Looking Beyond the Mission–How Job Fit Reflects Core Values
Job Fit assessment might not be as familiar to leaders and decision makers compared to other factors they develop for their organizations. Those other factors include developing a vision, mission and values to create a culture they want. But what about attracting the right people to build that culture? It doesn’t just happen because you have written statements about vision and mission or display the values on the walls of the workplace. So, how do you create the culture?
Culture in this context is really the organizational values the company has developed. It is a way to define how people are expected to act, belong, interact, and fit in the organization. Job Fit is the contributing factor to help create and sustain the values. It is important to find people who fit the job they were hired to do; can they do the job, do they want to do the job, will they stay in the organization, will they be engaged and happy to work in your organization? All those individuals add up to create the organization and reflect and support the corresponding values. The values, norms, relationships, and work they do that contributes to the vision and mission through the business objectives all make a difference.
Attracting the Right People
The next question is how do you know you can find the right people that fit the job you hire them to do? Of course, the obvious answer is through recruiting, selection and hiring. The key word to consider is the ‘right’ people to support the values. It is not just about finding people that share the organization’s values, however that is important. It is also about finding people that like what they do, are engaged and happy in their job and want to stay with the organization longer than 6-18 months.
What’s the difference? If you find people that match or agree with your organization’s values, then the focus is more on the overall organization. Usually, those values are not developed or defined by the employees themselves, but rather the leader(s). That is not a criticism, it is just usually the way it is done. Then the recruiters or those hiring people are looking to find people that fit something that is already defined for them. Not to mention, even if the people they find do share the values of the organization, there is no way to tell if they can actually do the job they are applying for, if they will enjoy the job and want to stay. Are shared values enough for them to continue with the organization?
On top of that, the recruiters are typically not using assessments that measure values or ask questions to find out if there is a value match. So how do they know if they share the values? If you are at the point of having organization values and want to hire great people that will stay to help you build and sustain the values, consider using assessments to fill in the blanks in your hiring process. Relying solely on resumes, screening and interviews will likely get you a 30% success rate at best. Focus on job fit that measures soft skill competencies –the knowledge, skills, abilities, and associated behaviors that are part of the person and how they will perform the job effectively. Assessing competencies, which are transferable across job types, gives objective data about the person and their ability to perform a job.
Assessing a Candidate’s Overall Fit
If you aren’t sure what competencies are needed for the job openings you have, use Reveal. It is uniquely designed to incorporate multiple measures that produce a holistic analysis of the person in the form of competency scores and overall job fit score. If you don’t have a job description for the position you want to hire, Reveal gives you a head start by offering you the competencies important for over 800 (and counting) job positions. Reveal uses over 50 years of research and has developed an assessment that measures competencies for job fit.