Flooded Candidate Pool

Return to Blogs

Is it possible that the number of available candidates can cause bad hiring decisions?  If this is happening to you, be assured you are not alone. 

Bias is a killer in the hiring process and it seems impossible to stop it. Bias is what hiring managers develop over time. Their experiences with employees both good and bad form their biases and over time, they distort the reality of a situation.

Unchecked biases will drive hiring managers to hire a replacement employee that has the same characteristics of the person who either resigned or was terminated.  The larger labor pool is the perfect time to change biases and take a fresh look at what the job calls for first then what type of person will do it well.

The process for putting a fresh face on the job is benchmarking.  Benchmarking of a position involves bring a group of employees together who are considered "keepers" or we call them stakeholders.  These people demonstrate they have an emotional stake in the success of the business. The stakeholders who interact with the position are the best people to benchmark it.

As an example, employees in a customer service department can interact with the people in the sales department, as the people in the warehouse and accounting department can interact with them.  The interaction represented here is the emotional responses the people working in the affected departments need to deal with when, in this case, the sales position is not performing well.

The primary result of a benchmarked position is to define what personal talents the position requires for the person to be a superior performer.  Every position has a set of technical skills required for the  position. Research shows that for every technical skill the position requires there are an equal number of personal talents required for them to be performed well.  The job description is the best format for defining the technical skills and educational requirements for the position.

Here is an example: An automobile sales person who does not have the patience to determine the customer needs may sell the car but the service manager will need to deal with the customer’s frustration because the feature (s) he/she thought were included are not there.

Benchmarking a position defines the needs of the position from the stakeholder’s point of view that interact with the position.  It can be said their views are biased views as well and this is true.  However, benchmarking averages out the results of the six to eight stakeholders to give a balanced view of the personal talents the position needs. The result is the hiring manger will be required to hire people who meet the technical AND personal talent needs of the position rather than fulfill the biases he or she has for the position.

With the flood of candidates available today and the real need many of them have to earn money they, can become very convincing they can do the job when in fact it may not right for them.  Benchmarking results greatly enhances hiring manger’s ability hire the right person for the job the first time.

Return to Blogs

• Hiring (9)
• Retention (14)

• Assessments (19)
• Technology (1)

• Talent (11)
• Selection (10)