Mission Statement

A mission statement describes the overall purpose of an organization. A mission statement should be brief and answer key questions about the business of organization. Questions such as what are the basic objectives of the firm? Who are the target audience? These points should be mentioned in the mission statement. A mission statement describes what an organization hopes to achieve.

Vision Statements

Vision statements mention aspirations of the organization; they lay out the most important primary goals for a company. A vision statement is a company’s road map, indicating both what the company wants to become and guiding transformational initiatives by setting a defined direction for the company’s growth.

The top management in organizations spend a lot of time drafting, designing words, and redrafting vision statements, mission statements, values statements, goals and objectives so on and forth.

And somewhere in the course of the organization’s journey, many of its actions don’t align with the well drafted vision and mission statements. Also, in the absence of a well drafted, or a poorly written vision and mission statements organizations lose good number of opportunities in attracting and engaging talented human resource, building organizational culture, and increasing productivity while leveraging all resources to successfully implement a strategic plan.

Organizational success is often linked to inspiring vision, clear mission, and strong values. But without employee buy-in, these concepts are worthless. Employee engagement is essential to an organization’s success, and alignment is arguably even more important.

Do you know that the founders of great and stable organizations like Hewlett-Packard, 3M, and Johnson & Johnson did not have a vision statement when they started out? They began with a set of strong personal core values and a relentless drive for progress and yet had an amazing ability to translate these into concrete mechanisms. 3M Corporation always had a sense of its core values in place such as support innovation, protecting the creative individual, solving problems in a way that makes people’s lives better. These core values gave it its soul. But what really set 3M apart was the ability of its leadership over the years to create mechanisms that bring these principles to life and translate them into action. For example, 3M allows scientists to spend 15 percent of their time working on whatever interests them, requires divisions to generate 30 percent of their revenues from new products introduced in the past four years, has an active internal venture capital fund to support promising new ventures, preserves a dual career track to encourage innovators to remain innovators rather than become managers, grants prestigious awards for innovations and entrepreneurial success, and so on.

Change is constant and needs to be taken into account as it is an essential component of strategic planning. So many changes take place in organizations. Change in manpower, change in business processes, change in product portfolio, change in infrastructure so and forth. This involves moving the organization or program forward or backward to create or change something. Some plans are created out of the need for the organization to move in a certain direction, and other plans develop organically. At such times, mission and vision statements need little tweaking, rephrasing, redesigning – little change and they are important to help communicate the goals of the plan to employees and the public.

Often companies modify their vision to fit the current environment; the changes internally or externally require a revision of in its mission or vision. To identify misalignments organizations require looking around internally as well as externally, talking to people, getting inputs, and finding out whether their core values align with their business philosophies. The misalignments arise because years of ad hoc policies and practices which are incomprehensible with the organization’s underlying values. When organizations don’t mean what they have signed off as vision and mission, at some point, the employees in the organization begin to grumble about the organization’s complex sign-off process, recognizing its inconsistency with the notion of respect and trust for the individual. The first task for leaders, then, is to create an environment and a process that facilitate people to safely identify and eliminate these misalignments.

Let’s take a look at Nestlé’s vision: “to be a leading, competitive, nutrition, health and Wellness Company delivering improved shareholder value by being a preferred corporate citizen preferred employer preferred supplier selling preferred products.”

Nestlé web site includes both a “mission statement” and a “vision and values” statement. Although the company is known for Nestlé Crunch chocolate bars and other snack foods, these statements emphasize nutrition, wellness, and good corporate citizenship.

The Swiss company’s “vision and values” statement is quoted above. Its “mission statement” is: “Nestlé is…the world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness company. Our mission of ‘Good Food, Good Life’ is to provide consumers with the best tasting, most nutritious choices in a wide range of food and beverage categories and eating occasions, from morning to night.”

These statements mirror the company’s long-term business strategy. In keeping with its claimed promise to nutrition, Nestlé has invested in scientific research on nutritional aspects of the kinds of products it sells. For example, it has studied the effects of chocolate on metabolism and gut bacteria. The Economist describes this as a potentially risky strategy; by investing in research and development, the company is “playing a long game,” in contrast to the short-term strategies of some of its competitors.

