Have you ever relied on your gut when making a personnel decision, only to suffer from ongoing indigestion when saddled with a poor performer?  Making sound decisions about hiring and promoting people is not easy. Even well conducted interviews can result in poor hires, and roughly one-quarter of executives who are promoted from within fail to meet expectations at the two-year mark. When candidates don’t work out, more often than not some aspect of their personality got in their way.

Personality is the key that unlocks the door to career success, but personality blind spots are often subtle and difficult to detect. It is easy to be swayed by a candidate’s strengths (even though when taken to excess, they can become weaknesses). Consider the case of an engineering firm that recently promoted a highly regarded manager to become a division vice president. The firm anticipated that this person’s attention to detail and persistent nature would help restore a sense of direction among the division’s employees. Unfortunately within six-months several top staffers resigned, citing the new V.P.’s micro-management, inflexibility, and perfectionism.

There are three steps you can take now to make more informed hiring and promotion decisions:

Examine your interview process to make sure you’re asking the right questions. Your interview must accurately target the core qualities candidates need in order to succeed.

Once you’ve optimized your questions, think about what constitutes a good response. Sounds simple, but you’d be surprised by how many interviewers fail to give careful consideration to this aspect of the process. What are the answers you’d like to hear, and how you will probe inadequate responses?

Consider adding business-based psychological testing to your hiring and promotion process. It’s legal, cost effective, and the results reveal how a candidate’s personality can work for and against them when it comes to on-the-job performance.

-Larry Gard, Ph.D.

Dr. Larry Gard is a Consulting Psychologist and President of Hamilton-Chase Consulting, based in Chicago. Organizations and individuals hire Dr. Gard to overcome the all-too-human obstacles that impede performance and profitability. Learn more at www.hamiltonchaseconsulting.com.