For recruitment, what is the best indicator of employee performance?
Developing performance metrics isn’t a cake walk for most human resource managers. There are no set rules as per industry standards and normally, a majority of HR departments are not equipped with good tools for accessing and analyzing significant data. However, it is highly recommended that an HR manager should be familiar with metrics that help them choose the right candidates for their organization. Apparently, it is with due diligence and experimentation that one can recognize those key performance indicators or KPI’s that determine the success of a recruitment process.
As also recommended by recruitment specialist- Lou Adler, a candidate’s past behavior is by far the best indicator of his future performance. According to him, the best way to determine a person’s ability to be successful in a role is by looking at his or her achievements in the past (Yeung & Berman 1997). While a detailed job description merely describes the qualifications and the required skills, a profile based on performance of an individual clearly states the challenges and difficulties experienced by the candidate in the past job role. This factor is designed so as to earn the interest of top team players who are passively looking for job and not the ones who just want to explore themselves in and out but, are not ready to make a move immediately. Further, it’s the performance profile that determines what all is required of the candidate to be considered apt for a particular job role.
Studies conducted in 2004 and 2007 suggested that behavioral questioning is one of the most reliable form of interviewing while a huge chunk of employers take this phase of recruiting for granted. A well-structured behavioral interview has an accurate predictive percentage of 62% which means it has the ability to accurately prove the validity of a person’s performance by as much as 62% of the time (Srimannarayana 2010). This makes ‘past performance’ the second most reliable and credible key performance indicator after assessment centers which stand at 70% of accurate predictive percentage (Srimannarayana 2010).
An employee’s past work performance can also be checked by conducting reference checks and reading performance reviews. These checks must be consistent and for a period of time. For most recruiters, reference check is usually the last step in the hiring procedure. However, ideally it should be conducted towards the beginning of the recruitment process.
Now, the type of questions to be asked during reference checks also hold great significance. Speaking directly with current and previous managers who can provide just the right information in the form of facts and documents is another great way to check the past work performance of a candidate. Merely asking about their employment tenure and status will not be a good judgmental criterion. It’s good to ask them about the candidate’s skills, core competencies and job performance. This will provide a deeper insight about the overall work performance of the candidate with previous employers. Further, the outcomes of reference checks can be recorded, analyzed and be rated with a numerical score as a pass or fail. These results must be well documented and must be included in the final rating of the candidate’s recruitment guide (Eckerson 2009).
Even though the validity of the notion that – “Past performance is a good indicator of future performance” holds true in a majority of cases, this does not imply that if a person had performed poorly in the previous company, he will perform in a similar way in the company to follow and his skills and attitude will remain the same. The best way to analyze the behavior of candidates in such scenarios is to ask both directive and indirective questions concerning their previous job roles. The better questions the HR managers frame, the more amount of information will they gather from the candidate (Toulson & Dewe 2005). Directive questions such as what, who, how, when should be structured properly and often end with words like “explain” and “describe” so that candidates can be as elaborative as possible. Further, non-directive and role specific questions will give a recruiter an opportunity to know more about the candidate. Some of these could be:
What type of software’s or tools did you use more often while on job at ABC company? -Describe your experience with HTML on your last profile.
How did you plan to overcome them?
These questions can further be accompanied with some follow-up questions if the responses are unclear or look incomplete in one or more ways.
Conclusion
Given that there are myriad other ways to judge a candidate’s suitability with a job role, past work experience tops the priority list among all. This includes their behavioral approach to answer the questions asked during the interview as well as background searches and talking to the former employers for more factual and precise information.
Works cited
Eckerson, W W. "Performance Management Strategies." Business Performnce Journal 14 (2009): 24-27.
Srimannarayana, M. “Status of HR measurement in India”. VISION – The journal of business perspective, 14 (2010): 295-307.
Yeung, A.K. & Berman, B. Adding value through human resources: reorienting human resources measurement to drive business performance. Human Resource Management, 36 (1997), 321-335. Viewed on 18th April 2012 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-050X(199723)36:3<321::AIDHRM4>3.3.CO;2-2
Toulson, P. & Dewe, P. HR accounting as a measurement tool. Human Resource Management, 14 (2005), 75-90. Viewed on 7th September 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-8583.2004.tb00120.x
