Candidates waiting for a job interview
The Hiring for Attitude research tells us that 46% of employees will fail within 18 months of hire. It’s terrible news, but you can beat the odds if you’re willing to take an honest look at your current hiring system and to make some needed changes. And you can start by avoiding looking for these warning signs.
Warning Sign #1: You’re Not Attracting High Performing Candidates
If you’re not attracting the talent you want, it’s time to reconsider your recruitment messaging. If, for example, your job ads say the same thing as every other company (hint: look for phrases like “dedicated passionate coworkers” and “tremendous opportunities for professional growth”) then there’s definitely room for improvement.
Trying to appeal every job seeker on the planet might produce a lot of job applicants, but it won’t attract the high performers you want. Instead, your recruitment pitch should make your company stand out from all the others and incentivize high performers to quit their comfy jobs to come work for you.
Start by highlighting the key attitudes that define your best people. For example, are your high performers collaborative or individualistic? Do they seek or eschew individual recognition? Are they compliant or do they break the rules? Do they love adventure or stability? Are they laugh-out-loud funny or more restrained? And if your organization doesn’t tolerate dramatic personalities, gossip, a lack of accountability, change resistance, etc. don’t be afraid to say so. Not only will this steer low performers away from applying in the first place, it will attract high performers who want to work with other high performers like themselves.
Warning Sign #2: Your New Hires Have Questionable Attitudes
The Hiring for Attitude research shows that 89% of new hire failures occur because of attitudinal issues, and yet, far too many organizations continue to focus on hiring for skills. Skills are great, but there’s simply no such thing as a high performer with great skills and a lousy attitude (for example, someone who brings drama, chaos, negativity and other attitudinal problems to the workplace).
Start by clearly identifying the top attitudes that define your organization’s success (including the low-performer attitudes you don’t want). One approach is writing down the attitudinal characteristics of your 3 best and 3 worst employees over the past 3 years (example: Best: Caring, Persistent, Objective and Worst: Condescending, Defensive, Placating).
Or you can enlist the help of your current employees by asking them 1) Think of someone in the organization who really represents our culture and tell me about a time they did something that exemplifies having the right attitude and 2) Think of someone who works (or worked) in the organization who doesn’t represent the culture and tell me about a time they did something that exemplifies having the wrong attitude.
Warning Sign #3: All Your Candidates Sound Like High Performers
If all your candidates sound like high performers, your interview questions are likely at fault. A good interview question will generate a distribution of both great and terrible answers. In fact, the very purpose of an interview question is to differentiate high and low performer candidates.
Hypothetical questions are especially problematic. These questions typically begin by asking: “What would you do if...” followed by a situation such as “you had to make a big decision?” Hypothetical questions typically inspire idealized answers, which is why you’ll hear a lot of responses that sound like something a high performer would do or say. Unfortunately, these responses rarely reflect reality because despite what we each might like to believe about ourselves, there's a huge gap between our hypothetical selves and our real selves.
Instead, use open-ended, non-leading behavioral questions that reflect the actual attitudes of your high and low performers. If you want to see what good interview questions sound like, try taking the quiz Could You Pass This Job Interview?
Warning Sign #4: You’re Holding onto Pet Interview Questions That Makes No Sense
Great interview questions target the attitudes that matter most to your organization, and that automatically eliminates nearly all the pop-psychological questions from consideration (e.g. “If you could be any kind of tree, what kind of tree would you be?”). Goofball questions like this don’t reveal anything of value. Maybe if you did a survey of every high performer in your organization, and you discovered that all high performers would be “Oaks” and all low performers would be “Spruces” then you'd have some research basis that would make these interview questions to ask.
Lots of hiring managers pride themselves on a pet interview question, but unless you can prove that your pet question reveals the truth about attitude, it’s time to stop asking it.
Warning Sign #5: You Don’t Have an Answer Key to Your Hiring Questions
You wouldn’t ask skills-based questions without first knowing the right answer, and attitudinal interview questions require the same. If your hiring managers are still making gut-based hiring decisions, creating an answer key that spotlights good and bad answers to your interview questions will give you a system to confidently and accurately rate responses.
Basically, you want to create an answer key that differentiates between “I want to hire people that sound like this____,” and “I don’t want to hire people that sound like this_____.” One approach to creating such an answer key is to test your current interview questions on your current high and low performers and to track the hallmarks of great and poor responses. This can be done one-on-one or via electronic survey in larger organizations.
