“Before I look at the personality profile, let’s take a look at this job posting and see if we can create a job description that will help us,” I insisted.
“Do we really have to?” Kristen pushed back. “You know, if we don’t make a decision quickly, I’m afraid this person might take another job. That’s why I asked you to come in this afternoon, to look at the profile assessment.”
“So, you would rather make a wrong decision this afternoon than a better decision tomorrow.”
Kristen was exasperated. “I don’t think we can wait until tomorrow. I told the candidate we would call her with a decision before the end of today.”
Intriguing anecdote Tom… It does a great job of highlighting one of the biggest mistakes organizations and business people make when using personality assessments – they fail to systematically link the needs of the job to the personality style that is best fit for the job.
I’ll step out on a limb and guess that your client was “ga ga” over the candidate’s profile because it was similar to hers. Just a hunch…
Curious to see what happens…
-Chris Young
Quick can cost money. Hiring the “warm body” and not having the job description to link compatability of the organization with the candidate will create more problems in the long run.
Perhaps a review or re-training of hiring managers might be appropriate regarding the steps and criteria the organization requires in their hiring process.