Here Today, Here Tomorrow; 3 Ways to Keep the Great Employees You Recruit

This post is the fourth installment in a six-part series by guest blogger, Jay Forte, Humanetrics LLC. 


Jay is scheduled to kick off the 2011 Image Conference with "The Greatness Zone" general session on Wednesday, July 13. Later in the day, Jay will present two additional sessions: “Will You Fit Here? The Talent Based Approach to Find and Hire the Right Employee” and “Intellectual Age Recruiter - Becoming a Strategic Business Partner”. Register for the Image Conference today to hear Jay! 



Here Today, Here Tomorrow; 3 Ways to Keep the Great Employees You Recruit
Jay Forte, Humanetrics LLC. 
www.FireUpYourEmployees.com      www.TheGreatnessZone.com

Let’s say you are really good at this talent-based approach to hiring – you have defined the performance attributes that drive success in the job, you recruited high-value candidates, you even used talent-based interviewing to assess for fit, and you hired an outstanding employee. Excellent. You are way ahead of most other companies.

So, now that you have brought in an outstanding employee, what will the organization need to do to keep this employee instead of hitting the road within 2 -3 years?

Consider these three ways to help organizations keep their best employees:

1. Increase management/employee contact with recurring (weekly) performance feedback. Build time each week to review performance – to applaud great work and to identify areas that need improving. Also, this regular contact builds the rapport between employee and manager to be able to have a meaningful career discussion. One reason why so many good employees leave is they never have a discussion with their managers on why they should stay. Personal contact with management is critical.
   
   
2. Share information. No one likes to work in the dark, particularly the best performers. They want and need information to be able to make meaningful and successful decisions. Increase meaningful contact with employees through a weekly management e-mail, the creation of a company intranet and regular company meetings. Meetings that add context and information give employees the details they need to know how to direct their performance and find opportunities.
   
   
3. Provide recurring skill education. Organizations that provide education as a normal part of all roles not only encourage greater thinking, innovation and performance but also connect more powerfully with high-value employees. Employees can’t be consistently extraordinary in a changing world without constant education and training – great employees know this and expect it in their companies.

The best employees don’t want to change jobs often; they do this because the culture and management (accidentally) encourages it. When recruiting for companies or working in your company, be sure to guide the organization into ways that keep the great employees you recruit. Talk to them, share information and invest in their education; these are three ways to inspire the best employees to choose to be here today and here tomorrow.


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The Five Best Interview Questions

This post is the third installment in a six-part series by guest blogger, Jay Forte, Humanetrics LLC.

Jay is scheduled to kick off the 2011 Image Conference with "The Greatness Zone" general session on Wednesday, July 13. Later in the day, Jay will present two additional sessions: “Will You Fit Here? The Talent Based Approach to Find and Hire the Right Employee” and “Intellectual Age Recruiter - Becoming a Strategic Business Partner”. Register for the Image Conference today to hear Jay! 

The Five Best Interview Questions
Jay Forte, Humanetrics LLC

I love talent or behavioral-based interviewing because it allows me to take each candidate out for a “test ride” before I make an offer for a position.

Let me back up. Today’s employees are mostly hired for what they know and how they use what they know to make a difference in their workplace. This determines their effectiveness in a constantly changing service environment.

Brain biology studies help us understand that we are each hardwired in very particular ways – we have unique abilities (talents, strengths and passions) that are truly ours. We each see the world in our particular way based on our DNA and genetic history. And during the course of a day we make 20,000 3-second decisions, most of which are made not by formally thinking, but rather by responding based on our particular hardwiring. This means that how we first respond frequently tells a lot about how we process, think and evaluate. Great – I need this to hire effectively in an economy whose success is based on my ability to find employees who think in line with the success thinking in a job.

A talent-based interview question is a question that uses unique phrasing to get the candidate to share his immediate, top-of-mind reaction; this is representative of his brain hardwiring and is likely to be the reaction he would have in the workplace. Couple this with questions that involve actual workplace situations and a good interviewer will be able to see a job candidate’s thinking and response in action.

Here are my five favorite talent-based interview questions:

1.      Define ordinary and extraordinary for me.  How have you contributed to making your previous workplaces extraordinary? What could you do to make our workplace (customer service, etc) extraordinary?

2.      Here’s a situation you’ll encounter in this role (workplace): _________________  How would you handle this?

3.      When you are at your best, what are you doing? What do others applaud you for? How do you see using this attribute in this job?

4.      How do you promote an idea or change to a manager? What have you done? What worked? What didn’t work?

5.      Let’s say you decided to take the job here. It has been a year and you are driving home, thinking that taking this job was the best thing you have done. What has happened in this year to make you think this?

