue about what they hope to gain from such initiatives. Fundamentally, it is important to get to the heart of the matter by addressing questions such as: "Can we clarify what we mean by talent management?" , "What exactly do we believe the differences are between 'strategic talent management' and 'strategic HR?'" and "Just who is it we are talking about when we use the term 'talent?'" It is not a matter of finding the right answer but finding the answers that are right for your organization.
For example, let's say your talent management team engaged a variety of line leaders and came up with the following definition of strategic talent management for your organization: "Integrated people processes focused on supporting the career development needs of individuals demonstrating superior performance and/or those assessed as having significant potential to contribute to the organization' s strategic objectives."
Every word should matter while arriving at a definition of talent management through a high engagement process. With the example above, you have agreed with your line managers that your processes will need to be integrated, thus gaining support from business unit leaders for the cross-boundary movement of talent. You have defined talent as high performers and those with significant potential, rather than using the term "talent" as a catch phrase to discuss your entire workforce. And you have raised the bar by stating that the output objective is to create competitive advantage by stating that your talent initiatives will contribute significantly toward achieving your company's strategic objectives.
As an example of making it happen, the Canadian RBC Financial Group decided it needed to go through a massive transformation to stay on top of its industry. In so doing, it changed its business model and, as a result, changed the skills and capabilities it would need in order to be competitive. This included changing who would be viewed as talent and what these individuals would need to do in order to remain in RBC's talent pool. RBC's senior executives laid out in plain language what it would take to be identified as talent and what it would take to remain with the designation of high potential. While there were difficult conversations, employees respected the candor with which RBC presented these messages.
You now have framed your company's talent management agenda and helped clarify your line leaders' views on what talent management means in your company. Let's see how we can get on with successful implementation.
3. Have you linked your talent initiatives to building mission-critical organizational capabilities?
Every organization has a business model upon which it competes, and capabilities that enable it to execute that model. Microsoft, for example, successfully competed for more than two decades on its technological and marketing capabilities. But those capabilities became liabilities when Google changed the competitive landscape by enabling the flexible search aspects of the Internet to overtake the computer's operating system as the dominant mode of communications and commence in the business world.
Instead of hanging on to a business model that had served them well but was in need of a transformation, Microsoft recently has been engaged in a massive process they call their agility project. The company is building new organizational capabilities to enable it to compete in a new world, and the company's talent team is front and center in identifying and developing the skills and behaviors its workforce will need to take on Google and other competitors in this new competitive environment.
Highly skilled talent professionals help their organizations see a clear line between articulated strategic objectives, organizational capability requirements and the talent initiatives that will be undertaken in order to build them.
4. Have you identified multiple touch points as benchmarks of success?
What is excellence? What does "world class" mean? While we stated earlier that companies should design talent initiatives that are right for their organizations, they also need ways of assessing that those approaches are robust. With that in mind, it is important to identify multiple opportunities to benchmark whether or not your talent processes are humming like a well-oiled machine, what GE's Immelt refers to as "multiple touch points."
GE has what we believe is an important step in conducting assessment reviews: They create monitorable milestones to show comparisons to the company's original plans. GE is well-known for conducting division-by- division comparisons of performance, and not just for punitive reasons. The company engages in cross-unit knowledge sharing as a means of organizational development for many of its processes, including talent management. Thus, GE engages in both hard and soft assessments. Remember, monitorable does not always need to mean quantitative - sometimes it's better to have meaningful dialogue than dubious figures.
Take the consumer products and personal-care giant Avon Corp. as another example. Marc Effron, Avon's global head of talent management, conducts internal and external benchmarking comparisons. He uses his group role to teach talent professionals in units in emerging markets how Avon's more successful units have attracted, developed, engaged and retained high-caliber talent. But Effron also has built strong external networks to make sure his talent organization remains at the top of its game. He has done so by creating the Talent Management Network, an informal volunteer group of approximately 25 talent management professionals who have agreed to share best practices and ongoing challenges in the field.
5. Have you created measures that matter?
We would argue that it doesn't matter if your company has 200 more individuals than last year who are tagged as talent if you aren't doing anything meaningful to develop them. What matters are outputs and results, not additional processes and activities. And this takes us right back to question three: "What capabilities are needed to win in the marketplace, and are our talent processes helping to build those mission-critical capabilities? "
HSBC is one of the world's largest financial services companies. Their brand strapline is, "We are the world's local bank." To HSBC, this is far more than a marketing slogan; it is the essence of what it aspires to be. With that in mind, the bank has designed talent processes that actively seek to identify local talent in every region of the world and make sure those individuals get the development they need in order to flourish. Diversity is the hallmark of their talent initiatives, so diversity becomes central to their effectiveness measures, with questions such as: "Which regions are doing the best job of identifying and grooming talent?" or "What are they doing that is different from other units?"
In this, as in all other areas, public and not-for-profit organizations should be answering the same questions. Some already are doing so. The U.S. Air Force Education and Training Command has a knowledge readiness initiative - using a talent management learning platform - that will measure whether a person (or unit) is ready to go to war.
Organizations with well-tuned talent processes understand that the "gold standard" is to have outcome measures that illustrate how their talent processes are contributing to organizational success compared to relevant competitors over a sustained period of time.
6. Have you cautioned everyone not to expect measurement perfection?
Economists call them "externalities, " forces you must contend with in your company's competitive environment that are largely out of your control. Externalities likely will impact your talent initiatives as well - positively and negatively. For example, it is more likely that mining companies will have the luxury of moving talent around the world for developmental purposes while commodity prices are on their current high plateau.
If you happened to have established a metric a few years ago - before prices rose to increase your cross-boundary moves by 10 percent so as to build a more internationally mobile talent pool - meeting it doesn't mean your talent program has succeeded this year. Nor does the reverse mean failure for financial institutions in the current credit crunch.
Metrics are important, but they should be balanced with a lucid, focused, concise and jargon-free commentary that states your overall objectives and provides the essential details about the company's talent manifesto. As with all measurement, it has to be far more than numbers.
[About the Authors: Sir Andrew Likierman is a professor of management practice at the London Business School, non-executive chairman of AIC, and a non-executive director of several U.K. organizations. Dr. Douglas A. Ready is a visiting professor of organizational behavior at London Business School and president of The International Consortium for Executive Development Research, a network based in Lexington, Mass.]
by Sir Andrew Likierman and Dr. Douglas A. Ready
Yes... finally... interest in talent management has reached the appropriate level - fever pitch.
