As a business advisor and business consultant, clients often ask me to review their employee selection processes.  In each instance I will employ the same review process, only varying it depending on the number and variety of different employees and positions – the steps are – employees complete a position analysis questionnaire, employee interviews, supervisor and manager interviews, developing an assessment profile for each position, and, assessing existing employees and employee applicants to this profile.

Why Should Employees Complete a Position Questionnaire?
As any business consultant will tell you, employees do like to be asked their opinion.  They also like to be given positive attention.  Completing a position analysis questionnaire accomplishes these objectives and also provides a detailed view of the position – its knowledge, skills, and abilities, judgment, complexity, accountability, supervisory responsibilities; its essential functions, and its environmental conditions (physical demands, work environment, motor skills, occupational risk).  You can get a very detailed description of the position’s daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. 

Why Should Employees Be Interviewed?
Some employees are better at writing, some employees are better at talking – in either event, it always helps to interview at least one employee per position – ostensibly to identify the details from the position questionnaire. 

Additionally, it allows the you and the consultant to identify why an employee is working in their current position, what is his training and educational background, what is his career objective, what is his perspective on the company’s effectiveness, who is a higher or a lower performer, what is his frustrations (if any) with his position, his company, and to develop a full list of tasks performed and the reason that they are performed.

Supervisors and managers of these employees are interview for much the same reasons as well as to identify, based on this questioning process, whether the selection process can be modified or enhanced to better match employees to positions and whether there are sufficient motivations in place for employees to excel at their position.

This is often an ideal setting for supervisory staff and the business consultant to discuss position enhancements, performance-based criteria, goal setting, and position benchmarking.

Assessment Profile
Armed with the knowledge obtained from the position questionnaire and employee and supervisor interviews, the next step in the selection process for the consultant is to develop an assessment profile that group the tasks that are performed into categories, and then identify common decision attributes for each of the task categories or groupings. 

Common decision attributes are selected from 80 defined under formal axiology, attributes such as accountability for others, balanced decision making, project scheduling, concrete organizing, and quality orientation.  Each of the attributes will be assigned a benchmark score to indicate the desired level of competency for each attribute.

The profile is prepared in draft form, comments are solicited from management and staff, and revisions are made.  Once the profile is completed, it can then be administered to existing employees to identify their level of competency to the benchmarked attributes. 

Prior to utilizing the assessment profile on position applicants, it helps to explain the context in which the profile should be used.  Assuming that the company has a functioning recruitment and selection process, job applicants will complete an application, undergo a series of screening interviews with human resources staff and supervisory or management personnel, and be notified if they are finalists for a position. 

I often recommend that the assessment profile not be used until the company has narrowed its applicant pool to 3 to 5 persons for the position.  The profile, once administered, is interpreted to the company representative by the certified consultant.  The consultant can indicate with a high level of certainty, whether or not the applicant will be the best fit for the position. 

The profile itself should not become dispositive; it should remain one of the key elements to the selection process.  If the employer has already decided to hire an applicant, the profile, as interpreted by the consultant, will alert the employer to categories where the candidate will perform very well, well, or not very well (where they will need additional support).  It is usually at this juncture that an employer can discuss with the selected candidate employment conditions, including participation in a professional development program.

Summary
OK, so now you may be trying to figure where this process fits to the person/future fit strategy, (selecting for the long-term contributions of a person to the business’ long-term strategy).  Well, engaging your employees in a position improvement process helps the employee and the owner to better understand and appreciate the need to have workforce alignment throughout the company. 

Developing an assessment profile becomes a key outcome to the process, and will help a company ensure that it selects for the person/future fit.  For existing employees, the profile results become an important ingredient in understanding more about the professional development needs they have that also helps ensure that person/future fit.

I would love to hear how you accomplish employee selection in your company.  What process is used?  How do you evaluate its effectiveness? How do you provide for the professional development needs of your employees?  Let me know.  See you at www.RutherfordBusinessAdvisor.com.