I have noticed during my 30+ years of experience in recruiting new personnel how important the interview can be if you want a really successful recruitment process. I will give you some advice here on how to prepare for such an interview with candidates.
Preparation:
Read the candidate’s CV to quickly get an idea of what the candidate has been focusing on in his/her working career.
Be prepared to take notes and do that, and simply that, throughout the interview.
Note down all questions you might have from reading the CV. These questions can be a good warm-up to make the candidate comfortable, and it also demonstrates that you have an active interest in this particular person.
When the candidate arrives, be ready to make things comfortable for him or her. Offer something to drink, demonstrate respect and decide to give your full attention to this individual. No company can afford bad manners on their hiring lines. The PR and word of mouth about your company depends on it to some degree. Have something to write down the candidate’s answers on. Be prepared to take notes.
Decide to focus on getting a clear idea of the candidate’s actual past production and be willing to ask “dumb” questions in case you don’t understand something.
Interview:
Realize that any candidate, whether great or not, has in fact taken the time to send you an application and travel to your office, and that demands some respect, no matter what. Just because there are few jobs available at the moment and lots of applicants, there is no reason to become arrogant. In a year from now the situation might be reversed. I repeat: It is much better to treat all candidates in a very respectful manner.
Carefully observe the candidate and be interested in what the candidate is talking about; make sure you understand what is being said and acknowledge each answer after you understand it.
Find out what the main reason was for applying to this position. (Was it personal interest or the need to do or learn something new, the urge to make more money, or any other reason, or is it a combination of different factors?)
Give the candidate a quick orientation regarding your company and the position you are hiring for, and ask the candidate if he/she has any questions at this point.
Ask some straight questions regarding his or her current job situation. Be curious and interested and focus on finding out about his or her production. What was contributed, how much and in what time, and who might be able to verify it.
Avoid using questions that direct the candidate to an expected answer such as: “We are looking for someone who is quick, effective and service-oriented. How would you describe yourself?”
If any question crosses your mind, or you start to become aware of something regarding the candidate during the interview, just ask about it. For example: If the candidate is nervous to the point where you notice it, just ask him “are you nervous?”; this should help to relieve the tension, and the candidate won’t have his attention focused on whether or not you have noticed his nervousness.
If you have done a test and already have the test results, you can definitely ask questions based on that information. In the Performia hiring training, you can find lots of advice on how to do this effectively.
Maintain a friendly yet professional attitude throughout the entire interview, and if you say you will get back to him or her with some information, make sure to keep that promise.
It is important to take into consideration a candidate’s previous results before you decide to hire him. The fact that a candidate has produced before and can prove it is VERY valuable in order to avoid severe hiring mistakes. This does not mean that a formerly productive person cannot become a failure in a new position BUT, and this is important, he or she is normally as interested as you in resolving a situation, and you will seldom experience complications in case you need to part ways.
Who wants to get a striker who has never scored a goal onto a football team? Who wants to hire a director of a sales department who has never increased the sales of a group in any area? Or who would hire a director of manufacturing who never started or stably increased production anywhere?
Even though most people agree that it is important to know about past production, many managers and executives sign employment contracts without even looking at or verifying the results given by the candidates. This could lead to VERY expensive and completely unnecessary mistakes.
Areas that one preferably should pay some attention to during the hiring process include:
Positive:
Candidate has no problem proving his or her high production in a previous job(s).
Candidate can prove that his/her results in a previous job(s) were above average.
Production increased through the years and, if this was not always true, the candidate can talk about it and tell you what happened when it went down.
Candidate was in a difficult situation and he/she managed to resolve it.
There are no “holes” in the candidate’s CV that could not be easily explained.
Candidate showed a clear interest in the part of the interview related to production and results.
Candidate does not have the slightest problem giving you contact info for people who should know his or her level of production.
Negative:
Candidate is not able or, worse, not willing to provide the production records from a previous job.
There was a lack of obvious value-creating results in previous jobs.
Production through the years has been decreasing. The candidate doesn’t seem to think that is a problem.
Candidate has a big problem defining what valuable results he/she produced in previous jobs.