No longer solely the domain of HR departments, CEOs have come to realize they need talent management to execute their strategic objectives. The time has come for HR professionals to move from talking about the need to become strategic business partners to delivering by designing and executing talent initiatives that are strategic in nature and focused on building and sustaining competitive capacity.
This is an historic opportunity for the HR function to deliver value at least equal to any other functional expert on the CEO's team. Yet it is this same fever pitch condition that worries us HR might rush to offtarget programs, processes and metrics characteristic of the competencies craze of the mid-1990s. Thus, we feel compelled to say: "yes, seize the moment, but take the time to get it right."
But what does getting it right mean when it comes to a company's talent management initiatives? Sooner or later, you will be asked, "Are our talent management processes working? Are they effective?" These are valid questions, and it's essential to think through them in advance to avoid that "deer in the headlights" look when your CEO asks you. We want to offer six questions for talent management professionals to consider in thinking how they might go about measuring the effectiveness of their companies' initiatives. Whenever possible, we have included examples of what some leading companies are doing in response to these questions.
1. Have you framed your organization' s talent management agenda correctly?
This question is an invitation to put all of the problems, issues, concerns and challenges involved in measuring talent management into an appropriate perspective for your company. Get the issues on the table, but don't be overwhelmed by them. Help your CEO create your company's talent manisfesto. Capture the high ground, and then follow up with specifics that will reinforce your policy statements.
For example, companies such as GE have talent manifestos that are unambiguous about people being central to their organizations' competitive advantage. This framing puts CEOs out in front by their statements linking people to the creation of "an undeniable competitive advantage," as GE's CEO Jeff Immelt said concerning his company's talent practices. If employees know the CEO is firmly behind getting talent management right, they will quibble less about whether or not the measures and metrics are perfect; they will get down to work on doing the right things and doing things right.
2. Have you engaged all key stakeholders in clarifying your organization' s views on talent management?
Answering this question will help you "take action before getting started," as New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra might have said. Instead of succumbing to the temptation of offering a variety of talent initiatives immediately, HR professionals would be well served to engage their line counterparts in an intensive dialogue about what they hope to gain from such initiatives. Fundamentally, it is important to get to the heart of the matter by addressing questions such as: "Can we clarify what we mean by talent management?" , "What exactly do we believe the differences are between 'strategic talent management' and 'strategic HR?'" and "Just who is it we are talking about when we use the term 'talent?'" It is not a matter of finding the right answer but finding the answers that are right for your organization.
For example, let's say your talent management team engaged a variety of line leaders and came up with the following definition of strategic talent management for your organization: "Integrated people processes focused on supporting the career development needs of individuals demonstrating superior performance and/or those assessed as having significant potential to contribute to the organization' s strategic objectives."
Every word should matter while arriving at a definition of talent management through a high engagement process. With the example above, you have agreed with your line managers that your processes will need to be integrated, thus gaining support from business unit leaders for the cross-boundary movement of talent. You have defined talent as high performers and those with significant potential, rather than using the term "talent" as a catch phrase to discuss your entire workforce. And you have raised the bar by stating that the output objective is to create competitive advantage by stating that your talent initiatives will contribute significantly toward achieving your company's strategic objectives.
As an example of making it happen, the Canadian RBC Financial Group decided it needed to go through a massive transformation to stay on top of its industry. In so doing, it changed its business model and, as a result, changed the skills and capabilities it would need in order to be competitive. This included changing who would be viewed as talent and what these individuals would need to do in order to remain in RBC's talent pool. RBC's senior executives laid out in plain language what it would take to be identified as talent and what it would take to remain with the designation of high potential. While there were difficult conversations, employees respected the candor with which RBC presented these messages.
You now have framed your company's talent management agenda and helped clarify your line leaders' views on what talent management means in your company. Let's see how we can get on with successful implementation.
3. Have you linked your talent initiatives to building mission-critical organizational capabilities?
Every organization has a business model upon which it competes, and capabilities that enable it to execute that model. Microsoft, for example, successfully competed for more than two decades on its technological and marketing capabilities. But those capabilities became liabilities when Google changed the competitive landscape by enabling the flexible search aspects of the Internet to overtake the computer's operating system as the dominant mode of communications and commence in the business world.
Instead of hanging on to a business model that had served them well but was in need of a transformation, Microsoft recently has been engaged in a massive process they call their agility project. The company is building new organizational capabilities to enable it to compete in a new world, and the company's talent team is front and center in identifying and developing the skills and behaviors its workforce will need to take on Google and other competitors in this new competitive environment.
Highly skilled talent professionals help their organizations see a clear line between articulated strategic objectives, organizational capability requirements and the talent initiatives that will be undertaken in order to build them.
4. Have you identified multiple touch points as benchmarks of success?
What is excellence? What does "world class" mean? While we stated earlier that companies should design talent initiatives that are right for their organizations, they also need ways of assessing that those approaches are robust. With that in mind, it is important to identify multiple opportunities to benchmark whether or not your talent processes are humming like a well-oiled machine, what GE's Immelt refers to as "multiple touch points."
GE has what we believe is an important step in conducting assessment reviews: They create monitorable milestones to show comparisons to the company's original plans. GE is well-known for conducting division-by- division comparisons of performance, and not just for punitive reasons. The company engages in cross-unit knowledge sharing as a means of organizational development for many of its processes, including talent management. Thus, GE engages in both hard and soft assessments. Remember, monitorable does not always need to mean quantitative - sometimes it's better to have meaningful dialogue than dubious figures.
Take the consumer products and personal-care giant Avon Corp. as another example. Marc Effron, Avon's global head of talent management, conducts internal and external benchmarking comparisons. He uses his group role to teach talent professionals in units in emerging markets how Avon's more successful units have attracted, developed, engaged and retained high-caliber talent. But Effron also has built strong external networks to make sure his talent organization remains at the top of its game. He has done so by creating the Talent Management Network, an informal volunteer group of approximately 25 talent management professionals who have agreed to share best practices and ongoing challenges in the field.
