How many of you that are responsible for hiring have selected a candidate based on their education, skill, and experience only to find out behaviorally, the hire is a terrible fit for the position?

I have done a lot of hiring as CEO of JellyBarn, Inc. and I can tell you that it is not an easy task. Finding the right fit for a position has been my achilles heel. I can tell you that I have made a lot of expensive mistakes when hiring. It wasn’t from a lack of education, skill, or experience on the new hires part, it was from a lack of the hires behavioral fit (or my lack of a better hiring process). The new hires just didn’t fit the position because their personality behaviors were different from the behaviors required. This can be the case when hiring for any position – developers, sales, marketing, exec staff, etc. 

Most hiring is done based on three criteria, education, experience, and skill.  I knew there had to be a better way. A systematic approach that would give more visibility into wether or not the candidate was a good fit behaviorally for the required role and not just a good hire based on education, experience, and skill. I needed a way to find out if the candidates would be a good fit for both the position and the company culture.

What I found after some detailed research was a behavioral test, called a DISC test. This test (see mine below) will give you a ton of information on the candidates behavioral traits and characteristics. This is indispensable information for hiring. For best results the DISC process is broken into three parts:

1. An RBA test (Role Behavior Analysis – this lets you define what you need in the required role)
2. A General characteristics test (this test allows you to profile the candidate)
3. The third step is a cross reference of the first two tests and spits out a report that allows you to see how well your candidate fits the defined role

This is also a great way to find those future young superstars that would have slipped through the cracks because they don’t have a resume with a lot of experience. I do want to note that this is not a silver bullet for hiring, but a systematic approach that can be incorporated into the hiring process to help reduce employee turnover. 

There are two companies that offer DISC personality tests that I recommend looking at: (each with there own pros and cons)

1. Target-Teams - target-teams.com

• Pros – Great detailed information, good for larger orgs
• Cons – $400 per test

1. Epic DISC – intesiresources.com

• Pros – $15-50 per test (cost effective), good information, supplement reports, good for start-ups
• Cons – A little less detailed than target-teams

In Summary, if your firm is hiring (especially smaller firms) I highly recommend incorporating a fourth behavioral criteria into your hiring process.

Lets take a look at two tests so you can see the granular visibility that is included in a behavioral test. For me they have been spooky accurate. Recently all the executives at JellyBarn took the test to help us further understand our strengths and weaknesses and be even better as a cohesive/progressive/communicating team.

Thanks for viewing this post! Best of luck with all your hiring.

Devin Day Intesiprofile