Candidate doesn’t seem to have resolved any difficult situations.
There are “holes” in the candidate’s CV that cannot be explained in a simple way. That a candidate was not successful in one of his earlier jobs does not necessarily disqualify him or her.
Candidate showed very little interest in the part of the interview related to production and results.
Candidate is hesitant to give the contact info of his/her former employer for reference.
Performia recommendation: While making your decision whether or not to hire someone, we urge you to focus on the above-mentioned statements. Do this until you know. And if this is very complicated, realize that that is a bad indicator all in itself, drop that candidate and look for another one.
Linda and Steve met at River Rooster / CHOOKS fresh & tasty in 1997. Steve was the owner of the brand and growing a new franchise, and Linda started to help him with her expertise in advertising and marketing. Soon she joined the company as General Manager until Steve sold this network of 43 stores in 2010. During this time, Linda was awarded with the 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2012 FCA Excellence in Franchising Woman in Franchising award for Western Australia. Steve was the President of the Western Australia Chapter of the Franchise Council of Australia from 2003 – 2008, and both Linda and Steve have been state committee members of the Franchise Council of Australia for many years.
Now they are partners at Think DONE Management Consultancy full time. Steve is the “King of Strategy” and Linda is the “Queen of Efficiency”. What do they do? Help executives to get things done. Here we present an interview with Linda and Steve.
Linda, could you give me a short summary of your company and what you do?
DONE is the most powerful word in the universe, and everything we have developed is around that one word. When we first started consulting, we were called “Think BIG”; but not everyone wants to be big – they want to be solid and get stuff DONE, so we changed our name to better reflect our philosophy. Our business is helping businesses to become more efficient from an organisation point of view; to get them to think strategically and tactically: all the little things that have to be done. We also specialise in franchising.
Steve, tell me how Think DONE is unique for your clients? What do you offer that other companies do not?
What I find with every company is that there are two things missing or not done as well as they could to be. No or illogical planning and bad organisational structure often results in the inability to get plans fully executed.
The challenge is said to be the failure to implement whatever the plan might be. Consultants say this is the owner’s problem, and we say it is the consultant’s issue.
What we do is find out what the issue is at the time, what’s needed, and what’s also needed long-term, and then get our clients to accomplish what is needed.
Steve and Linda with the fabulous CHOOKS management team, working through their weekly plans.
Steve, what are some of the biggest challenges that business owners have in your experience of working with them at Think DONE?
In most cases, the biggest challenge and the problem is the owners. Owners tend to do what they know and like. The biggest challenge, they say, is people and their problems.
They will say finance, lending; can’t get a loan, can’t find the right people. All those come along if they don’t have systems and procedures in place to know what they are actually looking for. They don’t have the organisation in place to know what they need.
But it goes back to the business owner first and understanding first that they don’t know. They also tend to make reactive decisions, whereas decisions need to be commercial and proactive.
Linda, how many staff did you have when you first started working with Performia in CHOOKS fresh & tasty and how many were there in the final year?
We started working with Performia in 2006. We had 19 stores and 300 staff. By 2010, when we sold, we had 39 stores plus 4 being built to make a total of 43. We had roughly 700 staff at that point.
Steve, what was your first experience working with Performia?
I first had a Performia evaluation on myself. We all think we are better than we are. I took notice of some of the things mentioned and was able to improve with training. I enjoyed the training and could easily relate to it.
Before you started working with Performia, what problems did you encounter regarding personnel?
We had big problems in the franchisee area. We were taking on franchisees who were good people, but we didn’t know how to manage them. Some were not suitable for franchising, some not suited to running a business. We took them on in the early days because we thought we could get on with them… if they had a heartbeat we would consider them, but that’s not how you do franchising. We learnt the hard way.
Linda, was it hard to find productive people for CHOOKS fresh & tasty?
It was hard to find the right franchisees. We were not just looking to find someone to cook chicken. We were looking for people we could train to look after their team. Being able to find franchisees was the reason we went to do the Performia training.
Linda, the company grew significantly. What do you think is behind this success?