Nestlé has also made an effort to practice “corporate citizenship.” It has been involved in a number of efforts to promote good agricultural and environmental practices, such as the World Cocoa Foundation, which is “committed to creating a sustainable cocoa economy by putting farmers first – promoting agricultural and environmental stewardship, and strengthening development in cocoa-growing communities.”

This article emphasizes not only being consistent with vision and mission but true alignment.

Identifying core values

In describing the alignment process, it is assumed that an organization’s core values are already clearly defined. It is important that people must be predisposed to holding them, and it is important to attract and then retain these people. Every organization has to wrestle with a niggling question: what should change and what should never change? Can policies or strategies change at a particular time? Can its core value change? Can cultural values change? Remember, undying core values should never change. But, operating practices and cultural norms should never stop changing. Because business environmental changes are constant and organization needs to change according to the environmental changes.

It’s always a good practice to review the vision and mission because in the organization’s lifecycle lot of changes takes place.  The sector in which it operates changes economically, socially, or politically; if the top management in organization such as the CEO, VP or General Manager changes their philosophy and ideas change; if the  product or service line has become obsolete due to regulation, or replacement for example cigarettes, or full service gas stations there is an immediate change in the business; sometimes the current product version is being replaced by another (iPods, for example being included into iPhones); if an organization  acquires another firm it needs to change its entire philosophy. As an organization evolves, to explain its foundation its vision and mission need the changes.

A well-written and well documented performance appraisal is of great importance in all organizations, no matter what type of business it is in. Employee appraisal can serve as a platform for employees to bring forth questions and concerns. This can help increase employee perseverance, creativity, and job satisfaction. Reviews allow the organizations to evaluate employees for increased responsibilities and future promotions. The PA acts as a road map for both organization and its employees.

PAs help organizations with useful information such as employee’s skill, knowledge, capability their knowledge up gradation, attitude, aptitude, health changes if any etc. In fact PA helps to improve the communication system of the organization and to review the potentiality of employees so that their future capability is anticipated. It helps in setting marketing and sales goals, operational goals, outsourcing function, infrastructural capability, R&D etc.

Rank and Yank is a term used to describe a process by which a company ranks its employees against each other, and terminates the employment of the people at the lowest end of the ranking (that’s the yank). The term probably came into being to describe the process used at General Electric (GE), and is associated with former CEO Jack Welch. In his view, the real term was “differentiation.” He looked at appraisals for building great thorough consistency, transparency and openness. Welch has written that “It’s about aligning performance with the organization’s mission and values. It’s about making sure that all employees know where they stand.” What happens to the yanks? According to Welch, the employees at bottom line 10% employees (the poor performers) will never feel let down, when PAs are done on regular intervals and are transparent.

A transparent, ethical PA system is never demoralizing or inhuman. What’s inhumane is failing to make the organization’s standards and values clear and transparent and letting people know where they stand. According to Welch, managers owe frankness and sincerity to their subordinates; they must never create environment in which the subordinates keep guessing about what the organization thinks of them. Employees must know exactly what organization feels about them.

During the hiring process, recruiters and hiring managers must tell employees when and how they will receive performance appraisals. Employees trust employers to follow throughout all promises; from paying employees on time, to giving employees holidays, enhancing career, and timely evaluation of their performance. Therefore, conducting systematic and timely performance appraisals is an important consideration when it comes to placing value on the company’s human capital.

Following are some specific tips for drafting better performance evaluations:

