20-20 MDS®
Selection and Placement
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Welcome to the workshop on “Selection and Placement.” In this workshop session we will be
exploring your role as a leader and manager of people as this relates to the very important task
of selecting the right candidates for specific jobs who fit well within your existing team. That is,
what you can do to find the right people in the first place, attract them to the role you have
available, and then find out as much as you can about them, so you can make an intelligent and
informed decision about whether to recruit them or not? Sounds easy, right? Not really …
Ask: Have any of you ever made a selection mistake? (That is, thought you were hiring the right
person, only to find out that he or she did not have the skills or personal qualities needed?)
Facilitator notes: Take some discussion here. If people are reluctant to speak up, suggest that
selection mistakes are common, and perhaps offer your own story here.
Ask: What went wrong? That is, what did not work out with this person?
Facilitator notes: Take discussion here and flipchart reasons the person was not a good fit. If
you do not get enough participation, open the floor to selection mistakes people have noticed in
their organization and probe for reasons that efforts to hire the right person sometimes fail.
Say: Given our quick discussion, I think it is fair to say that it is sometimes difficult to predict
who will be successful once on the job, even if that person has strong qualifications on paper,
and even if he or she interviews well. Research in the selection arena tells us that:
Most employees tend to be hired for their technical skills, but fired for their “people”
skills.
That is, in the recruitment and selection process, managers tend to focus most on candidates’
“hard” skills – education, qualifications, experience, technical knowledge – rather than on their
“soft” skills – communication, teamwork, leadership ability, interpersonal skills, emotional
intelligence, and so on. Some of the reason for this is that assessing soft skills is difficult, and
many managers don’t know how to do it effectively, but it remains perhaps the most important
aspect of all selection decisions, both internal and external. We will therefore be focusing a
great deal today on methods, techniques and tools you can use to improve your chances of
hiring the RIGHT person for the RIGHT job the first time around.
Facilitator notes: You may want to go around the room with introductions at this point, and
perhaps ask each person to also describe their experience with respect to the Selection and
Placement process, as well as their specific interest in today’s course, which you may want to
record on the flip-chart and review at the end of the course in terms of meeting participants’
expectations.
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Isn’t this HR’s Job?
• Organizational costs of
selection errors
• Impact on the team
• “Culture” fit
• Job-person fit
• Manager-employee
match
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Often, we find that leaders and managers believe that Selection and Placement of job candidates is the job of
Personnel or Human Resources staff. What is your opinion, and your practice?
Ask: In your organisation, what is the role of HR vs. the manager’s role for selection / placement?
Facilitator notes: It is a good idea to get this split responsibility out in the open early on in the course so that
participants (and you) understand current practice. In practice, this responsibility split is almost always joint,
with the manager’s role very important even if HR is heavily involved. You may want to flip-chart this with HR
as one column heading and Manager the other column heading and bullet point the responsibilities of each so
that people are clear about responsibilities in their company.
Ask: In your view, what is the manager, or leader’s most important contribution to the selection / placement
process, considering HR’s involvement?
Facilitator notes: Take some discussion here and emphasize these points: manager needs to carefully think
through the role itself – job description and requirements – to communicate these accurately to HR for
screening purposes. Manager should also do thorough in-person interviews and make final decisions. Other
responsibilities can be noted, as well, such as organisational culture fit, or team needs.
Say: Given that we have established that the leader bears heavy responsibility for hiring, what can happen if
we do a poor job as an organisation in the R & S process? This question will be the basis for our Icebreaker
Exercise now.
EXERCISE (refer participants to page 3 of their workbook)
Please form groups of 4-5 people and brainstorm the organisational costs of poor hiring. That is, make a list of
what happens in general within an organization when we consistently hire the wrong people. Appoint a notetaker who will also report out for the group. You have about 6-7 minutes.
Facilitator notes: Call time in about 6-7 minutes and ask each group to report out. Typical responses
include: high turnover, poor customer service, lower morale, productivity decreased, greater internal conflict,
retention problems, etc. Emphasise that selection / placement is an extremely important topic for all
managers.
Say: We have established that hiring is one of the most important responsibilities of a leader. Also, when we
recruit someone, we are selecting them for the specific role (that is, defining the role carefully so that
expectations are clear and we fit the person to the job, which is “job-person” fit), but we also select them to fit
with our company culture, our existing team, and to work well with us, as the manager and leader of the group.
We will be covering each of these areas in today’s course.
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Employee Selection IS Important!
“The job of the leader
is to pick the right
people to be part of
the organization and
to create an
environment where
those people can
succeed.”