We had a fantastic team at the head office. The team we had were very cohesive, worked together, and we were all on the same page. When we sold in 2010, I hadn’t had anyone leave our team for 2 years. Staff retention was very high. This was obviously from choices we had made using Performia and the training that went with it. We also had a fantastic bunch of franchisees.
Steve, before you started working with Performia, what problems did you encounter regarding personnel?
When I had 5 stores and 120 staff, I was powerful as a franchisee. The reason I became a franchisor was because people wanted to use my brand. I had an idea that we wanted 15 stores, but we made all the mistakes that we possibly could. We had 15 disasters.
Even when we were trained and licensed to use the Performia hiring system, I went against the recommendation on 3 cases, and those 3 decisions cost me one million dollars. I went against the recommendations of Performia and our entire team. I thought I was trying to be nice to somebody. I thought I could help them, change them. And I did this three times.
Linda, has measuring productivity in your company changed interactions within the team?
It can be absolutely fantastic. Productive people love it; it gives them that new challenge. Up is good, down is not good, and they want that graph to go up. When they learn it’s about getting production increasing, they produce more, they start playing the game and start being a team.
Linda, what do you think is the biggest advantage of using the Performance check?
The certainty you would get that the person could understand what production was and play the game to improve and succeed.
Can you imagine hiring people without checking productivity or without measuring it?
SH: Wouldn’t even consider it. We wouldn’t take anyone without some good evaluation and knowing and understanding they are about production, incentive, reward for production, and understand the penalty for no production.
LS: I cannot think of any other way of doing it. I have seen some clients hire in the most unusual way. It is a waste of time and a waste of personal energy. You place your heart and soul in someone and think they will be fantastic.
Performia can give you such valuable information, to know what are the true colours of any employee before they’re hired or interviewed.
Would you recommend checking and measuring productivity to others? Why?
LS: I would. It saves you time, heartache, money. You have better things to do with all your resources than devote them to a maybe/average candidate.
SH: Yes! Businesses need good, honest and loyal staff who are ethical. If you have this, you can train them in knowledge they might lack. When hiring in this form, your values and culture will come through.
Her role began in Customer Service and Contact Centre Management. She later headed the Operations Division and is currently the head of Talent and Quality Control. She wanted to move into this role because she loves to see people grow and develop. Why are Emanuela Wasinski and imei, a big Australian communication technology company, so successful? Find out here.
How is imei unique for your clients? What do you offer that other companies do not?
Our niche is Mobile Intelligence, Connectivity, Security and Management, and we have three unique features: proven exceptional customer service, proof we can be trusted by countries’ most security-conscious organisations, and intelligence, connectivity, security and professional management skills.
How many people were working there when you started and how many do you have now?
The company has gone through a period of evolution and change, initially starting from Tim’s second bedroom unit on his own in 2000, to 30 when I started in 2011 and 70 staff in 2019.
Emanuela is going through a Performia Assessment with a manager for a candidate who was interviewed for the manager‘s team.
Before you started working with Performia, what problems did you encounter regarding personnel?
Whenever we have had issues with performance, we always refer back to their Performia evaluation. When we checked these individuals, we saw that they had never been through the Performia process. They had not done the evaluation and had never gone through the same process. It made sense why they had not worked out.
So it changed after you started to cooperate with Performia?
The Performia evaluation has always been very successful for us. It works very well. The results of the evaluations give us guidance on whether we should progress further with someone, and it also assists with compiling second-interview questions, where we check productivity further. We al
so use the information for our reference checks.
Has measuring productivity in your company changed interactions within the team?
Yes. It holds everyone accountable. Gives everyone goals – especially our customer service team, who receive a monthly bonus based on statistics and productivity. It gives them visibility. We also share statistics with everyone in the company. Everyone sees where we are headed and everyone is on the same page. We are very transparent and that’s why we work so well together.
What is the biggest advantage of using Performance check?
There are multiple advantages. The biggest is that it provides very good insight into how productive they will be in the future, how effective they can be and whether they are the right person for the role you are hiring for.
Can you imagine hiring people without checking productivity or without measuring it?
Definitely not. Now that we use it, it is almost like, “how did we ever hire before?” It is the first thing we think about. It would not make sense to hire without checking this first.
