Making sure your company is the right fit for your employees is critical to productivity, morale and retention. Whether you are a small, medium or large firm, we are all faced with the challenge of how to identify and retain top performers.

With the right performers in the right position, we are better at obtaining new clients, maintaining existing client relationships, finding creative ways to streamline processes, and providing humor and esprit de corps during high tension projects.

Selection process

So, how can we increase our odds of success?

Our typical selection and promotion process looks at the candidate's:

• History: We typically rely upon the r?sum?, education, past employment, reference checks, and background checks to fill us in on the historical background of the candidate. We also verify that information by contracting with third party organizations that provide data search capability with personal investigation.
• Current situation: We commonly rely upon interview techniques that can vary in effectiveness. Perhaps we were taught by a mentor or recall questions we've been asked ourselves. The interview process isn't fool proof. Professional interviewees may abound when talent becomes scarce. We may fall victim to our gut feeling, their appearance, and even their personality style. Further, we are not always consistent in our approach to the hiring process. Yes, we ask the same questions of all candidates (hopefully), but we're human and that first impression can often throw our process off just a little bit.

We should keep in mind that a Society of Human Resources Management Study reported in USA Today stated that: "63 percent of all hiring decisions are made during the first 4.3 minutes of an interview." Isn't it surprising how we can base our decision on how well a candidate can present a good first impression? But what's below the "tip of the iceberg?"

• Future: Future capabilities might include assessing the candidate's thinking abilities, behavioral traits and occupational interests. Testing & job match patterns allow us to see below the tip of the iceberg and drastically increase our chances of success.

Improving the process

We must learn to utilize all available resources to increase our success rate. Note how the accompanying table illustrates the increased chances of a successful job fit when we apply additional processes.

Background and integrity testing are necessary in order to determine if the candidate is accurate in their description of past activity. Affordable background checks are available and recommended prior to selection. According to a report published by Reuters, "in an effort to put more credibility into embellishing their r?sum?, some candidates are paying hackers to plug their names into a class list data base of a university they claim to have attended."

Personality/behavior testing has been around for many years. We are now able to determine components of personality through many paper and online instruments. I'm a big fan of instruments that measure optimism. In addition, other measures such as energy level, assertiveness, sociability, manageability, decisiveness, accommodating, independence and objective judgment are critical to determining job fit.

Ability testing allows us to actually sample and/or observe work product. By providing a scenario and asking for written or verbal feedback, we are better able to see (or not) the candidate's ability to perform job specific tasks. The more realistic the simulation, the more valid the observations may be.

Interest testing provides us the measures of the candidate's occupational interest. It provides a long-term perspective and has an impact on retention.

Job matching has become more common place due to advances in technology. What used to be a long and paper intensive process of building a job match pattern has now become easier with Web-based tools that provide us the ability to quickly determine the patterns of our best and worst performers for any one job function.

Working with several industry tele-counseling groups, I've noticed that abilities need not be equal. Customer contact representatives need to have excellent verbal skills; however their need for highly developed numerical skills may not be required due to systems support. On the other hand, vendor and supplier managers who are responsible for accounting functions and perhaps inventory management are best matched with higher numerical reasoning skills. Can you tell the difference from the interview process? Is your process reliable and has it been validated over thousands of scenarios?

I often jokingly ask the question: "Have you ever made a conscious decision to hire a non-performer?" Of course we don't. We must find the best ways to promote job fit: Can the candidate do the job? Do they want to do it? Will they fit within our company culture?

The answer is to improve the quality of interviewing, background checks and implement pre-employment assessment measures. These measures must provide information about the quality of customer service, account development and account retention. Focusing on the characteristics of top performers, using sound assessment tools to enhance historical data and the interview will get us much closer to a fit employee.

Jon Morse is managing director for The Center For Success. E-mail him at Jon@TheCenterForSuccess.com.