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What Personality Can Tell You - Why Employee Behavioral Assessments Are Hotter than Ever with Credit Unions!
BY ALFIO CARROCCETTO
Staff personality fits are critical to a credit union?s overall success, but how do you gauge an individual?s unique characteristics on the basis of a resume and a few short interviews? Don?t let first impressions fool you. Learn how to spot fakes and properly assess behaviors early on in the hiring process.
I?m always intrigued when people respond to identical situations in startlingly different ways. Some don?t hesitate to push back when pushed, while others willingly retreat. Skeptics question everything. Believers have no doubts. Introverts, extroverts, rebels, diplomats, leaders, followers, opportunists and procrastinators all find their way into this world.
But what happens when they all find their way into your credit union?
- How do you manage such starkly contrasting personalities?
- Do you really know who?s who?
- Can you spot fakers?
Hiring new employees and managing existing credit union personnel can be a painstakingly hit-or-miss process when you can only guess at a person?s specific needs, expectations, traits and motivators. How can you confidently bring a new employee on board when all you have to go by is a well-polished resume, a friendly interview and, perhaps, some very flattering testimonials from your candidate?s ?excellent? ? but likely also very biased ? references? Unwittingly hiring an outwardly friendly but inwardly passive person to aggressively develop commercial business or bring in new members will almost always prove disastrous. And taking on a less-than-meticulous teller is sure to be an expensive mistake.
Candidates may look the part, sound the part and seem so accomplished you become convinced they?re perfect for the job. However, the frustrating reality is that some of these applicants know all too well how to play the interview game and will not hesitate to improvise, stretch the truth, guess, charm or even flat-out lie when they must. Too often it?s what you�think�you see that you don?t get; a common complaint of hiring managers is that their new employee seemed so promising at first, only to then start exhibiting inappropriate behavior, decreased productivity, an increasing amount of ineptitude or some gut-wrenching combination of all of these!
Employees are risky investments. They?ll either boost your bottom line or chip away at it ? dollar by dollar, day by day. A smart hiring decision scores a win and makes you feel good; a bad hiring decision is a loss ? of both time and money.
The risks of taking on the unknown go way beyond hiring. It?s also impossible to successfully manage existing staff members when you have no idea what motivates them. Some employers make the costly mistake of treating everyone the same way or the way they themselves like to be treated, thinking this approach not only makes life easier but also ensures consistency, equity and efficiency in the workplace. Think about it, though. The reality is that ?one size fits all? never fits�anyone�well!
This style of management seldom works long term and often leads to mutual dissatisfaction, frustration and sub-par performances; employers see disappointing workers as slackers, while unhappy employees conclude their boss is just a really bad manager. This kind of ongoing discontent in a branch typically leads to arguments, terminations or resignations.
Managing Different Personalities
It?s easier than you might think to find ways to motivate the individuals in your branch. Keep lines of communication open, and be ready to adapt your managerial tactics, at least to some extent, when overseeing a group of people. You may normally be a ?hands-off? manager, the type who lays out some general objectives then expects staff to resolve their own dilemmas, devise their own plans and think for themselves. While your independent-minded employees will embrace this approach, those who want input and guidance from you�will not; make an effort to stay available to them. Know your own behavior, appreciate the differences in the individual personalities of your staff, then figure out who?s who.
Knowing Who?s Who
While it may take time to uncover a person?s true work pace, level of assertiveness and need for structure, personality can usually be assessed more quickly. Outgoing individuals are easy to spot. They?re talkative and seem to promote themselves well. They?re full of life, usually not afraid to seem a little silly and take themselves less seriously.
However, these people are not necessarily aggressive or competitive, so hiring one of them to sell your financial products or assume a position of authority might be the wrong move. You need to be sure they can capitalize on their infectious charm and sparkling personality by pressing hard enough to put business first, meet goals and achieve objectives. Be on guard against would-be employees who seem too good to be true.
Spotting Fakers
Some people will do or say almost anything to get hired. They?re able to present themselves as one person in the interview, while their true self, the one they don?t want you to see, is kept well hidden. For example, self-confidence, like beauty, is sometimes only skin deep. Dig into a personality and you may find that your seemingly strong, solid, self-assured applicant is really just a conscientious, eager-to-please accommodator who?s prepared well for the interview and learned what to say, how to respond, where to stand and what to wear in order to impress you.
Behavioral Assessments
Institutions looking to reduce the financial losses associated with excessive turnover are aware of how vital it is to hire the right applicants and understand the behavior of their employees ? and they?re utilizing behavioral assessment tools to help them do this. The goal is to find the best possible candidates for open positions and key in to the hot and cold buttons of existing staff members.
The Omnia Profile, a simple yet amazingly accurate behavioral assessment, provides credit unions with insight into the workplace aptitudes of candidates and employees. It?s fast, just 10 minutes, and easy ? no confusing questions or irrelevant multiple choice scenarios. It?s based on extensive research in the prediction of behavioral characteristics through adjective checklists and psychometric analysis. It has been endorsed by the League of Southern Credit Unions (LSCU).
Omnia Credit Union Targets are designed to help credit unions hire and keep the best. The benchmarks are derived from practical research of the industry and the specific jobs within the industry, using profiles of proven top performers, position competencies, years of consulting data and job descriptions within our database. We have benchmarks for positions such as branch manager, MSR, teller, teller sales, loan officer, loan processor and much more.
By complementing a credit union?s existing selection strategies, the Omnia assessment provides an early glimpse into behavioral issues that may not be apparent until long after you hire someone. Branches can make more informed hiring decisions, decrease turnover and increase retention to improve ROI.
People who take the Omnia Profile choose words from a list of adjectives to describe themselves. The hiring manager is delivered a graphical depiction of the candidate?s workplace traits. These results are a helpful way to match candidates with the job and culture, which means less turnover and happier employees (i.e., higher production and more profit). Such profiling can also help develop and coach existing employees, plan succession, improve communication or deal with difficulties between staff members.
The Omnia Profile can be administered to candidates or existing personnel online or on paper. It?s important to keep in mind that the assessment is NOT a test. No one can study for it, and there are no right or wrong answers; it?s based strictly on an individual?s opinions. Ratings may be assigned to candidates, but this is to help managers measure an individual?s overall job suitability; hiring decisions should never be based exclusively on these ratings. They deliver additional information, providing the basis from which to delve more deeply and ask more questions.
Assessments are a valuable piece of the intricate, always challenging puzzle that�is�the human mind. They serve as readily available, reliable tools that make hiring, promotion, management and succession planning decisions much easier.
The less information you have when making selection decisions, the more of a disadvantage you have in getting it right. The once attainable objective of finding the ?perfect? employee has been abandoned. In its place is the more modest (and, unfortunately, more realistic) goal of just finding someone, anyone, who might be considered at least a half-way suitable worker. Bringing out the best in an employee who is�not�your ideal and�not�like you is, without question, challenging. But if you learn how to do it, you?ll inevitably save time, lower stress, make your job easier and, most importantly, eliminate the financial pain of frequent employee turnover.
Alfio Carroccetto, senior consultant, is an experienced entrepreneur and business owner.�Alfio provides employee hiring and retention guidance to senior-level executives for domestic and international businesses. His scope encompasses a wide range of industries, with particular emphasis on...