Every business has a hiring process – some more deliberate than others. Traditional hiring practices focus almost exclusively on cognitive abilities (skills and experience) and affective traits (personality and motivation). But this leaves out one very important piece of the puzzle – a candidate’s conative strengths (the third part of the mind).
Many of our clients come to us after a series of bad hires. They are ready for a new way to hire well. Even if cognitive abilities and affective traits are right, you can still have a bad hire if you ignore instinctive conative strengths (and stress).
How can you break out of the traditional hiring model and avoid bad hires in your business?
- What is Required to Do the Job Well?
Before posting a job, identify the strengths the job needs. Do you need someone who will gather the facts and pay attention to the details? Do you need someone who will follow step-by-step systems well? Do you need someone who will act quickly in the face of uncertainty?
Do you have top performers you would like to clone? What are their strengths?
With this information, you can identify a range of conative strengths a person will need to succeed in the role. This gives you a benchmark to compare candidates against. It also gives you guidance on the right verbiage to use in the job posting to attract the best candidates.
- Who is Qualified to Do the Job?
Next, find your pool of candidates. This is where traditional hiring techniques can help you find qualified and capable candidates. Review applicants and their resumes. Seek references. Interview your top choices. As you interview candidates, include questions and scenarios that align with the strengths you know you need for the position. Narrow down your choices to the top three to five candidates.
- What are Each Candidate’s Instinctive Conative Strengths?
Once you narrow down your list of candidates, identify their conative strengths. Unlike learned behavior, preferences, or social style, conation is instinctive. Through a Kolbe A assessment, you will learn how each candidate naturally takes action. This gives you an objective measure you can count on that cannot be changed or manipulated.
- Which Candidate is the Right Fit for the Job?
Now, you can screen each candidate against the job’s range of successful conative strengths. In this objective measurement (graded on an A-to-F scale), you can identify how well each candidate’s strengths match with the strengths you identified as necessary to do the job well. If a candidate scores an A or B, they are likely to thrive in the job. But if they score a C-F, while they may be able to do the job, it will eventually exhaust them and lead to stress and procrastination.
Finally, with all of the necessary information – cognitive abilities, affective traits, AND conative strengths – you can hire the right fit for the job!
- How Do You Set Up Your New Hire for Success?
Now that you have decided on who to hire, do not waste the information you have learned. It is important to share it with that person’s supervisor and direct reports. By setting aside time to educate the team on how the new hire takes action, and to educate the new hire on how the team takes action, you will minimize missed expectations as everyone works to get their jobs done well.
Stop wasting time, energy, and money on hiring people who don’t thrive in their roles. Contact us today to learn more about how to break out of the traditional hiring approach by including conative strengths in your hiring process.