Would you recommend checking and measuring productivity to others? Why?
Yes, definitely, saves you time and money. After all, a company’s productivity and profitability depend on the quality of its workers, so by ensuring we have the right tools to do so, i.e. Performia, I know we can hire top talent.
We can find a lot of articles and reports on production and productivity on the internet, in newspapers and magazines. But how do you connect production with your employees directly? Should their work be measured or not? If yes, will it contribute to the overall production of the company or not? Will it help you to have a better team? We decided to ask our clients in Slovakia how they see it and what helps them.
Do you measure individual production in your company? What is the biggest advantage of knowing each individual personal production?
Did you encounter any situation where you did not measure production, and what was the difference?
They measure individual production by statistics, which deflects fulfilment of the determined targets and production of the company. Each employee has within his job a description where the final result of the job is directly defined. Management sets the goals and standards for divisions, as well as for the whole company, and regularly monitors their fulfilment through key indicators in the graphs.
The biggest advantage is the ability of management to respond immediately to fluctuations in efficiency and adopt flexible measures. But there are several other advantages: ■ clear overview of whether the products of the job and the employee are going up or down. This indicates in advance whether the company is expanding, stagnating or contracting. ■ direct connection to a reward system, which considerably influences motivation ■ better measurement of the effectivity, i.e. whether the results correspond with the amount of work assignments for the job and whether the workload corresponds with set requirements. ■ any sensible person enjoys self-motivation ■ visual quantification of results (stats, graph) is like a shield that an employee can use as an argument when discussing his production with his superiors. No assumptions, only facts.
Yes, we can see the difference. It is similar to driving a car without the dashboard. It is possible, but you do not know whether the engine is overheated, or you have enough petrol, or are staying within the speed limit or not. Before, we had a problem identifying weak and strong spots in our processes. We could not make decisions quickly and effectively, and we had a problem recovering from long-term losses. After implementing several important decisions, including the measurement of production, we showed more than 5 years of profit and got into a good condition.
Name: Ing. Martin Holenda Position: ED Company: Proreco, Slovakia
They measure individual production in the company by assigning personal statistics to each employee.
The main advantage is that we have factual data on the production of our employees, departments, and the whole company, and we can exactly determine the condition we are currently in. Because of the statistics, we have our company under control. The other advantage is that when we want to motivate and reward our employees, one part of the salary is connected to their personal statistics and thus to real production.
The situation, before we implemented the stats, was a bit unrestrained; we were making decisions based on guessing rather than based on the actual facts. Of course, we had the data about production, but only the overall data, mainly based on our own production, accounting or sales records. Determining the trend was strenuous because we had to obtain the information from various sources, process and evaluate it. Now we have it faster, and the data are easy to get and thus the decisions are made faster.
They are a trading company and thus the production in sales is very easy to measure. If overall production is not following the targets, they immediately see which employee has a problem reaching his target and is causing the whole company to be behind schedule.
The biggest advantage of knowing each individual personal production is that I can see whether the employee is managing his job or not. Whether he is contributing or is a burden for the company. Many times, production is the reason why the person was hired for that job, and thus the company should monitor their investment in this person. We monitor investment revenues on capital markets/stock markets, so why would we not do it with employees? On one hand we can see whether the person is an asset and, on the other hand, we can monitor his potential. In our company we have a natural pressure on production, because in a small company one position is closely following another, and people are “chasing” each other when one has a delay with delivering his or her product. We strictly make sure that sales targets are met in our company, which also creates a natural pressure to fulfill individual plans.
We have measured individual production for a really long time and I, personally, do not recall a time when we did not. I could imagine that some companies operate without doing this, and I could assume that in bigger companies they do not have enough capacity to measure production for each individual. Such a situation could have two effects – either there is an individual holding the job who is not capable and nobody notices it, or there is a very capable person but because nobody measures his production, he goes by unnoticed whether he is producing a lot or a little. Not measuring production could discourage productive people, and for unproductive people it would be convenient. Our well-trodden path is to already start measuring production with each individual, continue with groups and up to the whole company. Our reward system is based on production as well.
