While good people are always hard to find, the  lack of experienced talent in this fast growth area will be a limiting resource for successful operations. PeopleStaff will be partnering with key clients to monitor, research, identify, track, recruit, and deliver a range of talent to handle important business, scientific, engineering and production issues in the biofuels arena.  

Bioenergy, broadly defined, is renewable energy which is produced by using biological source material. Biofuels and bioenergy  technologies have a key role to play in  the development of a sustainable and secure energy network for the USA and world. The technology includes development of technologies utilizing biomass and anaerobic digestion, conversion to usable fuels, and the delivery to the consuming marketplace.

To learn more about our efforts and how we can help make finding Great Talent easier in this marketplace call us today.

PeopleStaff will help you create a Performance Based Job Description free of charge.
see the contact form at the bottom of the page to request your FREE Job Description

The Performance Based Job Description is the first part of a process to help you identify and hire superior talent at any level. You start by getting all of the key decision makers to agree on the standards for superior performance for the job in question. You can determine these attributes by benchmarking the best employees (for admin, transactional, process or new hires), by using the Macro approach (for management and project type hires), or by using the Micro approach (for technical and all other type hires).

The recommended method for discovering these performance objectives is to explore the role of the position with respect to eight different work areas. Try to find one or more performance objectives in each of the following area of the job:
1. Major objectives
2. Secondary objectives
3. Organizational issues
4. Technical issues
5. People skills
6. Deliverables
7. Problem solving
8. Making changes/ Improvements

Once you create the performance objectives you set about to rank the most important ones and these become the basis of your Performance Based Job Description.

The process of building a Performance Based Job Description will help all of the team members fully understand the value of the position and provide the same markers by with each candidate is judged. Having all decision makers in agreement on what they are looking for and a template based on these performance objective will help in reaching a hiring consensus and making better hiring decisions.

Some added values of the Performance Based Job Description is that the candidate will also understand what you are looking for and be more able to appreciate your opportunity more accurately. Full knowledge of the opportunity and performance objectives by both the company and the candidate will result in a better match. Also the Performance Based Job Description becomes a great performance appraisal tool.

PeopleStaff will help you create a Performance Based Job Description free of charge. We will act as your agent to gather appropriate info from your hiring team members and create a finished Performance Based Job Description. The Performance Based Job Description is only part of the services that we provide but a very important part. Also key is our ability to provide a wide range of sourcing options and to monitor and adjust our methods to insure the delivery of talent to meet your performance objectives.

Let’s face it, even in tough economic times good people are hard to find. Spend your time making better hires. My job as a 20 year veteran in the search business, is to help find good people and put them in opportunities at which they can excel. It is my belief that the best chance of making a good hiring decision should be centered on a Performance-Based  recruiting approach rather than the skills-based approach. This is true because the Performance-Based  approach is focused on hiring candidates who have shown success in performing roles similar to what is expected in the new position and not just a candidate’s ability to win the interview.

For the past 15 years the hiring managers that I’ve worked with have hired predominantly on a skills-based approach. The skills-based approach makes candidate selections based on a list of the skills that a  candidate has and not necessarily the candidates ability to do the job. This is a fundamental difference between the two approaches.

FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN APPROACHES

Skills-based approach — hiring based on skills acquired matching job description skills

Performance-based approach – hiring based on the candidates ability to do the job.

I believe the skills-based approach is used because it is the traditional approach,  makes it easier to screen potential candidates, and because the recruiter and hiring manager don’t know of other options. The risk of using the skills-based approach is twofold: 1) you may hire candidates with great skills but who are unable to successfully perform the job functions, and 2) you may miss candidates who could be great performers but didn’t interview because they lacked required “skills”.