5. Have you created measures that matter?
We would argue that it doesn't matter if your company has 200 more individuals than last year who are tagged as talent if you aren't doing anything meaningful to develop them. What matters are outputs and results, not additional processes and activities. And this takes us right back to question three: "What capabilities are needed to win in the marketplace, and are our talent processes helping to build those mission-critical capabilities? "
HSBC is one of the world's largest financial services companies. Their brand strapline is, "We are the world's local bank." To HSBC, this is far more than a marketing slogan; it is the essence of what it aspires to be. With that in mind, the bank has designed talent processes that actively seek to identify local talent in every region of the world and make sure those individuals get the development they need in order to flourish. Diversity is the hallmark of their talent initiatives, so diversity becomes central to their effectiveness measures, with questions such as: "Which regions are doing the best job of identifying and grooming talent?" or "What are they doing that is different from other units?"
In this, as in all other areas, public and not-for-profit organizations should be answering the same questions. Some already are doing so. The U.S. Air Force Education and Training Command has a knowledge readiness initiative - using a talent management learning platform - that will measure whether a person (or unit) is ready to go to war.
Organizations with well-tuned talent processes understand that the "gold standard" is to have outcome measures that illustrate how their talent processes are contributing to organizational success compared to relevant competitors over a sustained period of time.
6. Have you cautioned everyone not to expect measurement perfection?
Economists call them "externalities, " forces you must contend with in your company's competitive environment that are largely out of your control. Externalities likely will impact your talent initiatives as well - positively and negatively. For example, it is more likely that mining companies will have the luxury of moving talent around the world for developmental purposes while commodity prices are on their current high plateau.
If you happened to have established a metric a few years ago - before prices rose to increase your cross-boundary moves by 10 percent so as to build a more internationally mobile talent pool - meeting it doesn't mean your talent program has succeeded this year. Nor does the reverse mean failure for financial institutions in the current credit crunch.
Metrics are important, but they should be balanced with a lucid, focused, concise and jargon-free commentary that states your overall objectives and provides the essential details about the company's talent manifesto. As with all measurement, it has to be far more than numbers.
[About the Authors: Sir Andrew Likierman is a professor of management practice at the London Business School, non-executive chairman of AIC, and a non-executive director of several U.K. organizations. Dr. Douglas A. Ready is a visiting professor of organizational behavior at London Business School and president of The International Consortium for Executive Development Research, a network based in Lexington, Mass.]
Monday, March 11, 2013
Unlock Employee Motivation Through Personality Testing
Unlock Employee Motivation Through Personality Testing
by Ken Lahti, Ph.D.
Remember that really smart co-worker, the one who had so many answers he could run the company, but who put in minimal effort and seemed unconcerned with promotions? Or your boss who had brilliant ideas for product improvements, but couldn't motivate direct reports to get anything done? Personality testing might have unearthed the key to unlock their motivation and prompt the performance you knew they were capable of.
We have all seen people who know could be wildly successful, if they just tried harder or were better fit for their roles. Or people whose inability to maintain positive working relationships undermined their other contributions. What explains these strange gaps in performance? Can we know in advance who will best "fit" the job at hand and what motivates them to succeed?
Actually, yes. Decades of research shows a lot of what motivates people is inside them. While money, opportunities for growth and good leadership all matter for employee motivation, a big piece of motivation is based on a person's character or personality. For better or for worse, we are who we are, and our personality tends to be stable over time and across situations. This consistency in people creates an opportunity for organizations. By assessing personality characteristics in job candidates, employers can predict their motivation and make better informed hiring decisions.
Sounds good in theory, but does it really work? PreVisor's 2007 Business Outcomes Report indicates pre-employment personality tests, when implemented and used effectively, predict key performance outcomes and improve organizational effectiveness. For example, when Starwood Hotels redesigned its hiring solution to include personality testing for the right attitude, it saw a two and a half times increase in performance for one customer facing role. A nationwide auto-parts distributor showed retention improved more than 80 percent for high-scoring candidates. Among warehouse associates taking a customized job-fit test, 43 percent of those who scored high remained on the job after 90 days, whereas only 23 percent of those who scored low on the assessment were retained. Higher retention leads to reduced costs, higher productivity and better organizational performance.
What is Motivation, Anyway?
We hear about motivation all of the time - in school, at work, in sports, in the context of motivational speaking. However, it is curiously difficult to pin down exactly what motivation is and how it works. While it has many definitions among scientists, motivation boils down to wanting something to be different.
Motivation is an energizing, mobilizing force related to striving toward goals and satisfying needs - everything from food to sex to self-esteem. From an employee perspective, this means work is the environment where they strive toward and achieve many of life's goals. Motivation can lead people to work hard and manage their interactions with others. On the other hand, a lack of motivation can lead to carelessness and callousness at work. A recent CareerBuilder survey found 32 percent of workers called in sick with fake excuses in the past 12 months, which is hardly a ringing endorsement of strong work ethic or job satisfaction.
From the employer's perspective, employee motivation impacts performance. Scientists describe performance as a function of a person's ability and motivation:
a) Ability or "can-do" is based largely on general cognitive ability or intelligence. Cognitive ability contributes to acquisition of job skills and knowledge through experience. Tests of these areas predict job performance.
b) Motivation or "will-do" is driven mainly by personality. Personality describes a person's disposition, interests and recurring behavior patterns.
Both ability and motivation are necessary for successful performance. By testing for personality, we can measure an important determinant of talent and success, one that is often overlooked in hiring processes that emphasize only technical skills, learning ability or past achievements.
As a key predictor of success in many people-facing roles, personality is particularly important in management and senior leadership positions, where one individual can have a strong impact on the whole organization.
PreVisor's 2007 Business Outcomes Report showed senior leaders who scored high on director/senior manager assessment - which assesses both ability and motivation factors - were promoted at a 30 percent faster rate than those who scored poorly.
The Maze of Employment Testing
Employment testing combines the power of science and technology to help organizations make better informed hiring decisions. Professionally developed tests are routinely used during the hiring process to measure candidates' job skills, technical knowledge, learning ability and motivation. The value proposition underlying scientific hiring practices is: Individual performance drives organizational performance.
"It is important to remember that job success almost always depends on several different kinds of performance, " said Dr. Charles Handler, founder and president of Rocket-Hire, a consultancy specializing in online screening and assessments. "For example, an employee who is very good at customer service will be of little value if her or she frequently misses work. You can measure these traits by combining assessment tools that predict different types of job performance. For instance, combining a personality test with an ability test can increase the overall predictive ability of your selection system by a significant amount."