• Be specific and avoid generalization: Phrases such as ‘maintain time limit’, ‘work harder,’ ‘increase production’ are not specific. They create ambiguity in minds of employees. Be specific by mentioning exactness. Such as ‘increase sales by 20% in the next three months,’ ‘you need to work from 9am to 5 pm,’ these are measurable objectives, and assist both the employee and employer.
• Focus on what you want the employee to do, not what you want him/her to be: A performance evaluation is not about finding flaws in an employee’s personality or discussing only weaknesses. You cannot change the employee’s basic personality traits in a performance evaluation. Managers must objectively state exactly what is expected out of the employee.
• Use real details: Use the correct and full name of the employee, his joining date, cadre, salary, exact designation, detailed duties, family background etc. Be specific.  Be clear about his Key Result Areas (KRA) what is expected from the employee and the date it is expected. For documenting performance issues, get as detailed as possible instead of merely using phrases such as ‘is a trouble maker’ instead, document incidents where the employee’s attitude was inappropriate, stating the date, place, incident, witnesses, behavior(s), and the unfavorable effect of the employee’s conduct on those around him, as well as the specific organizational policies and procedures to be used when employee’s behavior is violated.
• Set only a limited number of objectives: The employee needs to be able to do the work; people can’t achieve an objective that is not within their scope of influence or current capability. The employee must have the tools, resources, and access required to get the work done. Expectations must be well defined, and the employee must have sufficient time and assistance to meet milestones. Remember, more than seven objectives are excessive.
• Appraisal biases: should be avoided as far as possible. In performance appraisal halo bias is termed as Matthew Effect. It is said to occur where employees tend to keep receiving the same appraisal results, year in and year out judged or based on an early performance evaluation. If an employee did well on the early evaluation, he will be more trusted than other employees and all of his work will be seen in a favorable light. If he did poorly, he will have a very hard time earning trust or a positive evaluation from his boss. Their appraisal results tend to become self-fulfilling: if they have done well, they will continue to do well; if they have done poorly, they will continue to do poorly. The Matthew Effect suggests that no matter how hard an employee strives, their past appraisal records will prejudice their future attempts to improve.

Often organizations overlook importance of timely performance appraisal, though it is  powerful for enhancing employee satisfaction and retention. The timely and accurate performance reviews are a key factor in retaining a satisfied and productive workforce. Feedback, whether positive or negative, can help employees understand the company’s expectations and perceptions and provides a pathway to improvement. Providing timely feedback lets good employees know you appreciate their accomplishments. While identifying what an employee can or needs to do better is a critical function of performance reviews, other equally critical yet often overlooked functions include showing the company’s appreciation for employees who are successful, showing passion and accountability for their work, and letting them know they are important to the success of the company.

Training and development is another area which can be used with help of PA. Training and development are used together to bring about the overall familiarization, improvement, and education of an organization’s employees.  In general, training programs have very specific and quantifiable goals, such as operating a particular piece of machinery, understanding a specific process, or performing certain procedures with great precision. On the other hand, developmental programs concentrate on broader skills that are applicable to a wider variety of situations, such as decision making, leadership skills, and goal setting.
Google schedules their performance reviews twice a year; major one at the end of the year and a smaller one mid-year. Each review consists of a self-assessment, a set of peer reviews, and if an employee is applying for a promotion, reasons for why he should be promoted to the next level.  Each review component is submitted via an online tool.  Around performance review time, it’s not exceptional to see many engineers taking a day or more just to write the reviews through the tool. In the self-assessment, the employee summarizes his major accomplishments and contributions since the last review. He is asked to describe his strengths and areas for improvement; the employee is expected to frame them with respect to the job expectations described in his career ladder.  For peer reviews, employees are expected to choose around 3-8 peers (fellow engineers, product managers, or others that can comment on their work) to write their peer reviews.  Often, managers assign additional individuals to write peer reviews for one of their reports, particularly newer or younger employees who may be less familiar with the process are chosen. Peers comment on an employee’s contribution in a project, on his strengths, and on areas for improvement.  If an employee applies for a promotion, the peer reviews become more relevant for considering his promotion.

An accurate performance reviews is critical because it helps exceptional employees being  rewarded with exceptional performance ratings and the benefits that go along with those ratings, while poor performers should be rated and rewarded accordingly. Employees talk among themselves and share information. It can be extremely demoralizing for a high-performing employee to learn that marginal or poor performers have received the same rating, pay raise, and other benefits.

Finally, change is constant in business; the PA system should also change accordingly.

While Nestle India the big food maker is battling its biggest crisis in India, it has asked its employees and all their families and friends to become “valued brand ambassadors” for the company in midst of the company’s battle regarding discussions in the public domain on monosodium glutamate (MSG) in Maggi. In an email to employees, chairman and managing director Etienne Benet, a Swiss-French national who is hardly seen in public, said their role “at times like this is more important than ever……”

The point is why only in crisis, even in peaceful times a company can rely strongly on their loyal and engaged employees instead of hiring expensive brand ambassadors for image building. If a company wants to get extraordinary loyalty from its employees, it needs to take initiative in creating a mutual sense of that relationship. After all, engaged employees build stronger brands. No two thoughts on it.

