Our conversation moved naturally towards staffing levels.  I heard from him and many others like him, a similar theme: when positions had to be eliminated and headcount reduced, the weakest performers were the first to go and are not likely to be rehired.  Does this seem alarming?  I’m sure it does to those underperformers who are still searching for a position and/or hoping their old employer will hire them back.  I believe most employers have found that they were overstaffed and used the recession and lack of business as an excellent opportunity to not just “trim the fat” but to do so in a precise manner that kept the best talent.

All of this makes great sense for companies.  The best talent always produces the best results for its customers.  Unless a company must perform according to bargaining unit rules, keeping the best and getting rid of the rest is a great first step towards higher customer satisfaction and more profits.  These two things help ensure the long-term viability of the company and everyone is a winner.

“Everyone”, you say?  What about those that have been let go and through my insinuations here, were underperforming?  These people win as well.  Long term, no matter how great the job was, if you are underperforming you will not be satisfied in your position.  This lack of satisfaction will almost certainly translate into some other form of dissatisfaction in other areas in your life.  The sooner someone is “set free” from a bad working situation the sooner they are able to find the right situation.  Standing in the unemployment line gives the person a pretty difficult perspective with which to appreciate this situation.  I have spoken with many who have successfully made it through a career transition and have echoed these sentiments.

I can’t help but think about the difficulties we’ve been through over the past 12 – 18 months as a period of pruning for business.  The branches, and therefore the whole plant, will become stronger in the long run.  However, we didn’t just bundle up the pruned limbs and through them in the fire, they have been or will be replanted and nurtured in a different manner for the benefit of the entire garden as well.

Then yesterday evening, I attended a panel discussion hosted by Cross Collaboration discussing how we can provide more job and career opportunities for the unemployed in St. Charles County.  There was a great representation from panelists that help provide resources for the unemployed along with audience members, like myself, who have a vested interest in growing the job opportunities in St. Charles County.  The discussion after the discussion led me to a group of local pastors working with convicted felons from St. Charles County and providing direction and guidance for them to find work and support themselves and their families.  One ministry in particular, Connections to Success, and one of its representatives, Jason Cleaveland, and I discussed how we can work together to not only provide the counseling necessary, but how we can educate more hiring managers as to the skilled workforce that is available and somewhat untapped in ex-convicts.

I admit this is not a new phenomena but one that grows worse each year.  Business and social leaders must come together to solve this problem.  Simply shutting out ex-convicts will not make the problem go away.

I see this trend as a positive for all concerned if we can break out of the old mindset of traditional careers with traditional employers.  All companies have the need for talent.  All employees have talent to offer.  The day is coming when employees will have greater opportunities to create their own best employment opportunity if they can do a good job marketing themselves and their skills.  They will either have to act as their own “agent” or use the services of a staffing company or recruiter as an “agent”.

There is great concern that traditional employee sponsored health care will be a thing of the past.  We’ve already seen the market respond to the old notion of “employee retirement pensions” with the portable 401k.   We are more and more becoming a community of free agents or hired guns.  There is a new age coming for employers and employees, how will you make the best of it?

These are convincing arguments and I would tend to agree with the authors and their sources for the majority of interviewing that takes place within organizations these days.  However, there is a different way that transcends the normal “get to know you” interview.  The growing Topgrading movement takes interviewing to new heights and leaves no room for the typical conversational exchange where the hiring manager usually does most of the talking and even tries to sell the candidate on joining the organization.  Topgrading interviews come in two stages.  The initial interview is only about 30 minutes long and consists of just a few questions such as: “What are your strengths or what do you enjoy doing?” and “What are your weaknesses or what do you not enjoy doing?”  The most important of the initial interview questions is “Who are the supervisors you’ve worked for in the past several years and how do I contact them directly?”  This last question lets the candidate know that you are serious about determining the details of their past work history and that you won’t settle for the typical “job title, pay rate and dates of employment” reference that most human resource departments give when checking past employers.

Assembling the data from these initial interviews, you can then decide which candidates should proceed to the next interview stage.  You will want to limit this next stage to only a few candidates because the next interviews can last up to four hours.  This may appear to be a long time given the busy schedules that all managers face.  When you consider the cost of a bad hire, it lends some perspective to the process.  Some experts estimate that the cost of a bad hire can reach 10 to 15 times the first year’s salary of the candidate depending on the position within an organization that you’re trying to fill.  The second interview includes a standard set of questions that are asked of each candidate about every supervisor he or she has worked for (not just every employer) since the candidate exited college.  There are approximately 15 questions and include the following: “What were your expectations when you accepted that position?” and “What would your supervisor say are your strengths and weaknesses in that position?” and “What were the strengths and weaknesses of your supervisor in that position?” and “Why did you leave the position?”  This is a tedious process meant to elicit the absolute truth from your candidate not the typical veneer that many professional interviewers are able to provide during a typical interview.

Just like the Fast Company article cited above, I am a proponent of testing candidates and in depth peer interviews (Topgrading reference checks).  However, unlike the authors, I do not advise interviewing less.  In fact, I would advocate more of the correct type of interviewing.  Hiring managers can and do discover the information they seek during the interview.  The key is structure and process in the interview, doing your homework with the reference check and taking advantage of the latest testing opportunities that exist.

We are happy to take this information off our customer’s and other company’s hands.  By broadening our pool of candidates, we make ourselves that much more able to fill the openings that will come someday soon.  Even with a focus of commercial staffing, light industrial and administrative, if we pick up candidates with strong backgrounds in finance and accouting and information technology, we become that much more valuable to our customers and to partner staffing firms.

So before you pack away the paper (since the feds won’t let you use it to line your canary cage) call us.  We’ll come by and make a copy and box the information for you.