Personality Testing: Science or Alchemy?
Personality testing is a decades-old application of behavioral science undergoing a renaissance among both employers and researchers due to improvements in technology and a deeper understanding of its potential value. At its best, personality testing reliably predicts on-the-job performance. At its worst, companies may use poorly researched but well-marketed personality testing tools or use good tools (e.g., designed for team building) for the wrong thing (e.g., hiring). Only by carefully aligning testing programs with hiring needs will employers maximize prediction and ROI.
Scientists have known or suspected for some 30 years there are just five major dimensions of personality, called the Big 5 factors of personality.
a) Openness: Appreciation for creativity, adventure, unusual ideas and variety of experience.
b) Conscientiousness: A tendency to plan rather than be spontaneous, to show self- discipline, caution and to seek achievement.
c) Extraversion: The tendency to seek stimulation and the company of others, energy, positive emotions.
d) Agreeableness: A tendency to be pleasant and accommodating in social situations.
e) Neuroticism: The ongoing tendency to experience negative emotional states.
Within these broad factors, additional characteristics can be tested, such as dependability, a part of conscientiousness, and stress tolerance, a part of neuroticism.
The effective use of personality testing in the hiring process can lead to a workforce that is more motivated, more disciplined and better with customers.
For example, a major high-end retailer needed help hiring managers and staff whose personal motivation was to sell, not steal. Sales locations staffed with associates who scored high on a conscientiousness assessment experienced less shrinkage - almost $50,000 less per year - than other locations. Across the chain's 1,500-plus stores nationwide, this translated into nearly a $78 million difference in annual shrinkage.
"It is important to choose assessment tools that predict the various kinds of performance that are most critical to the job," Dr. Handler said. "As a general rule, it is good to focus on having assessment tools that predict both what candidates 'can do' and what they 'will do.' This usually means having a mix of assessment tools that measure hard skills, such as knowledge and problem-solving ability, as well as soft skills, such as reliability and customer service."
Uncovering the Research
Research clearly indicates personality testing in the hiring process works best and is most predictive when job requirements are well understood and characteristics most valuable to performance are assessed. How do we know which combination of characteristics will be most useful?
In a 2007 "Aha! Report," Dr. Wendell Williams wrote, "There are hosts of personality tests on the market, all claiming to be helpful in making hiring decisions. But before hiring and recruiting professionals commit to using personality tests, they need to understand the difference between causation and correlation. In other words, does a good personality score really indicate good performance? "
Causation means one thing causes another to happen. Throw chalk at the class bully, and you can expect to be punished. The stimulus causes the punishment.
Correlation means two things tend to occur at the same time, but one does not cause the other. Pocket protectors and mathematical ability are correlated or co-related, but having a pocket protector does not cause someone to be a math whiz. This is very important to know when using a personality test to hire someone.
In the real world, this translates into organizations finding people who not only have the necessary skills or abilities to do the job, but who really want to do the job under required conditions. Imagine two equally experienced sales manager candidates - same number of years in the field, same ability to create pricing models or presentations - but one of them scores high in agreeableness, while the other is Attila the Hun. Because of the criticality of people skills in this role, this difference in personalities likely would impact the performance of the sales organization. One manager may motivate the sales team and negotiate successfully with clients, while the other may terrorize everyone into submission or quitting.
If you are looking for the magic formula for hiring success, look to the science of assessment to help uncover the personalities of your future workforce. It will not only give you insight into their motivation, you also will be able to measure the dollar impact of better performance on your company's bottom line.
[About the Author: Ken Lahti Ph.D., is director of client solutions for PreVisor.]
by Ken Lahti, Ph.D.
Remember that really smart co-worker, the one who had so many answers he could run the company, but who put in minimal effort and seemed unconcerned with promotions? Or your boss who had brilliant ideas for product improvements, but couldn't motivate direct reports to get anything done? Personality testing might have unearthed the key to unlock their motivation and prompt the performance you knew they were capable of.
We have all seen people who know could be wildly successful, if they just tried harder or were better fit for their roles. Or people whose inability to maintain positive working relationships undermined their other contributions. What explains these strange gaps in performance? Can we know in advance who will best "fit" the job at hand and what motivates them to succeed?
Actually, yes. Decades of research shows a lot of what motivates people is inside them. While money, opportunities for growth and good leadership all matter for employee motivation, a big piece of motivation is based on a person's character or personality. For better or for worse, we are who we are, and our personality tends to be stable over time and across situations. This consistency in people creates an opportunity for organizations. By assessing personality characteristics in job candidates, employers can predict their motivation and make better informed hiring decisions.
Sounds good in theory, but does it really work? PreVisor's 2007 Business Outcomes Report indicates pre-employment personality tests, when implemented and used effectively, predict key performance outcomes and improve organizational effectiveness. For example, when Starwood Hotels redesigned its hiring solution to include personality testing for the right attitude, it saw a two and a half times increase in performance for one customer facing role. A nationwide auto-parts distributor showed retention improved more than 80 percent for high-scoring candidates. Among warehouse associates taking a customized job-fit test, 43 percent of those who scored high remained on the job after 90 days, whereas only 23 percent of those who scored low on the assessment were retained. Higher retention leads to reduced costs, higher productivity and better organizational performance.
What is Motivation, Anyway?
We hear about motivation all of the time - in school, at work, in sports, in the context of motivational speaking. However, it is curiously difficult to pin down exactly what motivation is and how it works. While it has many definitions among scientists, motivation boils down to wanting something to be different.
Motivation is an energizing, mobilizing force related to striving toward goals and satisfying needs - everything from food to sex to self-esteem. From an employee perspective, this means work is the environment where they strive toward and achieve many of life's goals. Motivation can lead people to work hard and manage their interactions with others. On the other hand, a lack of motivation can lead to carelessness and callousness at work. A recent CareerBuilder survey found 32 percent of workers called in sick with fake excuses in the past 12 months, which is hardly a ringing endorsement of strong work ethic or job satisfaction.
From the employer's perspective, employee motivation impacts performance. Scientists describe performance as a function of a person's ability and motivation:
a) Ability or "can-do" is based largely on general cognitive ability or intelligence. Cognitive ability contributes to acquisition of job skills and knowledge through experience. Tests of these areas predict job performance.
b) Motivation or "will-do" is driven mainly by personality. Personality describes a person's disposition, interests and recurring behavior patterns.