-- Mort Meyerson, Arts Patron and
former CEO of Perot Systems
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This quotation by Mort Meyerson, an American business leader and (more recently) arts patron,
sums up the job of the leader as almost split in two: first, it is about smart hiring, and then it is about
creating an environment in which good people can do their best – removing obstacles to excellent
performance and getting out of the way of the day-to-day work. Today’s course is about the former
goal – smart hiring.
Another business writer who has much to say on this topic is Jim Collins, co-author of the groundbreaking work, “Good to Great.” In this book Collins said that the f irst thing a leader needs to do is:
“… get the right people on the bus, wrong people off the bus, right people in the right seats
and then figure out where to drive.”
In effect, he is saying that selection and placement should precede the formation of a particular
business strategy. To explain further, he wrote that:
“ …great leaders understand three simple truths. First, if you begin with ‘who,’ rather than
‘what,’ you can more easily adapt to a changing world. If people join the bus primarily
because of where it is going, what happens if you get ten miles down the road and you need
to change direction? You’ve got a problem. But if people are on the bus because of who else
is on the bus, then it’s much easier to change direction.”
That is, getting the right people “on the bus,” or in your organisation, or team, is essential to top
performance. Selection is a manager’s first priority because if you don’t have the right people
working for you, your job is made so much harder.
Ask: What do you think about this idea? (refer participants to page 5 of their workbook)
Facilitator notes: Take some discussion here. Often, managers “inherit” strategy and/or people
and must work with what they’ve got, which can be challenging, even at the best of times. The key
point here is to emphasise that organisational success can be very difficult to achieve with
employees who are inflexible, do not wish to learn, grow and be challenged, or who resist change
(as change is inevitable).
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Selection and Placement:
Key Responsibilities
• Strategic staffing
• Develop a selection plan
• Write or update
the job description
• Resume review
• The selection interview
• Placement
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This is the “roadmap,” or agenda for today’s session.
We will be covering six broad topic areas. These are:
1. The concept of strategic hiring or looking to bring people into the team or organisation
based on the needs of the business and to achieve strategic outcomes we are looking to
achieve in the medium to long term.
2. The need to develop a sound selection plan or to think carefully about what job roles will
need to be in order for the organisation to achieve it’s mission and vision.
3. Selection begins with an accurate and clear job description. Even if there is an existing job
description it will need to be updated each tim e that you recruit since technology changes
as well as other factors.
4. Reviewing applicants’ resumes is part of the preparation for the interview. We will cover
what to look for and how to prepare.
5. We will spend quite a bit of time on the selection interview, how to plan, conduct and
evaluate candidates based on your interview with them.
(refer participants to page 4 of their workbook and encourage them to think about what
they want to get out of this workshop)
You can use your Participant Workbook to make notes as we work our way through the course.
Any question
s?
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Strategic Staffing
• What new positions are opening
up?
• What special skills (e.g.
computer applications) will be
needed?
• What work experience (e.g. in a
particular area) will be required?
• When will new staff be needed?
• When should hiring be
scheduled to ensure a smooth
transition?
• Does the hiring plan also
provide for employee turnover
and attrition?
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The first step in selection and placement thinking should ideally be to consider what you really need,
or “Strategic Staffing.” Strategic staffing is a method many leaders use to plan staffing needs well in
advance. Think of this method as a way to achieve having the right people with the right skills in the
right place at the right time.
Ideally, strategic staffing is part of an overall business or Human Resources (HR) plan that is
undertaken at regular intervals -- often annually. HR planning should be tied in with the overall
business plan. This process can be started by assessing current conditions and the future goals of
your organisation. Consider some of the following questions:
• What are the company’s goals and objectives?
• Do these goals call for expansion into new markets?
• Are new product lines planned?
• Are changes in technology necessary to stay competitive?
• Will new skills and/or training be required to meet the company’s goals and objectives?
Identifying your business goals and needs will help you to predict future hiring needs, in terms of
number of employees, types of skills and experience levels needed, and succession planning . This
planning process will help you to avoid making costly mistakes – such as hiring an employee
prematurely, or to late, for instance. Once you have developed a sense of the direction your business
is taking, you need to determine what human capacity you will need in order to accomplish those
goals.
EXERCISE
In groups of 4-5, take a few minutes to think about your organisation’s longer-term business goals.
What 3-5 areas will be most important in terms of growth or change over the next 2-3 years, in your
view? If you do not have access to company-wide plans and strategy, you can focus on your own
department or division. What is happening in your industry, or society-at-large that will have an
impact on your business? Take a few minutes to jot down your ideas and then next to each one,
indicate how this development will influence staffing needs in your area. Take about 10 minutes for
this now and appoint a different note taker / facilitator to report out to the larger group.
