Copyright © TIGERS Success Series
By Dianne Crampton
Does collaborative hiring mean that work team members interview everyone who turns in an application or walks through your door?
Absolutely not — that would be extremely counter productive for workforce rentention and profits. With collaborative hiring, the human resource department still weeds through the mountain of applications looking for prime candidates — on paper anyway — that fit the work description and hopefully the culture. Scanning for items such as past performance, GPA, accomplishments, and credentials, HR selects the best candidates they believe are worth scrutiny by team members.
How Collaborative Hiring Gives Your Team Ownership of the Job Candidate’s Success
It really doesn’t matter if informal gatherings are arranged where staff members mingle with the potential new hire – or – formal interviews are scheduled with coworkers and employees assisting with training and on-boarding. What collaborative hiring provides is scrutiny by employees who will be working with the new hire. These are the employees who understand the job and the communication demands that keep goals on target, work cooperative, and team relationships productive.
Studies also show that when employees help select a new colleague, they are more committed to the new employee’s success. For example, they are more helpful while the new employee is coming up to speed and in easing the team’s new storming dynamic, which naturally occurs when a new person is learning about existing group norms and procedures. This eases misunderstandings and resentment and makes the transition easier for everyone.
When team members are directly involved with some part of the hiring process, they are more willing to mentor, be accountable for team success and ultimately more loyal, kind and respectful to the new employee.
Deploying a Team Building Exercise in Hiring that Builds Trust, Interdependence, Genuineness, Empathy, Risk and Success on Existing Teams.
Using pre-hiring tests and exercises to screen for desired behaviors is not a new practice. Boeing, for example, created simulations and exercises to determine if potential employees would adapt well to itsGreenfield operation in Spokane, Washingtonin the early 1990’s.
One resource that shows employees the relationship skill level of job candidates is the TIGERS Team Wheel™ game, which is a team training tool kit developed by TIGERS Success Series®, Inc.
The TIGERS Team Wheel™ game is a powerful team building exercise that brings new employees up to speed quickly with regard to group norms and procedures, which reduces the potential for conflict and chaos on teams. It is also a chaos problem solving activity that teaches behaviors — trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success — that build strong teams and exposes the skill level of participants playing the game in less than 60 minutes of game play.
When used inside the organization to build high levels of cooperation between departments and co-workers, it is a natural screening tool for finding skilled job candidates. These are candidates with the right attitude and value system that compliment the organization’s culture and existing team dynamics.
And, when an organization is growing and adding new employees it is important not to rock the boat, causing culture conflict when you don’t have to.
In the course of game play, staff involved in collaborative hiring will observe how well job candidates listen, negotiate, deal with deadlines and convey their ideas. Once the exercise is completed, team members involved in the interview can ask questions related to their organization’s values, culture, and tasks to see if the new hire will perform well on goals, build good relationships, fit the culture and collaboratively solve problems.
The Bottom Line Is That Resume Results Are Impressive, But How Were They Achieved?
Several studies conclude that it is human nature for people to be biased toward results when faced with crucial decisions. Therefore, interviewers often look at what job candidates have achieved without asking “how.”
For example, did the job candidate succeed in previous positions with a win at all cost attitude or by collaborating and cooperating with others? As a leader was success achieved through command and control tactics or was success achieved by developing staff, coaching staff to solve their own problems and through deploying strategy with high levels of team buy-in?
Using the TIGERS Team Wheel™ game in the collaborative hiring process provides staff with the insight to examine behaviors that are critical to team success. By examining “how” performance results were accomplished, staff learns about the candidate’s skills, ethics, attitude, and behaviors.
Your Team is Your Most Valuable Asset
Unfortunately, many organizations introduce the new person that has just been hired to team members on the day they begin work. Management’s critical mistake is the belief that if they love the new hire, so will team members. However, when honest feedback isn’t solicited from key employees before the new employee is hired, existing employees tend to disconnect and feel watchful. A strong team is a company’s key competitive advantage, which is why employee retention should always be a top priority.
Through collaborative hiring, leaders improve the engagement level of team members, which, in turn, reduces employee turnover because conflict and chaos are minimized. A team environment and work culture that is sensitive to the “buy-in” of existing team members strengthens employee retention, which by default improves an organization’s bottom line through reduced turnover.
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