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Providing Tools To Leaders Defines Talents For Best Candidates
Conclusion: Identifying the specific behaviors, skills and knowledge necessary to successfully perform a particular job provides the critical framework for talent selection.
Reference: First, Break all the Rules – Chapter 3, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. Email Scott McTague, M.S. at sales@batrushollweg.com with comments or reactions.
Why This Article Is Important: This chapter provides strong empirical evidence supporting the notion that, especially for entry-level jobs, hiring for attitude and training for skills is a sound strategy. Too often hiring leaders are narrowly focused on particular skills or knowledge when interviewing a candidate and in the course of doing so overlook what the candidate brings to the table in terms of their attitudes, skills and talents. Hiring leaders need tools and training that help them assess for the behaviors and "soft skills" that are critical to successful performance.
Major Findings: From their research across 150 jobs, Buckingham and Coffman created a talent taxonomy that categorizes the diverse talents that employees in multiple roles possess. They found that talents generally fall in three general categories: striving, thinking and relating. Striving talent defines the "why" of behavior. Thinking talent describes the "how" aspect of behavior. The relating talent component describes one's "who" factor. This simple taxonomy enables hiring leaders to break down the various types of talents candidates' possess into more distinct and identifiable components.
What Does It Mean To You? We all know that finding the right employee for a particular job is a challenging proposition at best. Providing hiring leaders with tools to help them identify if the talents a candidate possesses is a good fit for the position and a way to categorize talent into more discernable categories can help move the needle towards this challenge in the right direction.
