Employee Persona is the semi-fictional representative of the workforce based on similar traits of individuals. It helps you understand your work staff better and enables you to understand who would make the right fit. This is very important because, besides competency, a new hire must also gel well within the company’s cultural fit.
While shortlisting candidates, you should compare your existing employee persona with the candidates to ascertain compatibility. In this regard, you can check for the area of expertise, behavior, individual goals, and judge their fit in the company.
By determining this, you’ll also know if the new hire would fit well and stay with you for the long term. Here, an employment personality test will help you understand your candidates better to compare them to your current employee persona.
M.E.P. System stands for “M”- Minimum mandatory requirement, “E”- Essential Skills, “P”- Preferred Attributes. It is a marking system wherein you ascertain points for these three attributes and score the individuals accordingly.
Usually, the marking system is 1 for mandatory, 2 for essential criteria, and 3 for preferable attributes. This system brings the science of numbers into the play to help you make a more rational decision.
Here, the “M” will be your absolute mandatory requirement. It can be an employment contract, immigration forms if applicable, legal formalities, etc. The “E” will be the work qualifications, knowledge of the field, and “P” will be candidate experience, designation, rank, etc.
Break down the Process
If you feel that the M.E.P. process will be too long for your taste, you can manually break down the cycle. In this method, it is a matter of simple elimination rather than calculating attributes and scoring.
Here, start the process by ascertaining who qualifies the mandatory checks and eliminate the rest. You should then eliminate the ones who don’t pass your preferred credentials out of the resumes you have left.
At the final stage, you should eliminate the ones who don’t fall under the preferred box. Thus, the remaining candidates can be considered as shortlisted for the interview.
Follow your Instinct
Last but not least, comes your instinct in hiring. Not everything in hiring should be the outcome of a scientific screening process. In doing so, you reject the human element of a candidate, which can count a lot in the long-term.
Sometimes, a candidate may pass all the tests but don’t meet your preference attributes. It will result in him/her eliminated from the process. But, that individual may have an underlying passion to learn and be more.
In the long-run, these are the workers that you want in your workforce. If you judge all your candidates through scientific methods only, you may miss out on these individuals. So, sometimes you have to use your instincts to make the perfect hire as well.
Source: blog.vantagecircle.com