How organisation can leverage on strength-based recruitment
Competency in the actual job tasks is not always the best indicator of an individual’s fit for a job.
Candidates who look good on paper and perform well in the interview do not necessarily perform well on the job.
This reality has ignited the interest in strength-based recruitment to place the right people in the right jobs.
Many strengths-based human resources practices have the power to transform an organisation’s overall performance, by ensuring that the best people are appointed to business-critical roles.
Individual strengths are what make people great performers, which are what they are naturally good at, love doing and are energised by.
Strengths-based recruitment helps to identify innate strengths and motivators for good job performance. This week we explore strength-based recruitment and selection.
According to Gallup, strengths are “the unique combination of talents, knowledge, and skills that every person possesses.
“People use these innate traits and abilities in their daily lives to complete their work, to relate with others, and to achieve their goals.”
This can be easily adapted to the recruitment process. Strength-based recruitment is therefore an approach used in hiring which has a focus on natural talents and motivators, as opposed to a candidate’s competencies, rather than focus purely on the candidates’ skills and behaviours.
Strength-based recruitment zeros in on the intrinsic motivation that drives the candidate’s behaviours.
Strengths-based recruitment is about identifying the strengths that will deliver success in a role, then recruiting and selecting the people who have those strengths.
The late CEO of Apple Steve Jobs once said: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
This is strength-based recruitment in action as it identifies people who will do ‘great work’, because they are a natural fit to the job.
Strengths-based recruitment can help organisations to succeed in the following areas:
- Placing people in the right roles where they excel
- Widening the talent pool available to your business to include people with the right innate strengths who may previously have been overlooked because they lacked the relevant experience
- Reduces the time and money spent recruiting people who are wrong for the role or training people to fix their weaknesses
- Reducing the cost of staff turnover
Strengths-based recruitment differs from the behavioural competency recruitment because it allows organisations to select people who are a natural fit for the role as follows:
- It focuses on identifying what people are good at naturally,
- By reviewing a strength-based advert applicants can screen themselves for the job based on the required strengths,
- Unlike psychometric tests candidates cannot study or earn how to answer strength-based interviews or assessments,
- Strengths approach also works well for Generations Y and Z because they have high expectations that they will love their work and get a lot of personal satisfaction from it.
Strength based recruitment processes include strength-based interviews (conversations) with people about their strengths and how those strengths help them succeed at work.
Strength based interviews allow a candidate’s energy, enthusiasm, and strengths to shine through.
Strength’s assessments can be done through scenarios or survey questions, work simulations or video interviews to test people’s strengths in relation to the requirements of the role.
When managers know their employee’s strengths, they can focus their work more effectively and create a more engaged, higher-performing team, and a more satisfied workforce.
While many organisations are firmly wedded to the traditional competency-based methods of recruitment, there are already some powerful pioneering organisations who are taking bold action to challenge the status quo.
These include standard Chartered Bank, Acromas holding and the Shelford group.
It is therefore important that organisations reframe their mindset and shift towards this approach in hiring so as to fully maximise on the whole candidate capabilities by shifting from intellectual capabilities only and tap into their strengths.
Paul Nyausaru is an OD Practitioner and leadership coach. For all your OD interventions and leadership development training you can get in touch with him on WhatsApp/call +263774062756 or Email pnyausaru@gmail.com. Chiedza Kadare is an OD Practitioner. You can get in touch with her on WhatsApp/call +263 77 283 0986 or Email chiedza.kadare@gmail.com
