Discovering Trends in Hiring – 8 Important Workplace Behaviours

A Special Report on Banking

The repercussions of a wrong hire are many fold. Apart from financial repercussions of resources spent on such hires without expected results, such a candidate also causes an impact on the team’s morale and job perceptions. As per a global study, hiring the wrong person can have serious implications for companies and more than half of employers in each of the ten largest world economies said a bad hire has negatively impacted their business. This was in terms of a significant loss in revenue or productivity or challenges with employee morale and client relations.

The current trends in assessing Behaviour

Companies spend millions of pounds / dollars a year on psychometric tests which measure personality types, learning styles and the personal preferences of their employees. In 2003, the estimated value of psychometric tests sold to UK organizations was more than £20 million and was used mostly in the public sector for selection in more than 70 of the FTSE (Financial Times and London Stock Exchange group) 100 companies and in 2008 it rose up to 85% of the FTSE 100 companies. In the US the estimated value of psychometric tests sold for purposes of recruitment and development exceeded $ US 100 million per year.

In India, it is growing fast and used widely by multi-national companies that have adopted global practices to be on par with the emerging trends of the world. When researchers tracked 20,000 new hires, 46% of them failed within 18 months. But even more surprising than the failure rate, was that when new hires failed, 89% of the time it was for attitudinal reasons and only 11% of the time for a lack of skill.

User friendly computer based solutions have made psychometric assessments easy to administer, score and interpret results in proctored and non-proctored environments.