Who is the perfect employee?

I’ve blogged about setting the stage for attracting and engaging the best employees – primarily understanding the company’s culture and business, designing the role and creating the flow and process. So who is the perfect employee?

First off, what is meant by employee? When I use the word employee, I am referring to employees, virtual assistants, independent contractors, strategic vendors, and anyone else who is going to do an involved task for your business.

work flowThe first step in determining the perfect employee is to scope out their position. I discussed the job design process and workflow design process in a previous blog. The objective is to better understand the tasks and responsibilities of that particular role. In addition, include what the employee will be empowered to take action on. Not just what they will have responsibility over, but what they will be empowered with certain levels of authority to take action on your behalf.

The longer the term and the closer they will work with you, the more thorough of a design is needed to scope out the new position. The more time you spend detailing this piece, the less time you will spend being frustrated when people do not meet your objectives; many times they are attracted to one or two words in the job description, but they do not understand everything they will be expected to do since you do not necessarily flesh out everything and communicate it beforehand.

Secondly, my company uses a conative indexing tool offered through a company called Kolbe Corp. Conative means any natural tendency, impulse, striving, or directed effort. The Kolbe people offer testing that produces a profile that identifies how you instinctively solve problems, how you strive to succeed. We have every role in the business run through their Right Fit model and then every applicant tested by Kolbe. I highly recommend following the entire Kolbe process. My business used it for four years, and it brought our turnover rate in a retail business from over 200% to less than 10%. Our turnover costs were about $5k-$6k per employee, so there was enormous savings.

In an upcoming blog, I will review the 3rd and 4th factors we review in determining the perfect employee.

We at the Confident Solutions Coach have developed a hiring process that we offer to our clients. Many professionals are very busy and do not have time to review their work culture, business vision, design a role, and understand what abilities an employee must have to be successful in that role. We do our process for them and have them do the final interviews with the candidates that stand to do the best. If you would like more information, contact me at coach@myconfidentsolution.com