Though, most companies focus all their branding efforts on marketing activities such as advertising campaigns, corporate communication, attractive packaging etc, yet one of the most powerful assets a company has is – its people. This is regardless of which industry the company is in, for building a strong brand requires that all employees feel connected to the corporate brand and understand their role in turning brand aspirations into reality. The earlier this is understood, it is better for the company. It should aspire to motivate its talent pool into turning brand ambassadors for its business health because employees rank higher in public trust than a firm’s PR department, CEO, board of directors or Founder. Employees are the most credible source of information regarding the organization. The frontline staffs give a glimpse of the organization’s culture and integrity. When a customer interacts with one of the frontline employees, or with the work produced by behind-the-scenes employees, everything the company’s PR and marketing departments have done will be put to the test immediately.

To build a strong corporate brand, the company must invest in its employees who are thoroughly engaged, connected and committed. Scarlett Surveys is the global provider of the best-practice AER Employee Engagement Survey System used by hundreds of organizations to intelligently manage employee engagement.

Scarlett Surveys International defines Employee Engagement as “a measurable degree of an employee’s positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, colleagues and organization that profoundly influences their willingness to learn and perform at work.”

This is where leadership comes into picture. The leaders must lead by stetting examples and embody promises made. When customers deal with an organization, they deal with a mix of employees from various ranks and cadre. A customer anticipates doing business with a company only when the employees look confident, happy and positive.

Attrition is not good for any company’s health. If a high number of employees are leaving then something is wrong; the question is what, and what can be done to improve it. Organizations must foster good work atmosphere because employees who genuinely love, enjoy, and feel connected to their jobs are the ones who best represent the company they work for.  I hope this makes sense, doesn’t it? You will see those employees are the most engaged, the ones who like coming into work every day and are the most likely to say positive things about your company on social media. This is why it’s important to leverage these engaged employees as ambassadors for a company’s brand.

However, in the age of social media, nothing is hidden; hence, it’s not uncommon to see employees badmouthing their organizations – sometimes subtly and sometimes openly. So why do loyal and engaged employees make the very best brand ambassadors? Quite simply, the visibility that engaged employees offer when talking publicly about the brand they represent is something that can’t be imitated emotionally and genuinely by best of the hired models or any outside source. Consumers can tell when employees are being sincere about their passion for what they do and for their company.

Engaged employees sincerely love the company they work for so they are more likely to spread that love on social media. They can organically increase brand awareness on social by sharing news and updates with their friends, fans, and family. They love their company brands so much that they can easily answer customer questions and comments on social, acting as your first line of communication. They provide a relevant, human face for the company they work for, and hence, they can create authentic, compelling content that drives traffic and increases social engagement.

At Starbucks at a point in time, some of their executives visited their coffee shops and noticed that good employees were losing their poise when faced with agitated customers. Instead of coming down on the individual employees, they developed new training material that eliminated the stress of these situations. The executives at Starbucks found that when they empowered their employees with tools they needed to serve customers happily, their employees gained their smiles back.

Do you know friends that Eastman Kodak is one such company in world which has the longest average tenure for employees at 20 years?  This Centurion old company gives the excitement of a strong core business and brand that is recognized and respected in virtually every country around the world. It enables its employees an effective organization, with strong leaders, engaged employees and winning culture.

The key to employee engagement lies in providing growth opportunities, varied roles and empowerment. In India, ITC is one such organization, in which, its senior executives hardly ever quit. Attrition at senior levels is less than five per cent and for frontline staff around 10 per cent. Naturally, ITC and its Agro Tech rarely hire from outside, preferring to promote insiders. ITC also backs employee initiatives. The company allows people to incubate businesses. The team in charge of the paper business suggested getting into greeting cards. A few years later they realised they were not getting anywhere and came back with a proposal to enter office stationery. The company placed a second bet on them. This time it hit the jackpot. In four years, office stationery has grown into Rs 500-crore business for ITC.

A great company culture breeds happy people. Those happy people who connect with their roles and the company become engaged employees. Let us not underestimate role of each employee in an organization from the sweeper to the CEO each one has a big role to play.

