Making Great Hires

Yesterday, RoundPegg hosted a 15-minute webinar on improving your hiring process in order to increase your odds of making a great hire.

RoundPegg’s Chief Psychologist, Dr. Natalie Baumgartner runs through the hiring landscape, the pitfalls most fall into, how to improve the process and finally, how RoundPegg can help.

Please check it out.  And if you’d like to learn more or have specific problems you’re struggling with please email us at: Natalie.Baumgartner@roundpegg.com.

Chemistry Matters

photo by sflovestory

We’ve written a lot about why we think chemistry matters.  RoundPegg, after all, is all about finding people who will fit on your team without creating a cloud of chaos around them.  The better people fit into the team, the more energy they can spend driving the team forward instead of playing politics.

Kevin Millar, former Boston Red Sox, was recently signed by the Chicago Cubs.  While he plays a position at which the Cubs need a backup, the odds of him making the big league team are incredibly slim.  He’s fourth on the depth chart where only two will play with the big club.  Plus, he’s advancing in his career and hasn’t hit much in the past few years.   He was signed strictly to set the team’s mood in the clubhouse over the six-week stretch of spring training.

Millar’s take: chemistry matters.

“People ask me all the time, ‘Is team chemistry overrated?’ Well, you tell me. You’re with 25 guys more than your family from basically end of February to October. That’s not overrated. You try to bring a team and a group together. When you get everyone pulling on the same rope, it’s exciting.”

Last year, the Cubbies signed notorious clubhouse cancer Milton Bradley and paid the price.  He’s the epitome of how companies often hire.  An ‘A’ player by all statistical measurements, but little mind was paid to whether he’d fit in with the rest of the guys in the clubhouse.  While impossible to attribute Bradley’s antics to the Cubs 14-game decline from 2007 to 2008, it’s obvious the front office has gotten the message and is determined not to repeat that mistake.  Clearly, they lay some of the blame on a chemistry experiment gone bad.

Baseball is a unique sport where every play is a series of one on one battles.  Between the lines, I’d go so far to argue that chemistry matters less in baseball than in other sports.  Or your company.  But as Millar points out, you live with these guys.  If you don’t like being around them it’s going to be harder to bring your best every day.

The Cubs are willing to spend potentially up to a million dollars to set the right mood in the clubhouse.  Meanwhile, your company is probably more dependent upon teamwork than any baseball team.  How much time, effort and money are spent aligning your culture, your team and getting the most out of your employees?

Job Satisfaction: An Alternative Approach

photo by orphanjones

Scott Adams of Dilbert fame brings us some insight into how he would improve employee satisfaction.

I’ve been meaning to post this for some time so you may have already encountered it.  Regardless, it’s worthy of a chuckle as you coast into the holidays and think about how you’ll get everyone to walk back through the door come January 4th.

He concludes his post with the following advice:

“…the best way to make your employees feel a false sense of job satisfaction is to somehow convince them that there are much better jobs elsewhere. For example, you could subscribe all employees to entrepreneur magazines that are full of stories about people who left their unsatisfying jobs to become zillionaires. If you instill the false belief that better careers are obtainable, cognitive dissonance will cause the employees that have high self-esteem to believe they must enjoy their current jobs.”

Best of luck in 2010!

The Worst of Times

photo by photomish dan

A sobering article from the Economist illustrates how unhappy people currently are with their jobs.   When the economy turns expect to see a massive surge in voluntary turnover.  The article included some alarming numbers from the US-based Center for Work-Life Policy:

Between June 2007 and December 2008 the proportion of employees who professed loyalty to their employers slumped from 95% to 39%; the number voicing trust in them fell from 79% to 22%.

Employers have the upper hand these days, but what good is that if nobody is willing to bring their best?  Quality work doesn’t flow from mistrust.

The employment process is a two-way street.  Employers need to get quality ideas and execution.  The employees, however, are trickier.  They all need something different.  Each is motivated differently, has different goals and needs to be communicated with in a certain manner.

There is no magic bullet to engaging people except by taking the time to know what makes them tick.  Clearly, these economic times are tough.  And companies are taking the opportunity to pare back and let loose the dead wood.

This requires doubling down on the efforts to learn about the others in order to make sure they don’t all check out as well.

Better yet, build this into your process.  Don’t wait for dire economic times to trim the workforce.  Frankly, people who aren’t engaged and aren’t fitting in with the culture are a drag on your time and bring others down with them.

Start with who you hire and remember it.

1. Take the time to ensure those you hire fit your culture and are likely to remain engaged.  RoundPegg can help you do this
2. Learn about what your new employees need during those first few weeks (they typically aren’t working on meaty projects yet anyhow)
3. Check back in regularly (aka re-interview)
4. Communicate your needs and how the employee helps solve them
5. Be quick to release those who aren’t working out.  Easier said than done, but failing to do so will cost you a helluva lot more than their salary

Times are dire.  Not just for the unemployed, but for the employers as well.

The job market is far more fluid these days and once companies start hiring again we’re guaranteed to see that fluidity in action.  Protect your most valuable assets and get the most out of them as you can.