Why You Should Be Willing to Hire on Core Values

 

Over the last three months I have been exploring the different aspects of Core Values and how they affect your organization. This month I want to discuss how your Core Values should inform your hiring decisions.

According to a 2012 poll conducted by CareerBuilder, 41% of participating companies had experienced a cost of at least $25,000 per single bad hire, while 24% had incurred $50,000 for a single bad hire. The cost includes loss of productivity and time, cost to recruit and train new employee, and employee morale being affected. Interestingly, the term “bad hire” was used in 67% of cases to describe someone who was incapable of producing the standard of work required, whilst in 60% of cases it was someone who was a wrong fit culturally i.e. someone who didn’t share the Core Values of the organization. If cultural “fit” is so important why don’t companies take more notice of it in the hiring process?

One of the biggest issues is that many companies use recruiters to help them find candidates for open positions. Often recruiters are just matching hard skills – i.e. does the resume correspond with the job description? – with little or no thought given to cultural fit. Indeed, in many instances a recruiter will not even meet the client let alone the candidate, so what chance do they get to even explore if character and culture match? This issue is even more prevalent in technical industries such as IT, somewhere I spend a lot of my time.

Unfortunately for IT employers, candidates are in short supply and to a large extent can have their pick of roles. Millennials, who are now the majority of IT employees, are not so worried about compensation as they are about wanting an interesting job with a good work environment with likeminded people. In short, the Core Values of the company that they work for are important to them. The problem is that if the recently hired employee feels they don’t fit in to the culture of the company they have just joined they will “wash out” in the first 60-120days. This is not only expensive it is disruptive to the organization, as it can create a revolving door of new hires that wash out within 3-6 months.

Next month we will discuss how to incorporate Core Values in to your hiring process, and look at two local companies that are helping employers to make sure they not only attract the right talent but also retain them.

To turn these techniques into actionable realities within your organization, please make time in your schedule for a free, one-to-one consultation with Simon. Call us today at (440)-385-6737!