Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER May 4, 2015 8 NEWS HR often misjudging fit: Survey How can you truly assess how well a person will be a match? BY SARAH DOBSON ARE THE NUMBERS really that surprising? Nearly six in 10 (58 per cent) HR managers have misjudged a candidate's fit with their company's work environ- ment while nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) have lost employees because they were not suited to the work environment, according to an OfficeTeam survey of more than 300 Canadian HR managers. at number — 58 per cent — is actually low, according to Jan van der Hoop, president of Fit First Technologies in Oakville, Ont., adding it's not just about HR but hiring managers and anyone else involved in hiring. "e most bullish odds that I've ever heard anyone say honestly is 'I get it right half the time.' And for people who get it right half the time, they generally feel pretty good about that. "ings like education, creden- tials, work history, skills even, are the weakest predictor of fit. And so even though we've relied heav- ily on the stuff that's in the resumé to decide who it is we're going to speak to, almost 90 per cent of the time the reason people fail has nothing to do with any of those things. It's almost always about fit in some way or form." And it's not always one-sided — it can be the company that made the wrong decision or the employ- ees themselves, said Gena Griffin, regional vice-president at Office- Team in Toronto. "Some of the reasons are con- nection in terms of fit with the current team; some are connec- tion of fit with the longer term vi- sion of the role specifically; some are to do with the company's own environment or their culture that's unique from each company to company, and sometimes de- partmentally unique as well; and not often but sometimes… there can be a disconnect in terms of ap- preciation for the mission of the company or the core values, the heartbeat of the organization." But when it comes to evaluating skills and fit, the two should carry equal weight, she said. "Whenever you're making a hire, you really do need a balance of someone who's capable of do- ing the job from a technical point of view, but also somebody who is going to be in alignment and in sync and where they mutually feel that way with the culture of the company, the values of the company and the direction you ultimately want that role to move into." ere are four critical aspects to fit, which tie into research done by Gallup and other experts, said van der Hoop. ese are fit with the job — "e extent to which the work is actually going to draw from my natural strengths and tal- ents versus the stuff that I'm never going to be great at" — fit with co- workers, fit with the organization and fit with the manager, he said. e latter is probably the most important. "If fit with the manager is weak, there isn't a whole lot the organi- zation can do in the other areas to compensate for that — it's just never going to be good," said van der Hoop. "e reality is most people join the organization and they leave the manager; so they join because of the brand, be- cause of the product, because of the position in the marketplace, because of the benefits, because of whatever… they want to feel proud that they tell their friends they work there and it looks good on the resumé and most often the reason people leave has nothing to do with those things. It has to do with that one single most impor- tant relationship." And aside from involuntary turnover, the effects of a bad fit can be insidious — absenteeism, higher benefit costs, stress claims, lower customer satisfaction, lower productivity and lower revenue, he said. Homework Ensuring the right fit requires considerable upfront work, to do a complete assessment of the position itself, said Ardyce Kouri, partner at executive search firm Davies Park in Edmonton. "If you take that step back, if you understand what's required not only from a technical perspec- tive but who the person's going to be working with and what kind of work they're going to be doing and how that will affect the over- all culture of the organization, you take those steps, you have those conversations… upfront, you will save time and money in the end. But it does probably add a week to two weeks sometimes to a recruitment process, which can seem like a lot... but doing it wrong will be bad in the end, so take that extra time." at first piece is huge and it does take some time, but the end result is so much better — every- one's happier, she said. "Because the cost of a bad re- cruitment is very expensive — there's lost time, redoing it again, training, disruption to the team and sometimes to client service if it's a customer service-orient- ed role, there's lots of costs that may be intangible. ere's some that are very tangible — you can see the costs of lost productivity and things like that — but there also can be some intangible costs: morale of the team, losing a leader again, over and over again, which can then have a domino effect on other people." e people doing the recruiting are often overwhelmed with the volume of work so it's a challenge to find the time to assess a person for fit, said Kouri. "I don't think fit is not thought of as important by organizations, I definitely think it is; it's just do we have time to do it? And, TESTING > pg. 21 "If fit with the manager is weak, there isn't a whole lot the organization can do in other areas to compensate for that."

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