Predicting future impressions, however, is a key to success in hiring
Some recruiters pay a lot of attention to the first impression they get from a candidate. Sometimes this could be a huge mistake. This does not mean that the first impression never matters, but it is often overrated.
Maybe you met your husband or wife and fell in love right away, and then got married and all worked out fantastically well and you have lived happily ever since. Or you could possibly have met a person many times over time and, one day, you found yourself in love with a person you have known for a long time. Without having done any extensive research on the matter, I have concluded that marriages or relationships that are quickly formed based on a very good first impression seem to be short-lived, more often than not. The same in sales. You might have met a salesman who made a fantastic first impression but, as you encountered him over time, you became slightly less amazed the more times you met him.
This does not mean that the first impression can never be vital. It really can be. In some jobs, you simply don’t get a second chance if you did not make a good enough impression in the first meeting. So yes, first impression can be extremely important in certain jobs and situations. But as a recruiter, you should generally be a lot more concerned with the 5th or even the 50th impression when you want to hire to build a real and productive team. When looking at this, think about a really good friend of yours who was not very outgoing or “PRish” the first time you met, but then started to “win over” or impress more and more, the more times you met. In hiring, you are often better off with this second scenario.
Some people are not good at all at generating an amazing first impression, and they often know it. Thus, they tend to hate situations where the first impression is considered “everything”, and unfortunately hiring is an area where it is often considered “very important” to deliver a great first impression. Now, you need to understand that there are people who deliver a beautiful first impression, and the 10th impression is still as great or even better. There are people who give an awful first impression and, after 10 impressions, you see the same awfulness. But then there are those who cannot easily make a good first impression, but then improve the more times people see or deal with him or her.
This leaves us with a simple idea: In hiring, the first impression is NOT super important unless the actual job requires that ability. Many companies miss out on hiring some amazing people simply because they pay too much attention to the first impression.
In hiring, a good first impression generally does not compensate for a bad 10th, unless it is a person who will almost exclusively deal with brand new people. In some other jobs, the first impression is crucial, such as in a busy reception, in some management positions, in a PR representative, in some sales jobs, etc. So in those jobs we have to consider what people will receive and think about from the first contact. But when it comes to people you will work with over time, and eventually meet hundreds of times, the first impression is rarely a good guide to what hiring decision you should take. That is why meeting a potential candidate several times gives you the chance to observe how the impression changes over time, and with more meetings.
Some quite productive people have problems presenting themselves in a “PR-way”. That is why they might not look so very interested when we ask them to “present themselves” or if we ask them to describe “who you are”.
Candidates who do not care about the first impression
Some people do not care about the first impression. They are often a bit dispersed, impatient, and they do not care much about “details” such as modern-looking clothes or self-confident behavior.
If something is really important, then they do it, but they are definitely not precise in details.
However, sometimes these people can still be productive in certain areas.
All factors are not equally important. When it comes to evaluating people for hiring, few things are as important as the level at which a person can produce or deliver. And that is why you should always care about production.
Anna Matusova is a co-owner and co-founder of Performia Slovakia. Her professional career in the HR field started in the 1990s as an HR manager at Eurotel (today Telecom) and then at McDonald’s. During her 20 years of work at Performia, she has interviewed thousands of candidates and, at the same time, has trained owners and managers in new perspectives and methods for professionally building a team. Thus, we decided to ask her for her viewpoint on production.
I have been representing Performia in Slovakia for more than 20 years now. We try to inform the current business world about a few basic factors that are part of our technology, and that are important not only when doing hiring but also when building a good team.
One specific, stable type of data that you can always count on when working with personnel is PRODUCTION. In other words, THE RESULTS of any activity. What you need from employees is simply to get the job done. If this takes place, you will avoid a lot of problems. What I say might sound a bit harsh, but you should pay your employees for their actual production.
To understand this better, it is good to look at the origin of the word PRODUCTION. It comes from Latin and consists of two parts: pro and ducere. (Pro-) is a prefix that means forward, to move something forward. (Ducere) means to lead or to carry. In the figurative sense, we could say that a “product” is something that we made somewhere behind the scenes, and only once it was fully complete was it brought forward with pride and put on display. We see this often in restaurants, where what we get on the table is nothing else but a completed product. A product is something for which you do not need to add or improve anything.
