We have previously stated that every employee of every organization exists within an organizational ecosystem; a complex network of interdependent relationships in which each individual strand is important and contributes (or detracts) to the successes (or failures) of the whole.
What happens when a new employee is introduced into your organization and culture?
Is it disruptive or integrative?
Your complex organization’s ecosystem requires sophisticated tools for candidate selection, ensuring competitive advantage, integrity, and adherence to regulatory standards.
Recruitment is a contest and it is fiercely competitive. Just as companies strategize to develop and offer the highest quality products and services to their customers and clients, so they must also strive to identify, attract, and match the most qualified employees. Selection of the perfect “fit” (congruence) is vitally important to the long term sustainability of any candidate program. Proper hiring demands serious attention from management, H.R., and administrative leadership because any organizational strategy will falter without the talent to execute it.
Hiring/matching new employees is expensive. In the corporate world, experts estimate that for every new employee hired to replace an employee lost to attrition or for not being a cultural fit, costs the employer roughly 150% of the salary to rehire a new employee.
According to organization experts, Laurence and Lorsch, “The extent to which an organization’s environment is stable, significantly affects the internal operations, structure, and policy”. Any organization that appreciates the competitive edge provided by great people must take the utmost care in selecting new employees. The organization’s decisions about selecting personnel are central to its abilities to survive, adapt, and grow.
A strategic approach to candidate selection requires ways to measure the effectiveness of selection tools. The best selection methods will provide information that is reliable and valid. The candidate selection program must choose the candidate that fits its “gestalt”, an employee who can seamlessly be incorporated and acculturated into its “gesellschaft”.
Your organization and its culture are complex and sophisticated; so should be your candidate selection processes. Selection committees should assess individual/job congruence by focusing on specific knowledge, skills, and abilities. They should assess person/organization congruence by focusing more on values, behavior, and personality characteristics. Effective and quality processes link selection decisions to cultural factors using quantitative and qualitative measures. This holistic methodology to candidate selection better ensures that synergism, critical in the workplace, is obtained.
