Why are mediocre employees are the worst hires?
Because if you fill your company with employees who are just average, soon enough your organization will become mediocre and flat line. If you’re like most employers, you’ll stew over whether firing these types is the right thing to do, especially because they didn’t really do anything wrong, so you’re likely to feel that your reason for wanting to do so isn’t even that compelling. It’s just that they don’t excel or move things forward, and if they’re not driving and thriving, then they’re like dead weight to the company’s performance and morale. Don’t think your top performers don’t notice the employee(s) who slack off and do enough to just get by. It’s frustrating for everyone.
How to deal?
Some of our existing clients have worked to improve their mediocre employee problem by building a profile of their best, worst, and middle-of-the-road candidates. If you’re not yet using pre-hire assessments, it’s important to know that perhaps the single most important thing about them is that they identify those hidden aspects of a candidate that aren’t always visible in interviews. Utilizing pre-employment testing in your hiring process can be a lifesaver in spotting candidates with less than stellar work ethic or those with questionable intentions.
Further, building a candidate profile is done through reviewing the testing profiles of those who have already been tested and hired, or by testing existing employees. In this way, when you go to hire someone, you’ll have a better idea of what a true top performer looks like for your company.
Another benefit to testing your existing team is that it helps you understand the strengths and weaknesses of those already working for you. You will know how to better place them in your organization, what they need coaching on and what to expect under certain circumstances. Assessments that measure competence and ability help to point out specific blind spots that could beneficially be addressed after hiring.
If you’re not yet using pre-employment assessments to gauge your candidate’s strengths and weaknesses, contact us today to try out a demo and see how we can help improve your hiring process.