I have already mentioned that employees should be paid for their actual production. If an employee is getting paid for something that he is not really producing, the consequences over time would be a decline in willingness, responsibility, respect for the company, respect for managers, worsening quality of his work, etc. Such a person will most probably spread his dissatisfaction to others in the company, and it could then continue to spread like a plague. Eventually, even the people who were once on your side will start to resist and revolt.
A product is something for which you do not need to add or improve anything
The main role of an executive is actually to bring his juniors to the successful creation of a product, in a high quality and an amount that follows the standards of the company. If you want to retain the right people, you have to be able to give them real challenges in the form of achievable results at work, which you then have to be able to verify as well. The best index for measuring results is a statistic. Every type of work can be measured. The results either exist or do not.
Statistics are a very useful index of production and can be used to make conclusions and decisions that improve a company. Although the world is not run by numbers, statistics can show us whether or not it is run well.
So how do you set up a remunerative system then?
One of the possible solutions is to ask yourself, “What do you actually pay your employees for?” The ideal scenario is if the pay truthfully reflects the production of each specific employee.
A reward system based on the precisely calculated, valuable, completed result of work done in good quality and produced by the employee, works the best. This is because production and visible results give a person more desire to improve. It is the basis for the continuous growth of success at work, as well as for having a strong and effective team.
I am convinced that the thing behind high production is the person’s motivation. The employee that does not create and produce anything is struggling and cannot experience long-term happiness. Grant joy from production, and fulfillment from work, to the members of your team.
This issue brings you an inside view of Testing personality. Is it really important to do it? Is it actually possible to measure it? How does it work in reality? Does it help you build a better team? You will find answers in this issue. We hope you will enjoy reading it.
Personality is a package of used “solutions” that you had better know about before you hire
“What exactly is personality?” I ask Mårten Runow. “Good question!” he says and I feel relief, because to ask the highest boss such a basic question, when I know he has dealt with it every day for more than 25 years, seems a bit elementary. “Personality is a word that we often use without even fully understanding it”, he continues. What is the real story regarding personality and its testing, according to the founder of Performia and expert in hiring and recruiting people for companies around the world?
One definition which Mårten considers very useful is this: “Personality is a package of ‘solutions’. Life for any individual consists of facing many different situations, including problems. Personality gives you an indicator of which type of solution is used to battle these different situations. Here is one example:
Two individuals are both rejected for a new job they wanted. One of them becomes sad for the next 3 weeks and hopes that someone will develop some sympathy for him and, out of pity, offer him a job, whereas in reality he loses the job he already has (because he stopped doing anything) while still not finding any new job. The other person decides immediately upon the rejection to apply for many more jobs, and two weeks later he has landed a new and even better opportunity. Same basic problem but two very different solutions are employed.” Through understanding personality, as Mårten is saying, we can find out who will use what solution, and that can help us decide who to hire for our team
“At the same time, I want to mention that a person’s solutions (and thus personality) might change over time through experiences, and thus personality is not a fixed condition but can actually change for the better (and sometimes for the worse) over time. Because when an individual finds a better solution to a problem he will normally stick to it”, Mårten adds.
PRODUCTIVITY VERSUS PERSONALITY
Why is the EXEC U-TEST, a personality test that Performia provides as a tool for our clients, a common part of hiring and building teams nowadays, and why have you not been satisfied at headquarters with just checking productivity as a tool for hiring people?
“Because it adds another dimension to the exactness and usefulness with which you can do your hiring”, Mårten explains. “Personality, on the other hand, does not answer the question of who can really produce at a high level. This is confirmed by the fact that you can meet someone who is not necessarily the most rational or simple person to deal with, but contributes massively to the production, while you might meet someone who is very nice and polite but couldn’t accomplish anything really valuable”, adds the expert on building teams across companies around the world.
