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In a time of increasing market pressure and constant change, businesses need the best from their teams. However, any business, HR or talent acquisition leader can tell you that building successful teams is easier said than done.
Even once we have a team of qualified professionals, it can feel like pulling teeth to resolve personality clashes, communicate and coordinate effectively, and achieve our goals.
But what if the way you’re hiring is setting you up for failure from day one?
The Problem With the Traditional Hiring Strategy
The traditional hiring strategy is that we outline a job description, interview people to get a better sense of their skills and personality, and then hire the most qualified candidate we can find. Seems reasonable at first glance…until you look into the statistics and find that over 50% of all new hires fail.
Even more concerning is the fact that when a new hire fails, it’s only due to technical incompetence about 11% of the time. The other 89% of the time it’s something related to behavior or attitude, which usually comes down to disagreements with coworkers or misalignment with leadership.
In other words, we do a great job of screening candidates for their technical abilities. But unfortunately, many recruiters, HR teams and hiring leaders fail to evaluate candidates based on how they will mesh with their new leader, team, and company.
Building a Cohesive Team From the Ground Up
Recruiters and talent acquisition leaders need to put a larger emphasis on hiring the right person for their unique team. The best teams in business are the ones that are intentionally built from the ground-up for complementary dynamics. It’s about building a team that comes together to be something bigger than the sum of its parts.
For example, you need people who will focus on the details, but you also need people who are more concerned with the big picture. You need people who can act quickly and decisively on urgent items, but you’ll have a hard time with complex, long-term challenges without a meticulous planner.
You need to get the right mix of people so that they can effectively, productively, and successfully coordinate to get things done.
Imagine if your team was a pro basketball team. You could hire 5 LeBrons…and that team may look great on paper, but who’s going to share the ball?
If you just hire people based on their experience, skills, and interview performance, you are practically begging for personality clashes.
The Science of Building Teams
It’s hard to fault talent acquisition leaders for hiring based on skill rather than team dynamics.
After all, we can read someone’s resume, call their references, interview them, and give them sample projects, but with traditional tools, we can’t predict how their personalities will mesh with a new team.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail!
However, all that changes with people analytics. Here at Qualigence, we use validated analytics from the Predictive Index to get insights on our teams and candidates.
The assessments from PI can be taken in as little as six minutes and illuminate what drives an individual, highlighting their strengths and helping us understand their blind spots. And you can rest assured they are accurate, since these tools have been validated by over 350 scientific studies.
In a nutshell, it allows us to understand our teams and predict how candidates will perform in the office. In fact, these analytics have helped us go from roughly 50% to 100% success with new leadership placements – something that would have been impossible before.
Are You Building Teams or Just Hiring Individuals?
At the end of the day, our success in business comes down to our ability to build and inspire teams to perform.
You can recruit the most accomplished professional in their field, but if they leave a week later because they hate their manager, you’ve just wasted a ton of money.
You can retain a team of rock stars, but if they spend all their time bickering and fighting over the wheel, the team of rookies with true chemistry will have you beat.
If you’re a talent acquisition leader who wants to add true value to your organization, you have to ask yourself: how is your recruiting process designed around building winning teams?
If you’re interested in having a conversation around how you can build teams that thrive for the long haul, schedule a consultation with our team today. We will ask you some questions about your current situation and provide advice that you can put into action ASAP.