At the end of part one of this two part series titled, “If your staff turnover rate is average, you are doing a terrible job”. I promised to outline how you can develop a process that is all but guaranteed to increase the probability you will hire the right team members and perhaps as importantly, avoid hiring the wrong people.

While rightly so, the focus of good hiring systems is primarily about getting the right people it is also true that hiring a single bad employee can do huge amounts of damage to your organization that can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to recover from.

Hiring For Success

Hiring for success means having a deliberate and standardized hiring process.  In my interview with Solutions Consultant Paul Buterakos and Assessment Implementation & Training Specialist Miranda Maynard from HealthcareSource, they laid out a process that’s both simple and sophisticated:

1.  The recruitment process needs to be proactive. This means you need to constantly be in ‘hiring mode.’ Even if you don’t have an open position today, you will in the near future because it is the very nature of the senior housing business.

At a minimum, you should always have open positions posted on your website and be accepting applications for those job categories that are prone to turnover. Paul and Miranda also recommend being proactive by networking and having efficient ways to consistently source prospective applicants including using tools like social media.  You might want to check out the HealthcareSource’s profile of Sanctuary at Fraser Villa as a great “how to” on how to use social media to find prospective applicants.

2.  Have a pool of part-time employees.  This is a great way to create a group of ready candidates that are prescreened and can quickly be moved to full-time. If you offer your employee a variety of flexible scheduling options, your part-time and per diem employees of today may be interested in full-time positions in the future.  

3.  Using behavioral assessment software, like the one offered by HealthcareSource, will give you substantial scientific validation when it comes to evaluating your candidates and hiring the best fit for your organization.  

Using a Structured Assessment System

This is a system that any hiring manager can use and will save them time and help make better hiring decisions.

1.  When a completed application is submitted, the structured assessment software sends an email to the candidate with instructions on how to complete the 15-20 minute and roughly 120 question survey (If you are using applicant tracking software, the assessment tool will likely integrate with that system).

2.  When the Staff Assessment is complete, you get an email telling you the candidate is done and asking you to score the results.  The scoring is an automatic process that compares the candidate’s answers with different criteria depending on the type of job they’re applying for; there are 5 specific job families you can score candidates on, such as Nursing and Entry-level Service.

3.  When the scoring is complete, you will receive a Staff Assessment report.  This report provides candidate scores for each of the nine behavioral competencies that are measured with the tool (like Service Excellence). In the areas where the scores are high, there is a high probability the candidate is a good fit for you in terms of that behavioral competency.

If the scores are low, it does not automatically mean you should reject the candidate, but rather that you should to do further exploration of those areas. The Staff Assessment offers 12 structured interview guides to help you probe into areas of the assessment where you need more information. These guides can also help you train hiring managers on how to interview well. This is particularly useful because so often those doing the interviewing often don’t have a good idea of what questions they should be asking and how to evaluate the responses. 

Think behavioral assessment software isn’t worth investing in? 

In conclusion, I asked Paul and Miranda, “Can a single stand along 50+ unit senior housing afford this software?” The simple answer is yes. But the question that came back was, “What does it cost a community to turn over 50% of their staff each year?” Enough said.

If you are curious about the HealthcareSource behavioral assessment software here is the Link.  

What techniques do you use to beat the averages? Are you using this or some other behavioral assessment tool and how effective is it?  

Steve Moran