When we combine it with an analysis of productivity (which is by far the most important factor in hiring) we can then, thanks to the EXEC U-TEST, more easily understand how and in what style this person will work, and you as a manager will get the “manual” on how to effectively manage that person.
HOW COME THE QUESTIONS ARE THE SAME FOR EVERYBODY?
It is true that average personality scores can differ from one country to the next, and it is also true that the average score within a country can change over time. Performia actually follows this development internationally. What is interesting in relation to hiring is that the main characteristics and combinations for a person to be truly successful are very similar. For example, you might find that a successful Hungarian bookkeeper is a bit of a perfectionist, which happens to be the same as in Sweden or even China, as Mårten explains, and this is the reason why test questions are the same everywhere, and the results fit anyone independently of nationality or place of residence.
“Still, the average Russian profile might differ quite a lot from the average South African. You might have to look a bit harder to find really accurate and stable bookkeepers in Brazil than you have to do in Switzerland”, Marten says, speaking from experience.
TEST EVALUATION – A SKILL THAT CAN BE LEARNED
If you know the EXEC U-TEST and you know that our clients evaluate the tests themselves, certainly you have asked yourself several times, ‘How is it possible that the EXEC U-TEST can be evaluated by people who have no psychological or other similar education?’ Mårten has a very simple answer for this: “Because the test is built on extremely logical principles that any bright business person can learn and understand if given the right instructions. Also, the system today gives the evaluator a lot of assistance, so that both the positive and negative aspects don’t go unnoticed”, says Mårten.
“And any person can ‘test the test’ by having people they know very well do the test and then compare the test results with ones own actual experience of those people. If the test results do not match your observations, our recommendation is to not use this system, as it will not be able to guide your decisions in the way you need and want. However, if the test results really do match your observations, it is then easier to trust the results when you test people you don’t know beforehand”, Mårten advises.
TEST YOUR FUTURE PARTNER
To lighten things up a bit, I ask Mårten if he could tell us his funniest experience while evaluating the EXEC U-TEST. “Even though there are many, one definitely stands out. It is about a client from Tel Aviv, who asked our consultant to evaluate the test of her “friend and her friend’s fiancé” to see how compatible they were as a couple, as they were about to get married. The consultant said: ‘He looks like a really simple and agreeable person, while she looks like she could drive a sphinx up a tree.’ The client then said that it happened to be her own test, and her future husband. They got married and, after 4 months, they got divorced because they were totally incompatible.”
You can encounter such stories when evaluating personality. I would summarize this with the words of Lucia Spáčilová: “Doing the test itself does not change a person, but finding out in black-and-white what you suspect, this can definitely be a turning point!”
Although many people have anxiety before any test of personality potential, we can summarize it with the words of one of our successful clients, who said, “Able people are not afraid to be tested.” We have asked people who regularly use personality testing in their companies about their own experience. It is not surprising that in their mind the synonym for personality testing is a test called EXEC U-TEST, which is the product of Performia.
In your opinion what has the biggest value for a company when testing the personality of employees?
Could you give us some examples of situations when you got significant help, or your viewpoint changed when testing a personality?
They use the EXEC U-TEST: for all people who have applied for work since the day they got access to it. They also test their existing employees. They use the EXEC U-TEST frequently, every time their need to hire increases, and on any level in the company: from operational, low-level positions to high-level executive positions.
The benefits of using personality testing are considerable, since we can predict the behaviour of people who are going to work in our company, which minimizes the risk of hiring the wrong people. We can also predict how the hired people will act once hired. Thanks to the system, I have been able to avoid hiring people who could have been a source of problems in the company.
We tested an accounting analyst who had been working for us, and we noticed her activity in the test was really high, which was not compatible with the sedentary job she had. We observed that, indeed, she could not stay in her chair for more than half an hour without standing up and walking around the office before going back to her work. I had the opportunity to talk with her, and she told me that even though she was studying public accounting, it was not what she really wanted to do. I asked her what she would prefer, and she told me she’d really like to work in the sales area, since she likes to be in contact with people. Thanks to the test, we were able to detect her discomfort and were ready for her resignation.
They use the EXEC U-TEST: for hiring new employees, and always on existing employees after they have been with the company for one year to find out if there are any changes or improvements.
