How Searing Honesty Can Help Increase Your Hiring Success
The number one reason for people voluntarily leaving a job within the first 6 months is that “the opportunity was not what I was expecting”. Of course, at times this is a cop out from people that do not have the tenacity to overcome challenges, but what can companies do to make sure they do not lose good people for this reason?
The best policy is to be as honest with people as you would expect them to be with you.
The first and most important thing to be honest with potential employees about the culture of the company.
Culture is going to be the factor that pushes people away the quickest. Consider the cultural differences between your company and one you have worked for in the past. What are the differences in expectations? In reward structure? How people interact with each other? What about the dress code or the attitude to working hours?
All of these things add up to a powerful culture, which, whether everyone is outwardly aware of it or not, will pull in certain people and repel others.
The second, which is tied to culture and probably of equal importance, is the company’s mission and goals.
What the company stands for and what it is trying to achieve will be of massive importance to any good calibre candidate. The ultimate result when hiring is to find people that buy into your company’s mission and want to be a part of it. To get buy in, the company’s missions and goals need to be discussed at length, openly and honestly during the hiring process.
The third, and final imperative, is the job itself. What activity is actually required once the work starts?
Sales roles have notoriously high staff turnover and, beyond the fact that a special level of resilience is required to be successful in sales, there is one key reason for his; people go into the role having been sold only on the positives.
I could write a job description for a sales role that would attract hundreds of people overnight; uncapped earnings, be your own boss, flexibility etc. By making it perfectly clear to these hundreds of people that the role required a minimum of 6 hours of cold calling a day I could instantly whittle my list down to about 5 people.
Sales tends to provide us with clear and easy examples that back up our arguments when discussing hiring but we have encountered examples of people having been sold on only the positives from every industry.
The potential negatives and sticking points must be discussed in as much detail as the positives.
The final point is that the results required of the person must be made clear during the interview process. The benefits of great clarity on key performance indicators is discussed in more detail here.
The culture of the company, its goals and ambitions and the detail of exactly what the job entails make up a huge part of the overall picture but often they are not covered with enough vigour in the hiring process.
Discussing these factors in great passion during the hiring process will dramatically increase your hiring success, as it will attract the people that feel the most connection to your company and the job and it will simply repel those that don’t feel any.
The ultimate goal of hiring is to find long term employees that excel and help the company achieve its mission. Providing great clarity around the company’s culture, mission and the job details are a critical building block in achieving this goal.