Both ability and motivation are necessary for successful performance. By testing for personality, we can measure an important determinant of talent and success, one that is often overlooked in hiring processes that emphasize only technical skills, learning ability or past achievements.
As a key predictor of success in many people-facing roles, personality is particularly important in management and senior leadership positions, where one individual can have a strong impact on the whole organization.
PreVisor's 2007 Business Outcomes Report showed senior leaders who scored high on director/senior manager assessment - which assesses both ability and motivation factors - were promoted at a 30 percent faster rate than those who scored poorly.
The Maze of Employment Testing
Employment testing combines the power of science and technology to help organizations make better informed hiring decisions. Professionally developed tests are routinely used during the hiring process to measure candidates' job skills, technical knowledge, learning ability and motivation. The value proposition underlying scientific hiring practices is: Individual performance drives organizational performance.
"It is important to remember that job success almost always depends on several different kinds of performance, " said Dr. Charles Handler, founder and president of Rocket-Hire, a consultancy specializing in online screening and assessments. "For example, an employee who is very good at customer service will be of little value if her or she frequently misses work. You can measure these traits by combining assessment tools that predict different types of job performance. For instance, combining a personality test with an ability test can increase the overall predictive ability of your selection system by a significant amount."
Personality Testing: Science or Alchemy?
Personality testing is a decades-old application of behavioral science undergoing a renaissance among both employers and researchers due to improvements in technology and a deeper understanding of its potential value. At its best, personality testing reliably predicts on-the-job performance. At its worst, companies may use poorly researched but well-marketed personality testing tools or use good tools (e.g., designed for team building) for the wrong thing (e.g., hiring). Only by carefully aligning testing programs with hiring needs will employers maximize prediction and ROI.
Scientists have known or suspected for some 30 years there are just five major dimensions of personality, called the Big 5 factors of personality.
a) Openness: Appreciation for creativity, adventure, unusual ideas and variety of experience.
b) Conscientiousness: A tendency to plan rather than be spontaneous, to show self- discipline, caution and to seek achievement.
c) Extraversion: The tendency to seek stimulation and the company of others, energy, positive emotions.
d) Agreeableness: A tendency to be pleasant and accommodating in social situations.
e) Neuroticism: The ongoing tendency to experience negative emotional states.
Within these broad factors, additional characteristics can be tested, such as dependability, a part of conscientiousness, and stress tolerance, a part of neuroticism.
The effective use of personality testing in the hiring process can lead to a workforce that is more motivated, more disciplined and better with customers.
For example, a major high-end retailer needed help hiring managers and staff whose personal motivation was to sell, not steal. Sales locations staffed with associates who scored high on a conscientiousness assessment experienced less shrinkage - almost $50,000 less per year - than other locations. Across the chain's 1,500-plus stores nationwide, this translated into nearly a $78 million difference in annual shrinkage.
"It is important to choose assessment tools that predict the various kinds of performance that are most critical to the job," Dr. Handler said. "As a general rule, it is good to focus on having assessment tools that predict both what candidates 'can do' and what they 'will do.' This usually means having a mix of assessment tools that measure hard skills, such as knowledge and problem-solving ability, as well as soft skills, such as reliability and customer service."
Uncovering the Research
Research clearly indicates personality testing in the hiring process works best and is most predictive when job requirements are well understood and characteristics most valuable to performance are assessed. How do we know which combination of characteristics will be most useful?
In a 2007 "Aha! Report," Dr. Wendell Williams wrote, "There are hosts of personality tests on the market, all claiming to be helpful in making hiring decisions. But before hiring and recruiting professionals commit to using personality tests, they need to understand the difference between causation and correlation. In other words, does a good personality score really indicate good performance? "
Causation means one thing causes another to happen. Throw chalk at the class bully, and you can expect to be punished. The stimulus causes the punishment.
Correlation means two things tend to occur at the same time, but one does not cause the other. Pocket protectors and mathematical ability are correlated or co-related, but having a pocket protector does not cause someone to be a math whiz. This is very important to know when using a personality test to hire someone.
In the real world, this translates into organizations finding people who not only have the necessary skills or abilities to do the job, but who really want to do the job under required conditions. Imagine two equally experienced sales manager candidates - same number of years in the field, same ability to create pricing models or presentations - but one of them scores high in agreeableness, while the other is Attila the Hun. Because of the criticality of people skills in this role, this difference in personalities likely would impact the performance of the sales organization. One manager may motivate the sales team and negotiate successfully with clients, while the other may terrorize everyone into submission or quitting.
If you are looking for the magic formula for hiring success, look to the science of assessment to help uncover the personalities of your future workforce. It will not only give you insight into their motivation, you also will be able to measure the dollar impact of better performance on your company's bottom line.
[About the Author: Ken Lahti Ph.D., is director of client solutions for PreVisor.]
Friday, March 8, 2013
The Paradoxically Gifted
The Paradoxically Gifted
by Harold D. Stolovitch, Ph.D.
One might assume those with remarkable talents, once secured and well remunerated, would require minimal support and direction to perform compared to others with less lofty abilities. Dangerous assumption!
While research on those identified as gifted contains abundant contradictions, several relatively stable findings provide us with useful information to help them perform in ways they and their organizations value. Foremost, gifted individuals often require more careful guidance and support - especially upon entry to a job - than their colleagues. That's because, while they have the same basic needs as the rest, gifted employees can sometimes be vulnerable in ways that decrease accomplishments. For example, their ability to perceive a vast array of possibilities in novel circumstances can lead to distraction. Confusion and anxiety about which path to follow can result. Findings from a number of studies on the gifted include:
1. Uneven development. While strong in talent areas, they may be underdeveloped in social skills or time management.
2. Self-criticism. They create idealistic, inflated images of what their jobs require and then internally punish themselves for not meeting self-imposed expectations.
3. Perfectionism. They set such high standards of performance they may expend enormous energy to achieve perfection, neglecting other important tasks, taking too much time to perform or becoming discouraged or paralyzed by imperfect results.
4. Risk avoidance. Foreseeing many potential obstacles, they might hesitate to take on initiatives for fear of underachievement or failure.