Facilitator notes: Call time in about 10 minutes. Debrief the exercise by having each group
summarise (2 min. maximum) their discussion. Emphasize that strategic staffing should be futureoriented, not just focusing on filling short-term needs. Acknowledge that even the best advance
planning is often superseded by unanticipated changes in direction.
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Employee Development:
Risk Assessment
YOU
100%
OPEN JOB
?%
Employee 3
100%
Employee 2
70%
Employee 1
120%
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Another interesting way to devise your staffing plan is to consider your department’s risk tolerance in terms of
hiring someone who requires development once on the job in order to be fully competent. Often, when we
have a job opening, we fill the job with someone who is “fully qualified” to do the job now – even on the first day
– because they have done the job before in another setting. In other words, we recruit someone who poses no
significant risk. Other times, we might have several senior people already in the organisation who can act as
“mentors” or at least trainers for a new person who may have potential, but is not fully “up to speed” yet; that is,
they may have done pieces of the job before, but not the entire job. We can call this a “developmental hire,”
and this is often a smart move if we want to hire someone with potential to move up, but who is “hungry” for
development and is a few years away from promotion. It can be a “win-win” for everyone at times to take on a
developmental hire.
Let’s look at a simple mathematical model for determining hiring risk levels with these values:
• 120% = Has done this job many times before (probably 5-10 years); can teach others; fully mature and “no
risk” except for potential boredom and dissatisfaction with little to no promotional opportunity
• 100% = Fully competent – Has done this job at least once before in another setting – “little risk”
• 70% = Somewhat competent – has done pieces of this job before, but not the entire job previously – “some
risk”
• 50% = Developmental hire – has some of the key skills, but will have to “grow” into the job over time, probably
1-2 years. “Significant risk.”
Let’s assume that you are the manager of Dept. X (and you are at 100%) and you have the current employee
configuration shown on the overhead.
Ask: At what level would you want to fill your open job? (120%, 100%, 70%, or 50%) Why?
Facilitator notes: Take some discussion here. An appropriate response here is that you can probably afford
to hire someone at the 70% development level because you have other people to train and groom this person,
including yourself. If you calculate the average value for this dept. (add all figures and divide by number of
positions), the result is 78%. Research shows that a “learning organisation” should be at about 70% to be both
“safe” in terms of balancing risk with developmental hires. This would mean that this organisation is a bit on
the conservative side (above 70%), so a hire at the 70% level is probably most advantageous.
EXERCISE
Now let’s try this on your department. Draw your own organisation and assign values to each box/employee in
terms of his or her development level. If you have, or were to have an open job, how much risk are you
prepared to take? What level would you hire at, given this risk model?
Facilitator notes: Allow about 10 minutes for this exercise and debrief the exercise by having participants
discuss the pros and cons of hiring more experienced people vs. those with potential.
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Develop a Hiring Plan
Check:
• Position approved for
hiring?
• Funding available?
• Temporary or
permanent?
Then:
• Define the job and
selection criteria
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Now that we have taken a rather strategic view of staffing, let’s turn our attention to shorter-term staffing issues and needs,
which vary considerably from area to area. In fact, it is unlikely that any two departments will ever have exactly the same
staffing needs. Therefore, you should think about how your department objectives will be successfully met by hiring just the
right person, at just the right time. Essential to your staffing plan is the availability of funds and the open position itself. Also,
you need to determine whether you are looking to fill a temporary need (which is usually a short-term position, possibly
without benefits) or a more permanent need (which is usually a long-term position with benefits). Think creatively about
different staffing possibilities. That is, a full-time, regular (or permanent) position is not necessarily the optimal solution. In
some cases it may be advantageous and even less expensive to hire an independent contractor, part-time employee,
temporary or interim person, or devise a job-sharing arrangement, if you have good people who would be interested in the
job if flexibility was available. To avoid undue frustration, the first thing you should do is to confirm that the resources you
need are available and that the position you are recruiting for will be supported by your own senior management.
Some helpful tips and steps for success include:
Develop a recruiting game plan. Define the job and selection criteria considering these key questions as
you do:
• Why are you hiring?
• Are there other ways to get the work done without adding staff?
• Is the workload temporary or permanent?
• What is the position profile?
• What is the job description?
• What are the selection criteria?
• What are the sources for potential candidates?
• Who's responsible for the selection decision?
• How will the new employee be absorbed into the workforce?
Know when to hire. Develop a hiring needs analysis that will determine when you need to hire a new
employee:
• Why do we need another employee?
• What will happen if no one gets recruited?
• What are the costs and benefits of hiring now?
• How else can the work be done?
• What will happen if the work is not done?
Taking time to develop a well-reasoned hiring plan can save you time and “head-aches” later on. Partnering up with
Human Resources can make this process run smoothly and efficiently.
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