When it comes to the ongoing process of hiring and training, the widely held belief has been that turnover and training is “just the cost of doing business.” What companies fail to understand, often to their detriment, is that the costs associated with replacing different positions within the organization are inevitably much higher than they believe. For example, the cost of replacing an entry-level employee is, on average, approximately one-and-a-half times base salary, while the cost of replacing a technical specialist is about three-times wage, and the price of middle manager replacement can end up being four to six times salary. The main takeaway here is that hiring the right way the first time will ensure better business practices and efficiencies and bottom-line success is a business activity that has a direct impact on your bottom line

While many organizations continue to rely on traditional methods of hiring and interviewing, we have learned that only 19% of the actual facts and information are truly uncovered during the traditional interview process.

In comparison, a structured behavioural interview yields a whopping 70% of the evidence needed to make the best hiring decision. In short, this means that the ROI for implementing an effective Structured Behavioural Interviewing program, over a traditional interview process, yields a return within the first few new hires.

Why is this happening? Because the structured behavioural interview obtains quality information from the candidate in an efficient way. For the behaviour interview to be successful, the hiring manager needs to know what the desired behaviours are, before the interview even begins. By understanding the desired actions, before the candidate arrives, the interview questions can be designed more specifically to draw out the needed information from the candidate.

By preparing themselves with more detailed and honest information, the hiring manager is able to draw a comparison between the profile for success and the candidate’s actual answer. Only if there is a match, regardless of the hiring manager’s biases, can there be a hire. To be able to capture and assess this information accurately, we add a fair and objective scoring methodology to the process. This methodology further drives the desired results through a fact-based and objective behaviour-anchored rating scale. We have developed our scoring process to capture both the frequency of the candidate’s demonstration of correct behaviours and how recently they lived those actions.

Customization: Our approach is to work in partnership with our clients to ensure we build a program specific to the client’s unique needs while integrating the client’s particular job statements of the behaviours coupled with the company values.

Outcomes: Research has shown that Structured Behavioural Interviewing improves the quality of hires by ensuring that new hires are the right fit for the organization in general, and the role in particular. This type of hiring process results in higher job acceptance rates, reduced turnover, lower costs per hire, faster time to productivity, and longer-term employee contribution to and engagement within the company.

Our program has assisted our clients by increasing their selection and retention of quality candidates by three to five times over their current traditional methods. We have worked on strategies for recruitment and selection with organizations, including campus recruiting, hiring for high volume seasonal, and hourly positions, company expansion, plant commissioning and start-up, expansion of a sales force, and engaging specific senior and executive managers.

Our work in the areas of articulation of company-specific behavioural competency models, along with the application of behavioural interviewing, culminated in the writing of The Talent Edge, published in 2001 by John Wiley and Sons. The book has since been included in several courses in colleges and universities around the world.

Training Program: Selecting the Best

Over the last 30 years, we have continuously refined and improved our structured behavioural interviewing program: Selecting the Best. We offer this program as a two-day in-house training, as well as providing Train-The-Trainers for in-house facilitation by your team.