Whenever companies bring on a new hire who doesn’t last more than six months, much more than the [tens of] thousands of dollars of spent payroll are lost. Team morale suffers along with work flow disruption. On-boarding and training efforts are wasted. Customer-facing staff changes bring unease into the marketplace. The list could go on and on; suffice it to say the hidden costs of poor hiring can be daunting.

In the April 4th, 2005 edition of Newsweek, Jack Welch said, “Hiring good people is hard. Hiring great people is brutally hard. Nothing matters more in winning than putting the right people on the field.”

Gut Feelings

Most companies large and small, continue to prepare for new hires they way they’re used to. Hiring managers run an ad, collect resumes, interview the stronger candidates, check references on the final one or two, and then trust their gut feelings. When more than one hiring manager is involved, differences easily come to light when one person’s gut feeling doesn’t match the other. At the end of the day, many hiring managers cross their fingers and ‘hope for the best.’ It doesn’t have to be that way.

Take an X-Ray

When interviewing to become a financial consultant for a major investment house 9 years ago, Edward became upset because his hiring manager had promised to show him the results of the assessment he was being forced to take prior to being hired. The manager never shared those results and he’s long gone, yet Edward’s a top producer today.

A lot has changed with hiring tools in the past 9 years. Today, it’s like taking an X-Ray. Not only can you easily see what the personal styles are of your strongest candidates, but also how they might modify those styles to ‘fit into the job’. The more modifications they have to make, the harder it will be for them to meet the demands of the job.

You can also learn their specific strengths, understand what their ideal working environment looks like, and get directions on how best to communicate, motivate, and manage them for best results. Sure, you have a team and a business to run, and you want to operate it as most effectively as possible, but, finding the person with the right credentials for the open position is only half of the equation. Matching the natural styles of the right candidate to your position is critical for long-term success due to stronger satisfaction levels and personal fulfillment.

You’d Be Crazy Not To

There are also seven hidden ambitions we all share that are revealed through each comprehensive X-Ray. All seven are listed in order of influence on each individual.

Different positions call for different ambitions. You would want hunters who close new business opportunities to have the economic and political ambitions in their top two. You would want farmers to have altruism as one of their top three. Not only would you want accounting and bookkeepers to have different personal styles, but they should also have theoretical as one of the top two ambitions driving them.

This powerful insight not only matches the right job to a new hire, it can identify reasons why existing staff aren’t satisfied in their current positions. Instead of firing them outright, take an X-Ray to reassess, and then move them into a different position. You’d be crazy not to.

It’s All Yours

The fact that candidates have demonstrated success is sales, administrative, or operational roles in prior companies doesn’t actually predict any level of success in your company. They’ll need to ‘fit into’ your expectations, job role, and culture.

In the world of sales, great hunters can be just so-so farmers, and vice-versa. Individual ambitions graphs will highlight those differences for you along with the personal styles. You can’t see this anywhere else but through the X-Ray.

See just how powerful this X-Ray is for yourself. FREE. For a limited time, we will also debrief you on your results; no obligation, no hard sell.

Test drive it here (or have one of your current staff complete this simple questionnaire) by clicking on the link, and make sure that you answer all the questions in one sitting, as they relate to work, and without any input from others. Take the X-RAY by clicking here.

The lessons I learned years ago teaching deaf and blind kids how to cook at Perkins School for the Blind remain with me to this day. Teaching in teams, our objective was to prepare each student to live productively and independently in society.

To avoid spilling milk, I watched them hook their finger over the top of the glass while pouring. When baking a cake, they would carefully measure each ingredient twice, while checking the recipe many times. They could feel when the dishwasher was done and went about putting each utensil, each plate back in its designated space. All they had to do was following the system we had put in place for them.

And, yes, it was funny seeing so many different sized pieces after they had cut up the cake. Don’t we all have our own strengths and weaknesses?

Perkins has had a long history in the transformation of many lives. Helen Keller attended in 1880 and later graduated from Radcliffe College. Several kids graduated from our teaching kitchen into independent living; some as prep cooks, some as dishwashers. You can only imagine how fulfilling that experience was for me.

When I reflect on the career challenges of both professional chefs and sales managers, I see several similarities. In the kitchen, it’s all about keeping food and labor costs down while producing the highest quality product at a fair price. The stronger the system is and the tighter the execution; the higher the profits will be.

During my ten years in professional kitchens, my signature was to leave very few leftovers. After coordinating a team effort that fed more than a 1,000 people at a formal dinner, there were only be a couple of plates left over. Planning, preparation, and team execution served us well.

A couple of days ago, I sat down with a new prospect and winced when he told me he had hired 11 sales people and burned through 8 of them in the the past two plus years. 8 sales people came and went in a matter of months, taking more than $150,000.00 in operating capital out the door with them.

He had used his own intuition, relied on recommendations of those he’s trusted, and even paid for the services of a staffing firm. Still, he has little to show for his pain today. Obviously, he needs to stop being blind when hiring new talent.

Because I have become a Target Teams Business Partner,  I can now shine a bright light with our new Employee Engagement Solutions on the age-old challenge of successfully hiring candidates. Together, we can now reverse my prospect’s fortunes.

These Employee Engagement Solutions set realistic expectations for both the new employee, and you, the hiring manager. They equip both parties with an effective communications road map, and outline plans for successful working relationships by identifying mutual expectations. As the old saying goes about relationships: as the start, so they go.

Instead of blindly hiring hopefuls, the prospect will be able to gauge how each new candidate will meet the expectations of the job while minimizing his investment. Sort of like hooking his finger over the top of the glass before the milk spills uselessly out on the floor.

Combined with my proprietary Individual Performance Objectives module, this prospect’s chances for greater success have just increased exponentially. His plan is now perfectly positioned in this economy. While many businesses are hunkering down, he’s aggressively pursuing sustainable growth.

Not only do these tools describe how people work in different situations, the detail how each person prioritizes the individual drivers we all have. Each will be able to more effectively communicate and work with the other because they better understand what motivates each.

Now you can stop being blind, stop taking needless chances when hiring new people.

Discover how this incredible tool works by investing just 24 uninterrupted minutes answering simple questions. Yes, it’s free, and I promise you’ll better understand how and why you do the things you do both inside and outside of work.

When you finish, we’ll set a time to review your results. It’s insightful. It’s free. It’s private and confidential. Get your results here.