Reduce the Recruiting Risks: How to ensure that you make the smartest hiring choices

By Elana Harris, Sales & Marketing Management

Finding High-Performance salespeople who fit into a particular culture is at the top of most executives minds today. It seems like finding someone who fits both performance-goal criteria and social objectives is nearly impossible.

But a new employee profiling system may help companies make their best hiring decisions. A newly formed subsidiary of the International Risk Management Institute (IRMI). Dallas-based ZERORISK HR, Inc., is offering the ZERORISK Hiring System. It's based on a test developed more than 50 years ago by Dr. Robert Harman, and tailored to the hiring process by ZERORISK's Dr. Robert Kinsel Smith.

The system's goal is to provide a resource to businesses that evaluates the true potential and level of risk associated with the people they are interviewing by using "an objective behavioral assessment to identify behavior critical to success." says Mike Poskey, the company's senior staffing analyst.

This is how the system works: Candidates take a 15 to 20 minute exam early in the interview process that identifies traits necessary for success in a given field, like sales. Then, through a practically instantaneous, statistically valid process, the test gives common traits for both the top and bottom percentages of salespeople to point out positives as well as red flags in the candidates profile. "The profile goes beyond personality and tells the thinking structure of an individual," Poskey says. "It helps discover if the candidate has the inherent thinking orientation to be good in sales and like it."

Even more helpful for some users, the test software automatically produces questions that can help to customize the interview. "Sometimes it's difficult to come up with questions about how someone would act in a particular situation, and the profile gives good ways to ask them" says Susan Overcash, supervisor of employee relations at the Texas New Mexico Power Company, a firm based in fort Wroth, Texas, that uses the tests.

Another user, Luke Swicegood, recruitment manager for Optio Software in Atlanta, likes the system not only because it gives questions, but because it also gives feedback as to what the candidates' answers should be. In other words, the system practically prevents managers from hiring somebody who doesn't fit in a certain profile.

"It keeps us from putting a square peg in a round hole." agrees David Baker, president of Apex Capital in Fort Worth, which works with ZERORISK to hire employees.

Ultimately, users of this hiring procedure get more in-depth information on candidates interviewing for a position, thus reducing potential hiring risks. "The test keeps you from making a mistake, and if you do make one, you probably know your doing it." Baker says.