5. Multi-potentiality. If they possess several powerful talents, they may wrestle with competing alternatives on where to focus and how to coordinate diverse visions and actions.
One study synthesized the paradox of the gifted as follows:
a) Quick learner: Impatient with others, bored by explanations.
b) Highly inquisitive: Endlessly probing, can divert attention or embarrass authority.
c) Internally motivated and
d) Driven: Strong-willed, resists external directions.
e) Creative problem solver: Resists grounded precedents.
f) Strong conceptualizer: Rejects or is intolerant of unclear, illogical situations that nevertheless exist.
g) High self expectations: Intolerant of self and/or others.
h) Focus on successful accomplishment: Neglectful of people and feelings.
i) Independent: Rejects authority.
Drawing gifted talent into an organization is a desirable action; it's also a challenge to prepare both the gifted individuals and their environment to obtain hoped-for performance.
In 1985, Pauline Clance came out with an insightful book: The Imposter Phenomenon: Overcoming the Fear That Haunts Your Success. In it she documented how highly successful academics, businesspeople and even those in not necessarily exalted positions were often unable to internalize their successful accomplishments, despite the fact they were truly merited. The greater the ability and success, the more they suffered from an incapacity to accept their achievements were not "fraudulent. " She and others found this to be particularly prevalent among the most talented and successful.
Additionally, in 2003, Dr. Martin Voracek from the University of Vienna Medical School released a study of 85 countries in which he demonstrated a significant, positive correlation between high intelligence and suicide rates. This aligns with the Terman study of genius that tracked more than 1,500 gifted Californian children born between 1920-21 to find their suicide rate is three times higher than the U.S. national average.
Giftedness, as defined by the U.S. Department of Education, is the possession of outstanding abilities and great potential for high performance. In the world of work, the capacity for innovation and superior performance is a strongly sought-after commodity. Yet the buyer should beware. Once acquired, the talents of the gifted must be carefully supported and managed. Only by monitoring and attending to the vulnerabilities and paradoxes of these extraordinary individuals can organizations transform what might be great potential into remarkable performance.
[About the Author: Harold D. Stolovitch, Ph.D., CPT is a principal of HSA Learning & Performance Solutions LLC and is emeritus professor of instructional and performance technology at the Universite de Montreal.]
by Harold D. Stolovitch, Ph.D.
One might assume those with remarkable talents, once secured and well remunerated, would require minimal support and direction to perform compared to others with less lofty abilities. Dangerous assumption!
While research on those identified as gifted contains abundant contradictions, several relatively stable findings provide us with useful information to help them perform in ways they and their organizations value. Foremost, gifted individuals often require more careful guidance and support - especially upon entry to a job - than their colleagues. That's because, while they have the same basic needs as the rest, gifted employees can sometimes be vulnerable in ways that decrease accomplishments. For example, their ability to perceive a vast array of possibilities in novel circumstances can lead to distraction. Confusion and anxiety about which path to follow can result. Findings from a number of studies on the gifted include:
1. Uneven development. While strong in talent areas, they may be underdeveloped in social skills or time management.
2. Self-criticism. They create idealistic, inflated images of what their jobs require and then internally punish themselves for not meeting self-imposed expectations.
3. Perfectionism. They set such high standards of performance they may expend enormous energy to achieve perfection, neglecting other important tasks, taking too much time to perform or becoming discouraged or paralyzed by imperfect results.
4. Risk avoidance. Foreseeing many potential obstacles, they might hesitate to take on initiatives for fear of underachievement or failure.
5. Multi-potentiality. If they possess several powerful talents, they may wrestle with competing alternatives on where to focus and how to coordinate diverse visions and actions.
One study synthesized the paradox of the gifted as follows:
a) Quick learner: Impatient with others, bored by explanations.
b) Highly inquisitive: Endlessly probing, can divert attention or embarrass authority.
c) Internally motivated and
d) Driven: Strong-willed, resists external directions.
e) Creative problem solver: Resists grounded precedents.
f) Strong conceptualizer: Rejects or is intolerant of unclear, illogical situations that nevertheless exist.
g) High self expectations: Intolerant of self and/or others.
h) Focus on successful accomplishment: Neglectful of people and feelings.
i) Independent: Rejects authority.
Drawing gifted talent into an organization is a desirable action; it's also a challenge to prepare both the gifted individuals and their environment to obtain hoped-for performance.
In 1985, Pauline Clance came out with an insightful book: The Imposter Phenomenon: Overcoming the Fear That Haunts Your Success. In it she documented how highly successful academics, businesspeople and even those in not necessarily exalted positions were often unable to internalize their successful accomplishments, despite the fact they were truly merited. The greater the ability and success, the more they suffered from an incapacity to accept their achievements were not "fraudulent. " She and others found this to be particularly prevalent among the most talented and successful.
Additionally, in 2003, Dr. Martin Voracek from the University of Vienna Medical School released a study of 85 countries in which he demonstrated a significant, positive correlation between high intelligence and suicide rates. This aligns with the Terman study of genius that tracked more than 1,500 gifted Californian children born between 1920-21 to find their suicide rate is three times higher than the U.S. national average.
Giftedness, as defined by the U.S. Department of Education, is the possession of outstanding abilities and great potential for high performance. In the world of work, the capacity for innovation and superior performance is a strongly sought-after commodity. Yet the buyer should beware. Once acquired, the talents of the gifted must be carefully supported and managed. Only by monitoring and attending to the vulnerabilities and paradoxes of these extraordinary individuals can organizations transform what might be great potential into remarkable performance.
[About the Author: Harold D. Stolovitch, Ph.D., CPT is a principal of HSA Learning & Performance Solutions LLC and is emeritus professor of instructional and performance technology at the Universite de Montreal.]
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Sharing Talent
Sharing Talent
by Kevin Wilde
My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Kay, gave me my first performance appraisal. She told my parents I was a bright, energetic 5-year-old who didn't sleep at nap time and had trouble sharing. While I've overcome the inability to nap during the day, I still have to remind myself to share my best toys.
Similarly, Mrs. Kay might give today's business leaders low marks for sharing high-potential leadership talent. Of course it's a challenge to convince executives to move their most promising personnel to some other part of the enterprise. Great talent produces great results. Why would a leader give up a valued producer, someone with the promise to deliver even greater results in the future?
