How to Know if Someone is the Right Person for Your Job- a thought leadership blog series from John Wentworth #2 HOW DO YOU MEASURE?

#2 How Do You Measure?

If you have specified your needs thoroughly, you are halfway to being able to measure candidates against requirements.  The next step is precision.

Why does precision matter?  It matters because not being precise can cause you to hire someone who might seem like the right person, but is not.

“I want someone who administers a Total Rewards program,” you might say. You find someone who does and you hire that person.  The person fails because you were not precise about knowing how big a Total Rewards system they needed to have administered.

As it turns out, your company is middle-size but your Total Rewards program is lush and, as a consequence, complicated.  You don’t recognized how complicated it is, however, because you are not a student of Total Rewards and you think that most TR programs are that complex.  You don’t specify the complexity of the program in your candidate measurement requirements.  You find a candidate and she says that she has done what you want.

You are choosing between two imprecise options: “they do” and “they do not” have the experience you want.  Your candidate does have TR experience but not at the level of complexity you need.  She fails.

 A better decision system would allow you to pick from five options.  The five choices might be:

Has managed a Total Rewards system that consisted of these elements: 1) compensation, 2) benefits, 3) work-life, 4) performance and recognitions, 5) development and career opportunities.

1.     Has no experience managing a Total Rewards system.

2.     Has experience managing a Total Rewards system that consisted of 2 of the above.

3.     Has experience managing a Total Rewards system that consisted of all 5 above.

4.     #3 + has helped design components of a Total Rewards system with all 5 above.

5.     #3 + has, with primary responsibility, designed a Total Rewards system with all 5 above.

At Wentworth, we create 30-35 requirements for each job, plus another 15 for workplace fit.  Each requirement is constructed like the one above.

The result of having a comprehensive set of requirements (described in the last post) and measuring candidates against the requirements very precisely is that you can filter out most of the candidates who will not work out on the job, raising the chance significantly of hiring a strong new employee.

In this diagram, you can see it in stop-action: the people in red are less qualified for your job.  The people in green are more qualified.  This careful filtering allows only qualified candidates through. 

We do this every day for our clients. The disciplined application of this methodology delivers precisely qualified candidates.

If you are interested in how Wentworth can help you select employees who will be productive and stable, or teach your employees how to do it, please call me at 310 732 2301.

Thanks so much.

John