How many times have you hired someone who has all the eligibility for the job, including the right education, training and experience, but that person just did not eventually perform well?  If your organization is typical, you’ve had this experience many times and thus have experienced what we aptly call the hiring paradox.

This tells us that there are factors other than eligibility that determine how well a person does his job. I call these work suitability factors. In the past two decades the importance of suitability factors has become increasingly recognized and many organizations have experimented with ways to assess suitability before hiring employees.

Whether we call it personality or emotional intelligence, these factors have a dramatic effect on the performance of individual employees and organization. By understanding the key personality factors that relate to performance, organizations benefit in two ways. First, they are more able to identify the real performance issues and thus are more likely to promote better performance from employees. Second, and more importantly, an organization which takes into consideration suitability factors is more likely to get good performers.  This reduces the cost of employee turnover while generating better performance at the same time. Studies show that companies spend an equivalent of about one to three years in salary for every employee turnover.

The biggest challenge is to determine exactly which aspects of personality relate to success for a particular job. Specific jobs require specific traits hence success may vary depending on the trait that suits a position. For instance, traits necessary for success in customer service may not necessarily be those required for management, sales, administration, or technical functions. Even with the same job title, duties and performance expectations can vary and thus the traits necessary for success must also vary.  In other words, we cannot make any realistic conclusions about personality or emotional intelligence unless these factors have been selected and calibrated for a specific job. To do so would be no different from a shoe maker who makes only one size in the hope that it will fit all people.

Determining work preferences is important in interpreting personality factors. Personality may indicate if a person is motivated but it does not tell us for certain if that person is really motivated to do a particular job. Understanding a person’s work environment preferences, tasks preferences and interests in consonance with his or her personality, on the other hand, gives a deeper insight into successful performance for a particular job.

Needless to say, by taking the suggested approach, you can begin to formulate the factors that truly relate to good performance for a particular job and help you consistently find the right person for the right job by avoiding traps of the hiring paradox. --JS

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