Executives invest in high-potential talent and deserve to reap the benefits. Any rational business leader would be unwilling to give up his or her best in exchange for someone else's so-called high potential. Faced with the risk of the unknown, it is common for a leader to dig in his or her heels and not share. Worse, leaders sometimes hide their best talent, lest corporate finds out about the rising star.
Share to Gain
There is much to be gained by sharing. Any business unit can offer job growth and stretch assignments. New business circumstances, geography and challenges broaden leadership capabilities. Fresh high-potential leaders moving into a new group often raise performance standards and promote recalibrating expectations to higher levels. Mixing the best talent will bring new thinking and best-practice sharing with accelerated application because these folks are change agents by nature. It makes sense to free the best developing leaders to move across business units. It is hard work, but there are a number of enablers to better talent sharing.
Corporate Ownership
Declare that above a certain level, the leadership group is "owned" by the corporation and is not the sole property of the individual business units. Everyone has a notion of the top 100, 500 or 1,000 leaders throughout the enterprise. Establish that the career development of this cadre will have a company point of view. It may not be a popular message, but it makes sense to consider leaders beyond a certain level as corporate assets who are currently "on loan" to a division.
Talent Identification
Build into any succession roll-up a robust process to identify and track the best talent. The CEO and senior team should know the up-and-comers, first through this annual HR system and by personally building relationships with each division's high potentials to facilitate movement. I've seen development- oriented CEOs personally intervene to break free emerging executives that are being held hostage in a greedy division.
Pocketbook Management
A natural way organizations manage the top group of leaders is through direct ownership of its compensation such as merit pay, stock options, incentive pay and other rewards. This practice can be useful in cross-division talent movement by reinforcing the belief that the corporation has a say in the treatment of these leaders, and reviews can be useful assessment and tracking practices to know where the best talent is located in divisions.
Recruiting Events
Training also can help identify and enable cross-business, high-potential talent movement. Filling a corporate leadership development program with high potentials from all corners of the organization is a smart way to identify the best divisional talent. Networking from this mixture can help open up possible cross-unit movement. Add in direct and meaningful contact with the CEO and other corporate leaders to reinforce the visibility and relationship. Finish by sending the message that the leadership development path to the top will be built with cross-business, broadening executive moves.
Slate Setting
Once you establish that the corporate office will be involved in filling division leadership jobs, the role can vary, from helping assemble the slate of candidates to reviewing the finalists. This is the critical time to nudge a division executive to consider a high potential from another unit or "recruit" talent from another division to interview for the opening.
Leadership development research reminds us that challenging assignments are accelerators of growth. At some point in a leader's journey, challenges are to be found in crossing divisions. It is hard work, but it has huge payoffs for the individual and organization. Speaking of hard work, it's time for my nap.
[About the Author: Kevin Wilde is the vice president and chief learning officer at General Mills.]
by Kevin Wilde
My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Kay, gave me my first performance appraisal. She told my parents I was a bright, energetic 5-year-old who didn't sleep at nap time and had trouble sharing. While I've overcome the inability to nap during the day, I still have to remind myself to share my best toys.
Similarly, Mrs. Kay might give today's business leaders low marks for sharing high-potential leadership talent. Of course it's a challenge to convince executives to move their most promising personnel to some other part of the enterprise. Great talent produces great results. Why would a leader give up a valued producer, someone with the promise to deliver even greater results in the future?
Executives invest in high-potential talent and deserve to reap the benefits. Any rational business leader would be unwilling to give up his or her best in exchange for someone else's so-called high potential. Faced with the risk of the unknown, it is common for a leader to dig in his or her heels and not share. Worse, leaders sometimes hide their best talent, lest corporate finds out about the rising star.
Share to Gain
There is much to be gained by sharing. Any business unit can offer job growth and stretch assignments. New business circumstances, geography and challenges broaden leadership capabilities. Fresh high-potential leaders moving into a new group often raise performance standards and promote recalibrating expectations to higher levels. Mixing the best talent will bring new thinking and best-practice sharing with accelerated application because these folks are change agents by nature. It makes sense to free the best developing leaders to move across business units. It is hard work, but there are a number of enablers to better talent sharing.
Corporate Ownership
Declare that above a certain level, the leadership group is "owned" by the corporation and is not the sole property of the individual business units. Everyone has a notion of the top 100, 500 or 1,000 leaders throughout the enterprise. Establish that the career development of this cadre will have a company point of view. It may not be a popular message, but it makes sense to consider leaders beyond a certain level as corporate assets who are currently "on loan" to a division.
Talent Identification
Build into any succession roll-up a robust process to identify and track the best talent. The CEO and senior team should know the up-and-comers, first through this annual HR system and by personally building relationships with each division's high potentials to facilitate movement. I've seen development- oriented CEOs personally intervene to break free emerging executives that are being held hostage in a greedy division.
Pocketbook Management
A natural way organizations manage the top group of leaders is through direct ownership of its compensation such as merit pay, stock options, incentive pay and other rewards. This practice can be useful in cross-division talent movement by reinforcing the belief that the corporation has a say in the treatment of these leaders, and reviews can be useful assessment and tracking practices to know where the best talent is located in divisions.
Recruiting Events
Training also can help identify and enable cross-business, high-potential talent movement. Filling a corporate leadership development program with high potentials from all corners of the organization is a smart way to identify the best divisional talent. Networking from this mixture can help open up possible cross-unit movement. Add in direct and meaningful contact with the CEO and other corporate leaders to reinforce the visibility and relationship. Finish by sending the message that the leadership development path to the top will be built with cross-business, broadening executive moves.
Slate Setting
Once you establish that the corporate office will be involved in filling division leadership jobs, the role can vary, from helping assemble the slate of candidates to reviewing the finalists. This is the critical time to nudge a division executive to consider a high potential from another unit or "recruit" talent from another division to interview for the opening.
Leadership development research reminds us that challenging assignments are accelerators of growth. At some point in a leader's journey, challenges are to be found in crossing divisions. It is hard work, but it has huge payoffs for the individual and organization. Speaking of hard work, it's time for my nap.
[About the Author: Kevin Wilde is the vice president and chief learning officer at General Mills.]
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Assessing Corporate Culture
Assessing Corporate Culture
by Randi Bussin
As a career coach, I've occasionally had clients come back to me for redirection after several months on the job. Often the all-too-perfect role turns sour because of the corporate culture and/or internal politics.