We test potential employees 95% of the time, and I see the biggest benefit in the fact that we only invite those candidates for the interview whose personality fits the position we are hiring for and, most importantly, we know in advance what we can expect from them. First, we work with this during the personal interview, and then afterwards we hire them. This means that we know their strong and weak points ahead of time, and then the work itself is simpler. Honestly, I cannot imagine doing an interview without first knowing the test results, because during interviews people can appear very good, and the reality is then somewhat different or, on the other hand, they cannot “sell” themselves but, according to the test and production, they are actually very good. So, the personality tests help us to save some time as we only meet with those selected candidates. On the other hand, that means that sometimes we interview only two or three candidates, which for some people could appear to be too small a sample to choose from.
A year ago, we were searching for a management assistant for the company. The job varies a lot, and the person needs to finish a lot of cycles and, in many cases, has to push people to get results. We had a lot of candidates, but almost nobody was really passing the tests. So, in about 14 days we had scheduled only one interview with a young lady, who at first sight looked very quiet, not very aggressive, and I personally could not imagine her in this position at all. However, based on the test she was very active, responsible, communicative, and well organized with a strong drive; she simply fit our picture. Based on her answers she was also productive, and the references ended up good as well. We decided to trust the test and everything that Performia teaches, and she has already been working for us for more than a year and handles everything.
Name: Elena Villarreal Position: HR Consultant Company: Harlingen Family Dentistry, USA
They use the EXEC U-TEST: for everyone who gets on board – new people, people they want to promote to executive positions, and people who want to change from one department to another.
Using the EXEC U-TEST really helps me to get an idea about a person, which I relay to the manager of an area. Then he knows how to handle the person better, how to correct this person so the correction really takes place. It also gives me data about the way people like to work – whether they need to be trained first or can be tossed into the swimming pool and allowed to swim. In our area, the training part is very important because we train all the people, so the test helps me to see how to train the person – if the person has a problem learning something, or has fixed ideas, etc. Based on that, I can then warn or prepare the managers and advise them on how to handle it correctly.
A few years ago we hired a dentist, despite the test results. I was able to see through the use of the EXEC U-TEST that this doctor would not be a good addition to our office. But he convinced my husband to take him on board, and there was also a desire on our side to help this dentist and get him going. My husband invested a lot of time and effort, only to finally arrive at the decision to let this doctor go. The results were devastating, and the majority of the work done by this doctor had to be redone. If we had not listened to him, but instead had looked at and trusted what we saw in the test, my husband would not have wasted two years trying to help this dentist, and even more time working to fix that dentist’s mistakes. We also generally check references on the person regardless of what the test says.
In my experience, it is almost a golden rule that if you cannot receive references, it is a bad sign. Sure enough, we could not get any references for this dentist, and after the fact it was confirmed that this person left in bad standing with his previous employer. I trust the EXEC U-TEST results 100%.
Name: Gerard Barwell Position: Managing Director Company: Silverdrop, Australia
They use the EXEC U-TEST: before deciding on the selection of any new staff for the company. They have also tested all existing staff.
We always use the test prior to making an offer. We no longer hire below a 2.5 score (a scoring system currently piloted in Australia, where 5 is most suitable and 1 is not) no matter our own personal impression of the person or their skills. Those who are above the 2.5 personality score are mostly more willing and easier to manage. Below 2.5 we find more issues to manage than we have resources to cope with. We tried this in the past and realized that it is not worth the hassle in the long run. Team interaction is the key aspect we are looking for. We look at avoiding anyone who might build their own silo. We also look at people’s ability to work independently, as we are a small organization.
We have recently been recruiting for a technical consultant. We decided that for this process, due to the small number of applicants, we would use the testing after an initial interview. We liked the person based on the interview; the individual seemed open and friendly. We then tested the person. The results were the opposite of what we thought they would be. After having more internal discussion, we realized there were key tell-tale signs from the interview that we had missed. This person was ranked very low, and we were pleased to change our minds and run with the test results. This has saved us from major future issues, and we have since found the right person for our role, and are happy.