Organization must deliver the promise to employees. “When employees feel that the company takes their interest to heart, and then the employees will take company interests to heart,” says Dr. Nelson, a clinical psychologist, bestselling author and business trial consultant. She mentions in her book an example: in 2011 after wrapping up a record-setting year, new Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook rewarded employees by giving them paid vacation through the week of Thanksgiving. In a memo to employees Cook wrote, “In recognition of the hard work you’ve put in this year, we’re going to take some extra time off for Thanksgiving. We will shut down with pay on November 21, 22 and 23 so our teams can spend the entire week with their families and friends.” This act of Cook motivated the employees to no limit.

Similarly, Proctor & Gamble also pays back company success to employees through extra paid days off. “It ate a little bit of their bottom line, a little bit from the stockholders, but oh my God what it bought them in employee loyalty and productivity,” says Dr. Nelson. She writes “If you’re doing well, share. And for God sake, don’t let your executives walk out with a bonus if the company is not doing well. People don’t mind that execs make money, they mind if it’s exorbitant if the company is not doing well.” She says in her book that even when the company is not doing well the information should be shared with its employees. Employees accept realities than being kept in dark.

Make your employees your brand ambassadors.

In globalized markets successful innovation has become a key driver for revenue growth, competitive margins and, in some cases, even for survival of the business. The ability to bring innovation to market swiftly, efficiently and ahead of competitors is becoming ever more significant. An efficient product launch requires incorporating great workable strategies and coordination among multiple functional areas, including product design, procurement, planning, manufacturing process, sales and marketing. In addition, as organizations increasingly leverage core capabilities of other companies, innovation has to be delivered through virtual networks, working with partners in a collaborative environment to bring product and services to market faster, smarter and cheaper. Today’s markets are swiftly altering leaving no room to even think. Cannibalization is a glaring reality and it’s better to accept and survive with it. The CEO of Apple Inc, Tim Cook says “Better to eat your own than have your own eaten by others”. That’s Apple’s philosophy on product cannibalization.

Market cannibalization refers to a situation where a new product “eats” up the sales and demand of an existing product. This can negatively affect both the sales volume and market share of the existing product. Market cannibalization occurs when a new product encroaches on the existing market for the older product, rather than expanding the company’s market base. Rather than attracting a new segment of the market and increasing market share, the new product appeals to the company’s current market, resulting in reduced sales and market share for the existing product.

Creative destruction cannot be avoided. When Joseph Schumpeter coined this term in 1942, he was damn sure that the future is all about impatient, over competitive ‘destructive creation’.  Though, Schumpeter’s idea of creative destruction was as the renewing of society through cycle of innovations, which would lead into higher levels of economic development and welfare. He also mentioned then that creative destruction would create discomfort and loss to the existing players while newcomers would benefit and increase value creation for broader society.

Organizations now not only need to integrate internally, but also externally with suppliers and customers, creating end-to-end supply chain processes and capabilities which differentiate on product and customer requirements. Successful innovation is of tremendous benefit to the organization while launching a new product. If the company can launch the product early in the market, it leads to the chance to acquire greater market share in introduction and growing phase of product life cycle management. Product launching time is also very important for success of product. Customer psychologies, customer need, number of competitors in the market, price driven by the market are most critical and important parameters for success of products. And, cannibalization is however accepted by organizations either internally or externally.

Market cannibalization can have a negative effect on a company’s bottom line, forcing an existing product’s life to end prematurely because sales shifted to the new product, rather than tapping into a new market as intended. At times, market cannibalism is used as a strategy if the company wants to increase its market share, and hopes that the introduction of the new product will harm its competitors more than it will harm itself; for example, when Apple introduced the more feature-rich iPhone and iPods that ate up sales for its lower-end iPods, including the Nano, Shuffle and Classic series. In marketing strategy, cannibalization refers to a decrease in sales volume, sales revenue, or market share of one product as a result of the introduction of a new product by the same producer. While this may seem innately negative, in the context of a carefully planned strategy, it can be effective, by ultimately growing the market share, or to please the consumers by meeting their demands. Cannibalization is a key consideration in product portfolio analysis. For example, when Apple introduced the iPad, it killed the market of the original Macintosh.

