Reducing New Hire Failure: Hiring for Attitude

“46% of newly hired employees will fail within 18 months, 

while only 19% will achieve unequivocal success.”

What an astonishing and distressing statement for any HR, L&D or corporate leader to read. This was in the opening stunner paragraph in Mark Murphy’s Leadership IQ white paper Hiring for Attitude: Research and Tools to Skyrocket your Success Rate. This white paper is well written, and Mark offers excellent statistical insights, which lead to positive solutions. First, look at these revealing stats from the Leadership IQ study:

      

 I. Study Results:     New Hire Success Factors  

Here are five areas distilled from the study data of 5247 interviews with

managers and the performance, personality and potential of new hires:       

·      Coachability (26%): The ability to accept and implement feedback from bosses, colleagues, customers and others.

·      Emotional Intelligence (23%): The ability to understand and manage one's own emotions, and accurately assess others' emotions.

·      Motivation (17%): Sufficient drive to achieve one's full potential and excel in the job.

·      Temperament (15%): Attitude and personality suited to the particular job and work environment.

·      Technical Competence (11%): Functional or technical skills required to do the job.

As is evident, coachability, emotional intelligence, motivation and temperament are more predictive of new hire success or failure than technical competence. The study also found that different interviewing strategies (e.g., behavioral, chronological, case study, etc.) had no significant difference in the failure rate. Those managers with the greatest success, however, emphasized interpersonal and motivational interview questions.                             

 II. Preventing New Hire Failure

Effective Interview Questions:

Leadership IQ recommends that managers focus interviewing on the first four factors above  

(coachability, emotional intelligence, motivation and temperament). Unfortunately, the most common interviewing approach centers on technical competence, which is easy to assess but is a “lousy predictor of whether a newly hired employee will succeed or fail”.

Two Quick Tests To Discover the Attitudes You Want:

Test #1: Finding Your High-Performer Attitudes

What are the distinguishing attitudinal characteristics that make these people such a joy to work with?

Examples of your responses might include:

·      They take ownership of problems

·      They’re highly collaborative

·      They aren’t afraid to make mistakes

·      They meet commitments

·      They’re empathetic towards customers’ and colleagues’ needs

Test #2: Finding Your Low-Performer Attitudes

What are the attitudes these folks have that make getting stuck in traffic on the way to work seem like a blessing?

Examples of your responses might include:

·      They always find the negative

·      They gossip

·      They respond to feedback with an argument

·      They only do the bare minimum expected of them

·      They get overwhelmed by multiple demands and priorities

·      They always find someone else to blame for their mistakes

·      They’re unwilling to leave their comfort zone

The financial costs for hiring failures can cost millions of dollars, even for small companies. Leadership IQ has done hiring managers and their companies a great service with this white paper. 

Coming soon from this white paper:  "The Perfect 4-Step Interview Question"