Reducing Employee Turnover Through Better Employee Selection

If employee turnover begins from poor selection processes, how can we improve it?

There are many steps in the recruitment and selection process. You will need to perform a diagnosis of where exactly the process is breaking down. Some suggestions for improvement are:

• define your roles and responsibilities clearly
• define competencies and characteristics required for the job clearly
• use behavioral based interviewing technique
• use qualified recruiters and interviewers
• use an interview panel instead of just one interviewer
• include new employee’s prospective supervisor and team member/s on interview panel
• use a professional recruiting firm (if outsourced)
• conduct thorough reference checks
• check salaries/rewards/conditions are market competitive
• select from a wider pool of candidates
• conduct pre-employment tests

Which of these process steps/capabilities you tackle will depend on the result of your diagnosis.

The real key to selecting the best candidates is to clearly define what exactly the role of this new employee will be, as well as, what core competencies are required for success in the position. If you don’t know what these core competencies are, then try interviewing your most successful staff in those or similar positions to establish them.

Once you have an idea of these core competencies, then establish how you are going to assess them in your selection process. The interview is the most effective if it is done right. What I mean is, do not ask any yes or no type of questions. Only ask open-ended questions. These type of questions will get the candidate to think, and this can determine their decision making capabilities.

Don’t forget to also assess the values, attitudes and behaviors of your potential candidates so they fit with your organization, as well as the soft skills such as customer service. The CIO and VP of Shanska uses a customer service simulation for all potential IT hires. He places the technical skills for the job as a lower priority for the job, because he believes that technical skills can be trained, whereas the soft skills cannot.

Research has often indicated that a person with a more positive and can-do attitude but with less technical skills can perform at a higher level compared to a person with stronger technical skills but a poor attitude. When it comes to the soft skills, you either have it, or you don’t. Given that, I can start to see a correlation with the number of rude people that are being hired in the workplace.

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