Personnel selection has been known since the Romans. Those used it, for example, to select those who were to become part of the prestigious legions. One of the tests consisted of swimming across a tumultuous river. Those who managed to reach the other shore were selected, those who drowned… no.
Fortunately, personnel selection tests have evolved since then.
And it's probably time to evolve again. Let us consider the selection of personnel as it develops in most cases and what we will call: the traditional view.
Traditional view
In the traditional view, the position is defined based on the objectives to be met and tasks to be carried out. This determines the profile of the candidate, in terms of Knowledge (knowledge, diplomas) and Experience.
The search for the candidates and the screening is carried out in the same terms of current and potential Knowledge and Experience. Those who pass the screen are evaluated in terms of Being (personality), especially taking into account those personality criteria that can guarantee the adequacy with the objectives and tasks to be carried out.
The result manages to optimize partial objectives, that is to say individual jobs, but not the global objectives. However, it is well known that a group is not the simple sum of its components and that the work carried out by a team can be much higher than the sum of the individual works: the difference is synergy.
Group Effectiveness - Sum (Individual Efficiencies) = Synergy
At best, traditional selection neglects synergy; at worst it harms him.
A boss recently complained that his department, seven people, was not achieving the expected results. The studies and tests carried out showed that one of the employees had a difficult coexistence, that she worked in isolation from her colleagues or was in conflict with them. "However, the boss commented, if you give him a job to do, he does it very meticulously and the result is almost perfect, embroidered."
We can say that a local optimum was achieved. But it harmed the global optimum because his interactions with his colleagues were scarce or bad, he withheld information, lacked cooperation, and bothered the environment, which slows down the motivation of the group. In traditional terms, you would pass a new recruitment for this position because you excel in terms of knowledge and experience. But the group does not form a team, and the department loses in both aspects: competitiveness and personal socio-emotional satisfaction.
A new vision
We propose to think in terms of globality and team results. It is intended to achieve global and not local optimum, and therefore treat each worker as a generator of synergy.
First, it is about defining the company as a global system to optimize. Then analyze the current situation in terms of roles and interactions within the group.
Role is for example: creator, controller, manager, pragmatist, etc. According to Belbin, the best team should include people whose characteristics are complementary and in particular:
- an idea generator, - a controller and manager to make the ideas workable and manage them
- a person capable of facilitating harmonious personal relationships and interpersonal negotiation.
It is then a question of analyzing the coherence of the team, its cohesion and its internal deficiencies and in its relations with the environment (the other departments). And after defining the necessary role to maintain or increase synergy.
Obviously, it is still necessary to define the position as an individual workplace; after all, the job will have to do it. But the main search and screening criteria become stable personality patterns, and the candidate's current knowledge and experience are less relevant than the skills to acquire them.
To take a sporting example, let's say that if all eleven players on a soccer team were forwards, the team would concede many goals; and if they were all goalkeepers, I would not score any. Nor is it productive to sign a star with the ball if no one wants to pass it to him, or if he is going to disjoin the dressing room.
The new recruitment has observed that in companies, the reasons why we hire a worker are usually never the ones that motivate their dismissal. Because people are hired for what they know, and fired for who they are.
Business coaching prefers to select people for who they are and for their contribution to the team in which they must be integrated, because what they do not know yet they can learn, but what they are will remain.
