For Better Hiring, Consider Professional Pre-screening

A common hiring blunder was publicly exposed when George O'Leary, newly hired 2001 Notre Dame football coach, was found to have falsified his academic and athletic background. Notre Dame had not checked his information before offering him the job.

There's a lot of pressure to fill an empty position, especially in a small company. Inevitably, people are handling an increased workload and are ready to hand over the job to someone new. Not to mention that candidates walk through the door with their best qualities held out in front of them.

Most companies rely on resumes and interviews to find top performers – the best person for the job. But, according to the Michigan State University's School of Business, using these methods only produces a quality employee 14 percent of the time. Not only are those poor odds, but the cost of this “bad hire” comes out in lost wages/benefits (paying the employee for not doing the job) as well as any lost revenue (lost clients, theft, etc.) associated with the poor hire. Add in the drop in productivity that results when the position again becomes vacant.

In an audio conference by the business journal Kiplinger and employee assessment company Select International Inc., it was estimated a bad hires cost a company $26,035 (based on a salaried employee of $35,000).

CEOs recognize hiring problems

A national survey of CEOs done by Management Action Programs, a business leadership training and consulting services company, in June of 2007 revealed almost a third of surveyed CEOs (32 percent) report up to 50 percent of their new hires weren't meeting expectations over the past two years. And because of this, a whopping 36 percent of CEOs lack confidence in their company's hiring system. The survey did not cover the style of hiring being used.

Among the ways to increase effective hiring is using a pre-screening system, an objective examination of applicants, usually with questionnaire-type assessments and background checks before an interview or other selection process. Successful pre-screening systems can increase the likelihood of hiring a top performer to between 38 and 75 percent.

Prescreening for the vending industry

This past spring, the National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA) established a business partner relationship with Profiles International™, an employment evaluation and human resource management assessment company. The driving force behind the relationship was Dave McCaffrey, president of Predictive Assets™, as well as a vending and OCS veteran (starting with Oscar Mayer in 1973 and moving closer to vending through General Foods, Kraft Foods and Starbucks until retiring in 1999).

Predictive Assets™, a strategic partner of Profiles International™, presents hiring assessment tools to potential clients. McCaffrey recognized the Profiles International™ tools would be a perfect fit with NAMA's member companies due to the online functionality, pre-hire to executive development portfolio, and low cost. “These (Predictive Assets) tools can change companies,” he said.

Interviewing versus Pre-screening

While interviewing is the most traditional hiring method, it remains a largely ineffective tool for identifying quality applicants. Kiplinger categorizes four topics a good interview can establish in a candidate: oral communications, competitive drive, leadership style and working with others.