Most ask how they can assess these factors ahead of time. Although culture is intangible, there are a few things potential candidates can do to get a read on the environment before they say 'yes'.
Before we begin, let's just step back for a minute and discuss what culture is and why it's important.
What is corporate culture? At its most basic, corporate culture can be described as an organization' s personality and the shared idea of 'how things are done around here'. Corporate culture is a broad term and guides how employees think, act, feel, and behave. It describes the unique beliefs and behavior of a company and includes the organization' s core values, mission, ethics, and rules of behavior.
Why is corporate culture important? Culture is important because it affects the hours you work, how people interact with each other (or don't), how people dress, benefits offered to employees (flextime, telecommuting, etc), office layout, training, and professional development. As you can see, culture affects just about everything that relates to your work. So how do you assess the true culture of a potential employer?
The first step toward determining whether you will be a good match for a company is to know yourself and know what matters most to you (your values). You have to be crystal clear about what you are seeking from each role and each company. Are you seeking intellectual stimulation, a family-friendly environment, a social outlet, or work-life balance?
The next step is to use the job interview - and your networking interviews - to determine if the employer's work environment is aligned with your core values. Working at a company whose value system does not match your own (understaffed, unethical, non-philanthropic) can leave you feeling unfulfilled. During your networking and/or interviewing, be sure to ask demanding questions of the prospective employer.
Here are some sample questions:
1. What three words or phrases would you use to describe the company/department culture?
Pay attention to the adjectives that are used to see if they fit with your values.
2. Does the company have a stated set of cultural values?
Often, a mission statement is a good place to start to gather insights in this area.
3. Can you describe the environment here?
Pay attention to the words used and the aspects of the work environment the employer mentions, such as camaraderie, career-development opportunities, and work-life initiatives.
4. What is the company's attitude toward educational and professional development?
Does the company place a value on lifelong learning and advancement?
5. What type of employee achievements are recognized by the employer?
Pay attention to what the company values, and whether any special awards are given for outstanding customer service, sales, etc.
6. What type of sponsorships or philanthropic activities does the company participate in?
Does the company partner with United Way, or support programs such as Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day? Do company employees volunteer for local charities?
Another great way to assess corporate culture is to pay attention to details as you walk around the office during your interviews. Reflect on things you notice, including:
a) How were you treated during the interviews? Were people on time?
b) Were there key phrases the interviewers used frequently that would give you a clue as to what the company values/does not value?
c) How prepared were the interviewers? Had they seen your resume?
d) Do people look happy and appear to be having fun?
e) Do senior management members sit with everyone else or do they have fancy lush offices?
f) Does the office layout promote collaboration between departments?
g) Are people eating lunch at their desk alone, or in groups in a cafeteria?
Finding the right culture is key to your career success. Think about your impressions of the corporate culture during your networking and interviewing, and capture your thoughts afterward. Pay attention to your intuition: if you have a bad feeling, it might be best to decline further interviews and/or an offer.
[About the Author: Randi Bussin founder and president of Aspire!, is a career coach and counselor with 25 years of business, entrepreneurial, and career coaching expertise.]
by Randi Bussin
As a career coach, I've occasionally had clients come back to me for redirection after several months on the job. Often the all-too-perfect role turns sour because of the corporate culture and/or internal politics.
Most ask how they can assess these factors ahead of time. Although culture is intangible, there are a few things potential candidates can do to get a read on the environment before they say 'yes'.
Before we begin, let's just step back for a minute and discuss what culture is and why it's important.
What is corporate culture? At its most basic, corporate culture can be described as an organization' s personality and the shared idea of 'how things are done around here'. Corporate culture is a broad term and guides how employees think, act, feel, and behave. It describes the unique beliefs and behavior of a company and includes the organization' s core values, mission, ethics, and rules of behavior.
Why is corporate culture important? Culture is important because it affects the hours you work, how people interact with each other (or don't), how people dress, benefits offered to employees (flextime, telecommuting, etc), office layout, training, and professional development. As you can see, culture affects just about everything that relates to your work. So how do you assess the true culture of a potential employer?
The first step toward determining whether you will be a good match for a company is to know yourself and know what matters most to you (your values). You have to be crystal clear about what you are seeking from each role and each company. Are you seeking intellectual stimulation, a family-friendly environment, a social outlet, or work-life balance?
The next step is to use the job interview - and your networking interviews - to determine if the employer's work environment is aligned with your core values. Working at a company whose value system does not match your own (understaffed, unethical, non-philanthropic) can leave you feeling unfulfilled. During your networking and/or interviewing, be sure to ask demanding questions of the prospective employer.
Here are some sample questions:
1. What three words or phrases would you use to describe the company/department culture?
Pay attention to the adjectives that are used to see if they fit with your values.
2. Does the company have a stated set of cultural values?
Often, a mission statement is a good place to start to gather insights in this area.
3. Can you describe the environment here?
Pay attention to the words used and the aspects of the work environment the employer mentions, such as camaraderie, career-development opportunities, and work-life initiatives.
4. What is the company's attitude toward educational and professional development?
Does the company place a value on lifelong learning and advancement?
5. What type of employee achievements are recognized by the employer?
Pay attention to what the company values, and whether any special awards are given for outstanding customer service, sales, etc.
6. What type of sponsorships or philanthropic activities does the company participate in?
Does the company partner with United Way, or support programs such as Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day? Do company employees volunteer for local charities?
Another great way to assess corporate culture is to pay attention to details as you walk around the office during your interviews. Reflect on things you notice, including:
a) How were you treated during the interviews? Were people on time?
b) Were there key phrases the interviewers used frequently that would give you a clue as to what the company values/does not value?
c) How prepared were the interviewers? Had they seen your resume?
d) Do people look happy and appear to be having fun?
e) Do senior management members sit with everyone else or do they have fancy lush offices?
f) Does the office layout promote collaboration between departments?
g) Are people eating lunch at their desk alone, or in groups in a cafeteria?
Finding the right culture is key to your career success. Think about your impressions of the corporate culture during your networking and interviewing, and capture your thoughts afterward. Pay attention to your intuition: if you have a bad feeling, it might be best to decline further interviews and/or an offer.
[About the Author: Randi Bussin founder and president of Aspire!, is a career coach and counselor with 25 years of business, entrepreneurial, and career coaching expertise.]
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