Savvy Selection Leads to Right Retention

By Rita Rizzo CMC

What could be worse than investing time, money and human resources in recruiting, selecting, orienting and integrating a great new employee into your organization and then finding that they leave within a year after hire? Perhaps hiring a perfectly lousy employee and having them stay on forever is worse. Both situations bring about lost productivity, revenue, and damage to team morale and stability, each in their own unique way.

The two scenarios are different sides of the same coin, and they both lead back to faulty selection practices. New employees with exceptional skills tend to inspire motivated behavior from existing employees. Who wants the “new kid on the block” to out-perform them? If this person chooses to make an early exit from the workplace it tends to demoralize the entire work team. “We always manage to run the good ones off,” is the comment uttered in water cooler discussions.

Hiring new employees with mediocre skills is equally deflating for the existing team. “We sure got stuck with Dora the Dummy this time!” Asking team member to bring an under-skilled worker up to speed simply overburdens those who have been impatiently awaiting the arrival of the new team member who was expected to lighten the workload. No team ever is enthused about carrying dead weight over the long haul.

So what’s the solution? Invest the proper time and care in selecting the most skilled and motivated applicants for each and every job opening in your organization. Early skills testing quickly weeds out those who tend to inflate the description of their skill level during the initial interview. Allowing the work team to interview and select the best suited applicant from three candidates, each of whom has been tested and received high scores, gives the work team some ownership in helping to orient and develop the new team member, and assures them that their time will not be wasted mentoring an individual who has little potential to succeed.

Yes, testing job candidates for skill competency will require an early expenditure on someone you may, or may not end up hiring, but not testing candidates and hiring under-skilled workers will end up being a far more expensive proposition.

Rita Rizzo CMC is a Certified Management Consultant and the President of Rizzo & Associates LLC, an established management consulting and training firm that specializes in employee retention success. For a free consultation concerning your selection and retention practices contact Ms. Rizzo by visiting her website at www.rizzoandassociates.com or email her at rrizzo480@aol.com.