MAKING JOB DESCRIPTIONS WORK FOR YOU (PT 2)

Last time we looked at improving the value of job descriptions by adding measures of success to them that the new hire can be judged against. However, that is only part of ensuring you know exactly what you are looking for. The next key criterion is to look at the behaviour you want the employee to exhibit.

Behaviour might seem particularly difficult to specify, but spending time on this and understanding the basic fundamentals of human nature will mean you'll have a model that with very little practice will ensure you are consistently making the best recruitment decisions possible.

It's Human Nature

It's fair to say that we are 'programmed':  whether we like it or not, most of our behaviours are learned whilst in the womb to the age of seven. During our formative years our minds absorb everything that is going on around them; it is akin to being in a hypnotic state. Our interpretation of these lessons and how we behave as a result of them becomes programmed into our psyche and forms the core of our personalities.

I suspect we all know people that move from one relationship to the next but the next person has exactly the same incompatible traits as the previous one. Why do people do this? Because they have been 'programmed' to do so. Closer to home, we probably all have personal experience of situations where we've over- or under-reacted to something quite dramatically. We've looked back and regretted it and vowed to do better next time, only for next time to come along and for our reaction to be just the same - even though we know it's inappropriate.

The point is that behaviours we learned when we were in our formative years worked for us then. As we mature, these behaviours might well no longer be appropriate and we often know we must change them, but it's a real struggle to do so. Welcome to the unconscious mind!

A good analogy is that your mind is not dissimilar to a tape that has been pre-recorded, so irrespective of what you want to hear, you actually hear the same message and react in the same way.

Another way of looking at this is that our conscious mind can deal with five to nine pieces of information at the same time, whereas the subconscious has millions of pieces of information and interprets them all the time, based on your past experiences.

The good news is that the inappropriate behaviours and reactions sometimes change through experience, maturity and professional assistance. The bad news is that it can be very time-consuming to make this kind of change happen. The even worse news is that I've read social studies that demonstrate that people will repeat their behaviour and not change, something like 90% of the time.

In the meantime, you - the employer - need to have your focus on the success of your venture or project. For that to happen, you need to be able to rely on your new employee performing in the way you hoped when you first hired them.

The way forward for you as an employer is to understand and accept that people struggle to change and that hiring people in the hope they will change is always a mistake. (And even if they eventually succeed in changing, the process will have been time-consuming, frustrating and damaging to the company's overall morale.) You might want to take a more generous view of human nature, but your business can't afford that luxury!

What that means is that to ensure you hire the right person, you must first recognise the behaviour(s) that you require from that person if they are to be a success. You can then work on finding someone who behaves in that way.

Next Time:

Identifying the need for desirable behaviour(s) is one thing; working out practical measures is another!