Notice the formats – they are ideally not typical questions because we are after a candidate’s top-of-mind reaction, not his planned and rehearsed answer. Also, we are interested in real life situations, ideally involving real situations the candidate will encounter in your workplace. Kick the tires. Go for a test drive. Get a feel for the thinking the candidate will bring to the workplace before you hire.

I’ll be reviewing this concept and how to craft these questions at 2011 Image Conference in Raleigh.

How Human Is Your Workplace

This post is the second installment in a six-part series by guest blogger, Jay Forte, Humanetrics LLC. 

Jay is scheduled to kick off the 2011 Image Conference with "The Greatness Zone" general session on Wednesday, July 13. Later in the day, Jay will present two additional sessions: “Will You Fit Here? The Talent Based Approach to Find and Hire the Right Employee” and “Intellectual Age Recruiter - Becoming a Strategic Business Partner”. Register for the Image Conference today to hear Jay! 

How Human Is Your Workplace
Jay Forte, Humanetrics LLC

I was a CPA and CFO. I totally get that business is about results – the bottom line. I am also wise enough to understand that the key to great results is a commitment to engage and inspire our people, so they choose to show up to work and consistently do great things.

The migration from the industrial age (make things) economy to today’s intellectual (provide service) economy no longer has employees working behind machines; they are now face-to-face and phone-to-phone with customers. This customer contact has completely changed the role, work and impact of employees.

Great information presented in the book Human Sigma by Dr. John Fleming supports that achieving customer loyalty (not just satisfaction) requires building an emotional connection between the customer and a product, brand, company or person. And at the heart of this event is the passionate, talented and engaged employee, watching for opportunities to connect more significantly with customers. And behind this level of employee connection is a workplace that wisely chooses, supports, educates, values and inspires its employees.

So the question I generally ask organizations is, How human is your workplace?

Do you hire people based on their talents, strengths and passions so they get to use their unique abilities in roles that make sense for them and they have the ability to shine?

Do you have a compelling vision, mission, belief and purpose that employees can feel part of?

Do you create meaningful and achievable reward and recognition programs to celebrate both effort and success?

Do you offer education to encourage employees to stay current, constantly learn and bring their best to their work?

Do you provide recurring performance feedback to stay in touch with employees and support their growth?

Your people are your profits. Highly engaged employees create the critical emotional connected customers need to move customers from satisfied to loyal. These employees bring their best when they feel valued, supported and cared for. We can no longer mandate performance – we must inspire it. And the more we value our employees for their unique abilities and impact, the more we inspire their loyalty. More about this at the 2011 Image Conference in Raleigh.

A New Definition of Performance

This post is the first installment in a six-part series by guest blogger, Jay Forte, Humanetrics LLC. It seems fitting that Jay kick off the NAHCR blog, which has been inactive for some while, since he is also scheduled to kick off the 2011 Image Conference with "The Greatness Zone" general session on Wednesday, July 13. Later in the day, Jay will present two additional sessions: “Will You Fit Here? The Talent Based Approach to Find and Hire the Right Employee” and “Intellectual Age Recruiter - Becoming a Strategic Business Partner”. Register for the Image Conference today to hear Jay! 

A New Definition of Performance
Jay Forte, Humanetrics LLC

I have a question for you. Why do you pay your people – or why do people pay the people you recruit?

I always get so many answers from this question but I still have one favorite answer: we pay our employees to provide the best, most efficient and most profitable response in this moment - period. We pay them to think on their feet and respond to the situations they encounter with a focus on service, efficiency and profitability. We don’t pay them to do a job; we pay them to respond in a meaningful way. And it is therefore our responsibility to know how to inspire this response. And it starts with a changed definition of performance.

Today’s intellectual (provide service) age has employees face-to-face with customers. This personal contact with customers now requires that employees be wisely hired into roles in which they “fit.” Today, great performance happens when employees are both good at what they do and passionate about doing it.

Consider that I need my employees to think on their feet each moment of the day (I like to say that employees need to pack their brains when they pack their lunch). Employees who are intrinsically good at what a job requires (talented) know how to get the job “done right” for a customer. This is good but not great. What would be better is if the employee were also passionate or interested in the work as well. Employees who are also passionate about what they do commit the extra effort to raise their performance, do extraordinary things and emotionally connect with customers. This is critical to an organization’s profitability and success.

Performance has changed. It is no longer about doing a job. It is about thinking through the best, most efficient and most profitable response in this moment. To create this kind of performance requires that employees are good at what they do (their talents and strengths match those needed in the job), and interested, or even passionate, about doing the job. Knowing that performance has changed is critical to attracting and hiring the right employees. Its not about doing the job – its about thinking the event through each time. 

Knowing this encourages today’s intellectual-age recruiters to do more than just hire – they become strategic performance business partners. More on this at the 2011 Image Conference in Raleigh