Another instance of cannibalization is when a retailer discounts a particular product. The tendency of consumers is to buy the discounted product rather than competing products with higher prices. When the promotion event is over and prices return to normal, however, the effect will tend to disappear. This temporary change in consumer behavior can be described as cannibalization. Though, in business this concept is known by different names in sales and marketing. What is happening in e-commerce? Some companies intentionally cannibalize their retail sales through lower prices on their online product offerings. More consumers than usual may buy the discounted products, especially if they’d previously been secured to the retail prices. Even though their in-store sales might decline, the company may see overall gains. The game of ‘volume’ leads to increase in sales with help of e-commerce.

Cannibalization happens even when companies – particularly retail companies, open shops too close to each other, in effect, competing for the same customers; e.g Nike or Bata having many outlets in an area for shoe markets. Cannibalization becomes an important issue in marketing strategy when an organization aims to carry out brand extension. Hindustan Lever’s Lifebuoy soap’s brand extensions are Lifebuoy Plus, Lifebuoy liquid and Lifebuoy Gold, since these brands have been positioned at different segments. Similarly, Amul butter, Amul ghee, Amul cheese, Amul chas and Amul chocolates are various brand extensions of regular Amul Brand. Companies make brand extensions in the anticipation that they can earn on the equity of the successful brands. Normally, when a brand extension is carried out from one sub-category; e.g. Marlboro Gold cigarette to another sub-category such as Marlboro Light, there is a possible occurrence of a part of the former’s sales being taken away by the latter. However, the strategic intent of such an extension is to capture a larger market share of a different market segments.

Kodak is best known for photographic film products. Its famous USP is “Kodak moment”. During most of the 20th century Kodak held a dominant position in photographic film, and in 1976, had a 90% market share of photographic film sales in the United States. Kodak was synonymous with the film. Do you know that Kodak had to struggle financially in the late 90s, as a result of the steady decline in sales of photographic film due to market transitioning to digital photography? But, despite having invented the core technology in film, as a turnaround strategy, Kodak focused on digital photography and digital printing. The lesson is that cannibalizing one’s own products can be a good thing, if it allows a business to prevent competitors from doing so. A good business is the one which can take flexible decisions and flexibly spin.

Marketing is all about reaching out to customer the maxim “When you are in Rome, speak Roman” describes fact of marketing. Despite having multiple laundry brands such as Cheer, Daz, Dreft and Tip,  P&G successfully introduced a custom laundry brand in India called Tide Naturals. It’s a unique product that suits the needs in the Indian market. P&G makes sure that when they enter a market, they adopt marketing approach that suits the local’s taste and tradition. They adopt appropriate yet diverse strategies. They realize that if they use the same marketing vehicles and distribution arms it’s hard to bring new benefits to different customers. By introducing Tide Naturals they cannibalized their existing laundry product’s market share.

The fact is companies must come to grasp with their cannibalization concerns, because getting overly defensive can restrain powerful growth strategies. If an opportunity is large enough, somebody is going to find a way to grab it; it is therefore a smart move to seize the opportunity than the competitor does. In the long run, survival matters.

A lot is said and written on how to answer interviews, how to dress up, how to greet and how to answer (all this for the interviewee) but, what about the interviewer? I think that interviewing is a skill which rarely is correctly practiced. I have been on both sides of the table; and having the experience of interviewing some intelligent, friendly, bright, timid, shy, unripe candidates which has really helped me become a better person. As an interviewee, I must mention that I have rarely seen an established, well-mannered, polished and mature interviewer.

The world depends most heavily on the least reliable, yet, most expensive method in hiring employees and that’s the interview technique. It is the most expensive process.  I call it expensive because it begins by inviting the so-called ‘experts’ which is often absurd.  Some of the panelists think no end of them and demand high fees for conducting interviews. Then it all depends on how sincere they are, how enthusiastic they are and whether they are geared competitively to ask questions. Friends, many interviews become a waste of time when wrong people are invited on the panel. Some half-baked experts get intimidated when a bright candidate is better informed and in fact gives the right answers. When the panelists are not well informed, are not really ‘expert’ in the chosen field of interviews their egos get hurt, and they turn out the real suitable candidates from the process of selection. I have seen so far in my life some most callous, unfriendly ‘quacks’ conducting interviews. Thus interviewing is one of the least accurate steps in the selection process.

