PsyMax Solutions Newsletter: Trends in online HR solutions
Seeing Beneath the Resume: How Psychological Assessments and Background Checking Help You Hire Better People
In This Issue:
- Seeing Beneath the Resume: How Psychological Assessments and Background Checking Help You Hire Better People
- Human Resource News and Trends: Best Practices in Hiring for 2005
- Public Eye: PsyMax Solutions in the News
1. Seeing Beneath the Resume: How Psychological Assessments and Background Checking Help You Hire Better People
Selecting the right candidate for the right position is one of the most important challenges faced by organizations today. Hiring the wrong individual typically costs an organization 150 percent of the employee's annual salary - and the cost of a bad hire is even greater for management level positions. To minimize the subjectivity leading to poor hiring decisions, employers should use validated selection tools to reduce turnover, increase productivity, improve customer service, and increase revenue. Better hiring translates into real dollars.
Developing a Success Profile
To avoid subjective, bad employment decisions, organizations must ensure their decisions are based on job-related criteria. Organizations should follow a process to ensure decisions are based on factors related to employees' competencies to perform essential job functions, and not on unlawful criteria such as race, sex, age or disability. The more subjective the criteria, the more difficult it will be for an employer to establish that its employment decisions were made on job-relevant criteria. The advantage of using validated tools such as the PsyMax Solutions Work Style Assessment inventory is that it gathers objective, job-relevant data that allows organizations to rank-order candidates based on their likelihood of success if hired. The following procedures will help establish and document the job-relatedness of your process.
We recommend developing Success Profiles for each targeted job. Your approach to determining core competencies should be consistent with best practice approaches to job analysis and competency modeling such as:- Facilitate a focus group workshop with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to determine which work styles are most important for a given job.
- Conduct a questionnaire-based job analysis. Multiple SMEs will complete a survey regarding which work behaviors are most critical for performing the job.
Seeing Beneath the Resume
Resumes provide information about skills, knowledge, and experiences. These are useful predictors of how well people will perform in their current jobs. However, as job requirements change, the skills, knowledge, and experiences that were important for successful job performance may also change. Therefore, measuring psychological factors during the hiring process can have the highest Return on Investment because these factors enable employees to develop the knowledge, experience, and skill needed to succeed in any job. Similarly, background and credit checks are also critical foundational factors that help assess honesty and integrity - traits that are important for all jobs. For comprehensive and reliable background checks visit the Background Information Services Inc. (BIS) website at www.employeescreen.com.
2. Human Resource News and Trends: Best Practices in Hiring for 2005
Dr. Charles Handler, PHR, an employee assessment and selection expert recently wrote an article outlining the best practices in hiring that organizations should be focusing on for 2005:
- Continuing to integrate the hiring process. Organizations should integrate the information they gather in the hiring process with the subsequent employee development and coaching process.
- Demanding more from your Applicant Tracking System. Applicant Tracking Systems should not just be efficient tools for storing data, but also provide functionality that allows organizations to be more effective in choosing the right person for the right job.
- Defining key outcomes. Developing a profile of what it takes to be a successful performer in the job is critical. If you don't know what you are looking for, you won't find it.
- Linking the quality of the hiring process to business outcomes. Organizations need to document the effectiveness of their hiring decisions by showing the financial impact good hires have on bottom-line performance.
- Experimenting with assessment. Just do it! If you have not used assessment yet, now is the time to start. Dip your toe in the water by using assessment for your next hire.
Source: Rocket-Hire
3. Public Eye: PsyMax Solutions in the News
- PsyMax Solutions' William Shepherd in Staffing Management Magazine's April 2005 Issue. The story titled "Use Personality Tests Legally and Effectively" discusses how most companies misuse personality tests or use the wrong tests thereby increasing the potential of lawsuits and decreasing the effectiveness of hiring decisions. William Shepherd, President of PsyMax Solutions is highlighted in this article as saying that many companies try to cut corners with personality testing because basic-level tests are available to anyone on the Internet and can be bought off-the shelf for prices ranging from $15 to about $150 for a high level test. Read this entire article.
- PsyMax Solutions' Fred Elabed Featured in Inside Business Magazine's April 2005 Issue. In this story, Fred Elabed, a former Tri-C student and successful entrepreneur gives words of wisdom to other entrepreneurs on how he started, built and sold his E-Commerce software firm ROI Supply. To receive a copy of this article, please contact Fred Elabed.
- PsyMax Solutions Featured in Quick Service Restaurant Magazine's (QSR) April and May 2005 Issue. To read more about QSR, visit the QSR website.
- PsyMax Solutions to Exhibit at the Fast-Growing HR Star Conference.
The HR Star Conference will be held in Cleveland, Ohio on July 27, 2005. Register for this event.
About PsyMax Solutions
PsyMax Solutions offers an on-demand and integrated Human Capital website that provides world class assessment, interviewing, development, coaching, career, and 360° reports and programs for employees and managers. The PsyMax Solutions product suite is based on the work of psychologists who have conducted and written reports for over 20,000 managers. Our product suite generates results equal in quality, but at a fraction of the cost.
The PsyMax Solutions product suite is ready for immediate use without time-consuming and expensive consulting and IT set-up costs. In minutes you can create your own customized Human Capital website and use our integrated product suite to align your recruitment and development processes. To learn more about PsyMax Solutions, please visit us on the web at www.psymaxsolutions.com, e-mail us at info@psymaxsolutions.com, or call us at 866.774.2273.
