As the economy continues to improve and the population ages and birth rates decline, that underlying assumption begins to break down. What if you have fewer applicants than you have openings? Even more likely, what if you have fewer qualified applicants than openings?

As recently as a year ago, this just wasn’t much of a problem. Many hiring managers either were not around during the employee shortages of the late 1990’s or have forgotten what it was like and how they dealt with it!

The old adage, “good times build bad habits; tough times build good habits” may apply here. When it’s easy to recruit enough candidates for your jobs, complacency and habits rule the process.

• When did you last make a substantial change in the publications where you advertise openings or in the content of those advertisements?
   
• When did you last look for an untapped reserve of fresh talent?
   
• Have you looked at where your new hires live, hang out, or hear about your company?

In a recent session with a client company, we requested a simple zip code list of their employees in an entry-level position where they had an applicant shortage. We were surprised and they were chagrined by the results. With a million people living within a 45 minute radius of their plant, 81 percent of their employees were from just seven Zip codes, representing less than 100,000 people.

They were recruiting from less than 10 percent of their possible targets!

Aside from the obvious geographic opportunities, where else can you look to increase your applicant pool?

For many companies like Home Depot, Borders Books and Johns Hopkins Medicine, the answer has been in their partnership with AARP to recruit older workers. Other companies are working with the V.A. and Armed Forces Transition Programs to find good candidates in the ranks of those leaving the military. Community Colleges across the country are working with employers to provide specific career preparation.

Wherever you find them, the payoffs may be huge. Many of these special candidate pools possess a better work ethic and lower turnover rates than the general population. Some come with subsidized on-the-job training. All of these groups help expand your pool so you can be as selective as possible. You deserve the best employees you can possibly find and there’s opportunity in expanded numbers!

The steps of hiring and firing employees are similar to those of marriage and divorce. When you are dating, you are searching for someone with whom you are comfortable and who is as good for you as you are for them. Next, in the courting stage, you are on your best behavior. You are nice to your companion’s mother, you might buy flowers and you refrain from burping at the table. You get the picture.

Your companion may think, “He/she’s not perfect, but when we are married, I’ll change him/her!” So you marry, and one spouse tries to change the other. If it can’t be done, (the usual case, unfortunately) the couple may separate and then divorce. Of course, divorce is extremely traumatic and often very costly.

In a process very similar to dating, a company advertises for candidates. After sifting through many applications and résumés, the finalist candidates are called for a face-to-face interview. With the interview begins the courting. The candidate is on his best behavior. He has researched the company and says all the right things.

Finally the interviewer concludes, “Well, he’s not perfect, but I’ll train him after I hire him.”

Sound familiar? Have you ever regretted hiring someone on the very first day? It hurts, doesn’t it? Or someone asks, “What idiot hired that person?” Ouch!

But you don’t give up. You pay for training, trying to mold the person to do a job he will never do well. Eventually you begin the sad process of firing the employee. This, too, is a traumatic and often costly process. In our litigious society, it can be very costly.

When I conduct workshops on hiring, I ask the participants to list what they want in their ideal candidate. They often list the following descriptions: honest, good people skills, hardworking, self-starter, gets along with everyone, relevant work experience, stable, trustworthy, does quality work.

Then I ask how they determine if the candidate has these qualities. Often they admit, if the interviewee is outgoing, they infer he must have good people skills. If he maintains eye contact, he must be honest.

Except for relevant work experience, the traits we seek may be hard to see. Since it is difficult to determine these traits, we use behaviors (like eye contact or a firm handshake) to infer their presence or absence.

Consider punctuality, for example. A hiring official may think a candidate’s early arrival for the interview is a sign of integrity or good work ethic. In reality, it may be the first time the candidate has been on time for an interview in his life!

In a hurry to hire, we may neglect to examine whether we are hiring a rabbit to run - or to swim. Haste to hire is a costly exercise and results in both the company and the employee being unhappy.

Valid, scientific assessment of the characteristics necessary for job fit can reduce these errors in the hiring process and increase hiring success!

For the past two years, the property has used the Step One Survey II™ to help select high-quality employees and has also used the Profile XT™ to insure good fit and high probability of success in building their management team. In the fall of 2004, before the ski season, the hotel embarked on a full-scale “blitz” designed to identify the common characteristics of their top customer service people and to provide coaching input for each staff member to improve individual customer service. The program also included training and feedback to ensure every member of the team was on the same page when it came to delivering five-diamond class service.

The core of this intensive effort was Profiles International’s Customer Service Perspective™ assessment (CSP). Before the kickoff, management identified the hotel’s top performers in customer service. The CSP was administered to this group and a Success Pattern was created. These top performers met with management to create the Company Service Perspective - their consensus answers to the 49 very tough questions on service issues contained in the assessment - a thoughtful guide to “how we do it here.” Built on this foundation and implemented over a one-month timeline, the initiative followed this sequence:

In week one, all employees completed the CSP, requiring about a half-hour each, on-line.

In week two, all supervisors received training on proper use of the CSP’s Coaching Report and received their own Coaching Report in the process.

During the third week, every employee met with their supervisor and the two discussed the Coaching Report results and how to improve each employee’s customer service delivery. The employee’s answers to the Company Service Perspective questions were discussed, with emphasis on where their responses differed from those developed by the top performers and management. Since many of these answers differ with perspective and situation, these were often lively discussions.

Week four was devoted to small-group workshops of 20 employees or fewer and focused on the Company Service Perspective, the company’s answers and the situations and circumstances leading individuals to have differing answers to these questions. The atmosphere was one of encouraging individual opinion, as the questions often have no one “right” answer. Participation was high and the groups generally agreed. Their awareness of the complexities of service issues had been greatly increased. Finally, as follow up to the initiative, individual working groups continued to discuss these questions and issues, one question at a time, through the winter as they held routine staff meetings.

The hotel participates in a third-party customer satisfaction measurement program, which provides a numerical summary of customer feedback on a monthly basis. Results of the program are at left.