Another fact is assessing candidates is highly subjective, and is based on whatever assumptions (prejudices) the recruiter and the interview panelists have; there is a mismatch between the mood, and the chemistry between them and the candidate. Even factors such as physical appearance, dressing, tone of voice, or time of day can impact the interview. Please give this a thought – if there are two candidates with same qualifications and experience, one panel turns down one of the candidates, but if that candidate is made to take interview with another panel  he/she has bright chances of getting selected. Please try it, and you might get amazed.

In my opinion written tests are ten times more accurate than interviews. You get all types of computerized tests or you can prepare them depending on the requirement. Through computerized tests you can assess the IQ, EQ, SQ, RQ, compatibility, knowledge of the area all of these and many more factors. The most accurate hiring procedure is use of ability-merged tests that measure aptitude, motivation and competitiveness followed by a trial period, a review of the resume and, of course reference checks and experience etc. But, sadly we all depend heavily on the interview technique. Perhaps, it is because, it allows to gauge a candidate face to face.

Research has consistently shown that the typical unstructured interview is pretty unreliable. It does not consistently ensure that the most qualified person gets a job or that the person will perform any better than another candidate chosen with less care. The validity of choosing candidates by only using an unstructured interview process is about the same as simply picking someone at random. But recruiters and their HR managers love interviews. I suppose they like it because it satisfies their ego, need for power and control; all powers are vested in the interviewer to select a candidate.

Interviews are rarely done consistently; after five or six candidates the panel gets bushed. It becomes a rote question-answer session. After the first two or three candidates the panelists experience the ‘economies of scale’ from interviewer to interviewer or from candidate to candidate. Yet, we typically consider all the interview inputs for a candidate as if they were done in the same way. Therefore we are comparing grapes to apples, and apples to oranges; the hairs we split and the time we spend distressing over a small detail or a particular answer to an interview question is a white wash.

Carefully constructed interviews, where the questions are directly related to measurable skills, competencies, or past experiences, take a lot of time to prepare and, to be most effective, have to be delivered in a similar way to each candidate for the job. It requires lot of detailing and scientific measures. From my experience as a recruiter, I can say it is time consuming and requires real expertise.

What happens when a person is already chosen for a job, and interviews are conducted to ‘show the world’ that the concerned person is chosen through a process? I have experienced some rambling, incoherent, and amorphous interviews which are a sheer waste of time for both – recruiter and candidate. The interviewers look into the resume of the candidate and ask questions randomly ranging from funny questions why something is his hobby and why something else is not his hobby? Or why he left a job, when the candidate starts answering and the panel is weary the candidate is asked to cut short, and is asked to validate something they already expected and wanted to hear. A well-versed, experienced candidate (one who has given many interviews) can game the system in many ways to incline the deck in his favor. No wonder that most candidates often roll their eyes at the absurdity of the interview process.

The mistake most companies make is they are not ready with the checklist while they hire people; they should be prepared with the requisite skill sets for the position – such as enthusiasm, courtesy, honesty, warmth, sincerity etc. Also recruiters need to check attitude, aptitude, social skills, and personality traits. The fact is these are inborn traits and cannot be taught. List the job tasks, along with the qualities, education, experience and training a person needs to do the job. Then it needs logical processing of identifying how to determine whether a person has all of the qualities that has been listed. Reference checks, background investigations and other sources also are equally important.  Compatibility is the most important factor, and the smaller the organization, the more important it is. Compatibility is where most problems occur, and it’s the hardest to check. While hiring a candidate it most important to check whether the applicant shares same values as the organizations’.

A person could have a terrific aptitude for the job, is motivated, has lots of experience, education and training for the job, but if he/she does not fit in with everybody else, the candidate will create problems. He/she will eat up much of management’s time every now and then for trivia. Compatibility can be gauged by comparing applicants’ test results with results obtained from testing an organization’s best and worst existing employees. After short listing the final candidates, ask them to carry out a practical task, such as solving a case study, doing a presentation or preparing a report. This is a great way to show whether their bark is bigger than their bite, in other words if they really do have the goods to deliver. Although the style of their presentation may not fitting, or they might not be polished and astute or they may not exhibit perfect knowledge but look out for that out of box thinking, look out for the attributes to cope in a high pressure situation.

Finally, let me tell you, there are complex reasons for why people do what they do. And a mere interview of some minutes or hour cannot reveal the precision of a person.