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People Matters Personality mismatches to job requirements can be hazardous to your health—and theirs. By Barbara Metzger About 14 years ago, I performed behavioral analysis on a courthouse team. The analysis highlighted a woman with a very radical difference between whom she was naturally and who the job needed her to be, so I indicated to the manager that she was statically at risk. I heard back a couple of months later she had a heart attack. Now, this is a drastic example, but it demonstrates the importance for hiring the right personality fit. The natural tendency for most us is to hire people similar to the person doing the interviewing. This may be very good for team work. However, it may not be reasonable for the job or the applicant. You must ask the question: If the job could talk, who would it hire? A number of years ago, I had an outgoing small business owner that was a good salesperson and a strong leader. He needed to hire for an opening in the bookkeeping department, but because his past decisions hadn’t worked out so well, he decided to run assessments on the candidates. The first applicant he really liked. She was great in the interview. She could easily talk to the owner, and was great at telling him what he wanted to hear. But to his credit, he showed restraint by doing the assessments before he hired her. The assessments indicated she would not be someone the position would hire. What was the problem? The job required a detailed oriented person; someone who liked to complete projects and was somewhat introverted. This person was the opposite. So, why was she even applying for the job? Because someone once told her she was good with numbers? Because her friend had been in bookkeeping years ago and she just followed her into it? Because she didn’t know what else to do? Who knows? But the real issue is that she had a short attention span for details. She wanted and needed a high amount of interaction with people during the day. She wanted to do things her way, not someone else’s way. The greater the distance between what the job needs and the behaviors and beliefs the employee/applicant doesn’t have, the more likely it is for the employee to be termination or them to outright quit. This cost money for mistakes made, training time and lost of productivity. The employee also feel like a failure, which can result in higher stress, and that leads to more sick days, more time complaining about the company, and the employee escaping by doing more personal tasks on the clock. Another outcome can be they adapt their behavior to be what is expected. As you can imagine, this takes a great deal of energy they become more ineffective the longer they stay. There have been numerous statistical studies on this, but the bottom line is that the more a person has to adapt their behavioral style (especially when it is not in alignment with their motivation filters) the higher the risk for illness or an accident. Any way you slice it, it is not good business. Hire who the job would hire—it can help your team, stress levels, energy and profits. Barbara Metzger’s company MaxImize specializes in taking the pain out of hiring. Contact Barbara at (512) 278-1200 or Barbara@maxproductivity.com. |
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