Shouldn’t the costs associated with making a wrong hire and the overall benefit of making a great hire cause hiring managers and staffing organizations to consider a more efficient option? The Performance-Based approach is a more efficient option because the entire process is focused on delivering candidates who have performed and are likely to continue to perform the new positions required tasks. The concept is that past performance is a good indicator of future success. The performance-based approach delivers talent where the whole person is greater than the sum of their individual skills. When the hiring decision is based on the candidate’s ability to do the job good things happen. You can begin to build your organization with Peak Performers who have the confidence and ability to deliver what is required of them.  This is one way to build a Great Company.

The Performance-Based  recruiting method.

1. Create a Performance-Based  job description. Identify the critical success factors of every job and write it from a performance perspective. Your Performance-Based  job description now becomes the template by which compare your candidates.
2. Build a deep enough talent pool of appropriate talent.
3. Screen candidates based on their ability to perform the critical success factors
4. Conduct a short initial Performance-Based  phone interviews
5. Conduct more detailed Performance-Based  face-to-face interviews
6. Create short list ranking based on the ability and motivation to do the job
7. Complete thorough reference checking and background verification
8. Hire the best fit candidate and keep the others in your pipeline

The most important task of every manager is to build or improve their team to help him or her achieve their objectives. Every single hiring opportunity is a chance to improve a performance capability. The Performance-Based recruiting process will help you hire performance oriented talent where a skills-based recruiting approach may not. Performance-Based  recruiting requires more effort and intellect than the skills-based approach because it requires judgment on a candidates ability to do the work. A good recruiter can greatly simplify this process for a busy hiring manager by doing all of the leg work and preparing the results in an organized and easy to follow presentation.

If you want a better chance of increasing the performance of your team try to make your next hires utilizing the Performance Based Recruiting approach. PeopleStaff is available to help guide you through the process and work on your behalf.

Your comments are appreciated.

Books to read:  Hire With Your Head. A rational way to make a gut decision.  by Lou Adler.

We want You to develop your Talent Mindset.

We’ve released a new website to inform our clients of a new business model and describes some new markets that we’ll be pursuing.  With a New Economy just starting to emerge our focus at PeopleStaff will be of building the Talent Mindset and building networks of Talented and Motivated individuals in the Enterprise IT and small to midsized fast growing companies. How can we help you? We always appreciate your feedback and comments.

There are many definitions available for the word “Talent”  such as the Webster definition “any natural ability or power.” I believe that Talent from a business or hiring perspective must go far beyond the “natural ability” and include the life experiences of SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE and MOTIVATION. I believe that all 4 of these attributes must be present for someone to be considered a real Talent from a hiring perspective.

Smart people are often considered to be really talented but if they lack the experience, skills or motivation they are only smart.

When a hiring manager is looking to hire Talent he/she should be trying to gauge their Talent by comparing the four attributes noted above. Very often the focus in information technology hiring is based only on the Skills and Experience attributes. I suspect because these are the easiest to ascertain by reading a resume. Knowledge is difficult to judge because some candidates are just better communicators than others and come across as smart. Of all the attributes MOTIVATION is one of the most important. Without motivation even a candidate with the other three attributes (Skills, Knowledge and experience) can be a dud. With motivation even if the other 3 attributes are diminished the hiring manager can still make a good hire.

QUESTION TO TEST YOUR TALENT

So the question I would ask anyone who is trying to further their career and trying to become a better Talent is – Are you doing everything you can to enhance your Talent attributes?

Are you working to develop and further your marketable SKILLS?

Are you accepting assignments to enhance your marketable EXPERIENCE?

Are you studying, testing, networking, communicating, discovering to expand your marketable KNOWLEDGE? This may even include your learning new languages, technologies, physical experiences etc.

And are you truly MOTIVATED by the work you do?

QUESTION TO THE HIRING MANAGER SEEKING TALENT

Have you developed an interviewing technique to uncover the depth of accomplishment in the areas of SKILLS, EXPERIENCE, KNOWLEDGE and MOTIVATION when you seeking to upgrade or grow your team? Or are you only focused on the skills and experience attributes? Work a little bit harder and you’ll make a better hire.

Rick Zabor