People Dynamics Newsletter - People Matters
Issue 29, July 2007 | Back to Newsletters Index
A new face at People Dynamics
We would like to welcome Shannon to the team. She started as Administration Assistant on 02 July with us.
Shannon is currently doing her Masters of Arts Management at Melbourne University. Her core working hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 8am till 1pm.
The McQuaig System™
Hiring new staff and retaining them is one of the key issues facing us as managers and owners. One way to make sure we get the right people is to use profiling as a measure.
We use The McQuaig SystemTM and are licensed resellers of the program.
This excellent tool allows you to assess what attitude you need for the role and then matches this to the candidate or current employee. The online surveys take 10 to 20 minutes to complete and are available through us. Comprehensive reports are provided with interviewing questions to make it easier. Contact us for further information. We have also started helping clients with recruiting jobs.
Common mistakes in interviews
A number of studies on the predictive power of different selection methods have shown that the traditional, old fashioned way of interviewing – that is, walking into an interview without questions, planning to have a chat with the person and asking them their strengths and weaknesses - is only marginally better than random selection in predicting future performance. Behavioural interviewing (that is asking people to give you actual examples to display that they exhibit the desired behaviours) is a far more robust selection tool. One of the best predictors of future performance is past performance. So what are some of the more common mistakes people make when conducting a behavioural interview?
1) Making up your mind within minutes of meeting a candidate – interviewers must recognise their personal biases and objectively measure candidates on their past behaviour
2) The Halo Effect – letting one factor (eg, a course they have completed, or where they worked) influence all else. Where they worked or what they studied is never as important as what they did while there.
3) Being underprepared – this not only results in a less probing interview, but you also miss the opportunity to impress a candidate with your knowledge of their past, and your interest in them as a person. An interview is as much about you selling your organisation as them selling themselves.
Searching for the right candidate can be a demanding and arduous process. In the end though, if you don’t find the right candidate, it is always more economical to delay your decision rather than hiring the wrong person. If in doubt, keep looking.