The right person for the job—make it a process

Managers currently face an overwhelming number of applicants for their open positions. How does a person sift through an onslaught of candidates to find the right match? In this month’s article, I’ll introduce you to the concept of psychometrics and even tell you about approaches that can help in your quest to match the person to the job at hand.

In order for psychometrics to make sense, you must generally accept that people, though much the same in basic needs, all have important differences in how they fulfill them. Their orientation to the world drives their motivations, and there are many different orientations.

Some history

Since the early part of the 20th century, the budding sciences of psychiatry and psychology have spawned speculation about personalities. In 1920, Swiss psychiatrist Dr. Carl G. Jung laid much of the groundwork for analyzing personalities and behaviors in the form of temperaments. Jung’s contemporaries largely discarded these ideas and they lay dormant until the 1950s.

At that time, Isabel Myers teamed up with her mother, Katheryn Briggs to piece together the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) based on Jung's work. The MBTI uses a series of questions to determine that a person is one of 16 general personalities. Each of the 16 personality types comes with a description of personal preferences, likely behaviors, risk tendencies, and possible career interests.

How does that help me hire effectively?

In reading over the descriptions of the 16 personality types, you may find several that fit the job that you want to fill. You can then use the MBTI Type Sorter to test candidates for the position and use it as part of the hiring decision. Keep in mind that a successful business track record and other indicators may carry as much weight, or more, than personality type. But the personality type gives you great insight into how the individual will work with other team members and how they will perform over the long haul. In short, you may find out who is a “natural” for the position.

In another approach, you could test employees that currently enjoy great success in their positions. You’ll then know some of the personality types that do well in your environment and you can look for similar personalities when hiring. You’ll find this especially effective when staffing various types of phone banks, help desks, or sales functions—multiple openings for essentially the same job description.

The MBTI is certainly one of the first systems in the field of psychometrics, and is well regarded throughout the world. Other systems have appeared over the years, each with significant validity. These include such tools as Time Typing, Personalysis, SPQ Gold, Salesmax, Customer Contact Styles, HRProfessional, Enneagram Profiler, DISC and DISCUS. Each will tell you about personality, but each looks at the personality from a different viewpoint. Imagine cutting all the way through an orange at different angles and opening it up after each slice—each dissection would show you a different cross-section, but they would all reflect reality.

Click for SIDEBAR: How does a psychometric system work? Time Typing by HumanAge, Inc., explained.

Okay, what’s this got to do with Process Effectiveness?

Not long ago, I asked an acquaintance what he owed his business success to. Not that his business was a success, mind you, but I was playing dumb. His answer: “great people.” That answer always gives me pause, because it indicates no processes. Without process, the business has to have exceptionally smart and personable (expensive) people to survive.

“Okay,” I said, “Do you use a process to ensure that you hire great people?” Sure he did. He told me that he just made sure that three people whose opinion he trusted interviewed the candidate and if they all gave a thumbs-up, it was a hire.

In the ensuing weeks, one of his “great people” badly fumbled some business with me and our joint client. It made me take a look at the qualities and consistency of the people in his office, only to realize that their effectiveness was “iffy” at best. This wasn’t a process, it was a crapshoot.

Seize the Day

At this very moment, businesses can take advantage of the “buyers” market when hiring new employees, and try to get the best fit they can. The current tendency is to concentrate on the candidate’s technical skills, without realizing that success relies on the personality/position profile match just as much as other qualifications, if not more so. Take the whole picture into account, including skills, experience, references, and don’t forget the personality.

A personality profile is not something you can easily determine by intuition or “feel.” A consistent process of measuring a person’s attributes will give you more consistent results in hires that fit their assigned roles and missions. Use one of the aforementioned tools to make sure you have a proven, repeatable process.

The Sapling

John Furey, inventor of Time Typing, illustrates it this way. “About 15 miles inland from the Oregon coast grows a sapling, surrounded by its mother, father, siblings and cousins, each of which has a similar chance of growing into a mighty tree. If we were to take that sapling, uproot it, and plant on a ledge overlooking the sea, it would be destroyed by the first big storm that rolled in. Whose failure would that represent? Would the sapling have failed to thrive, or would we have failed it in planting it in exactly the wrong place to succeed?” This is how most of us unwittingly staff our companies.

© 2001 M. A. "Ryan" Yuhas