Why Do Some People Achieve Their Goals in New Jobs and Others Do Not?

Statistics indicate a worrying trend that many people fail in new jobs despite the initial promise they show in their interviews. Businesses take a gamble every time a new employee is hired even with apparently good interviewing, selection and training policies.

Understanding the main reasons why new employees are dismissed can help you avoid this happening to you. The only comprehensive study of employee failure is by Leadership IQ. Their report found that:

• 46% (just under half) of all newly hired employees fail within 18 months and only 19% achieve unequivocal success.

• Most surprisingly this research shows that when new hires fail 89% of these are for reasons relating to attitude. Contrary to popular expectation, the primary reason for failure is not a lack of technical skills.

When assessing hiring failures it is found that people don’t underperform because they lack technical skills. People underperform because they lack soft skills. 

What Are Soft Skills?

Soft skills can be acquired but cannot be specifically taught or evaluated.

Examples of soft skills are:

• Strong and professional communication skills
• Time management
• Organisational skills
• Reliability, sense of responsibility and job commitment
• Motivation and teamwork

While hard skills are necessary for any position, soft skills are crucial in the successful utilisation of hard skills in achieving employment goals. Most employers value mind set or the ability to think critically and make logical decisions. These skills shape how you respond to situations.

Many employers set great store by employees who are determined, dependable, innovative, and collaborative. Soft skills are subjective and are associated with personal attributes and character. Soft skills are often described as people skills or interpersonal skills revealing how one relates and interacts with other people.

What Are Hard Skills?

While, in contrast, soft skills are a complete collection of our social, communication and self-management ability that enable us to work and integrate into a work place.

Soft skills are the capabilities that enhance or emphasise the hard skills. It is not that technical skills are unimportant; just that they are much easier to assess and that is why attitude (mindset) is the most important predictor of a new hire’s success or failure.

Hard skills are specific technical skills based, and these are teachable.

Some examples of hard skills are:

• Academic qualification such as a degree

• Proficiency in computer programming

• Customer Service experience

• Speaking a foreign language

• Operating a type of machinery

Most companies do a good job of judging candidates’ technical skills. Some conduct day-long interviews focused on complex manufacturing methods, project management skills, and data analysis. Then, in the last half an hour, the interviewer will ask some non technical questions, often as an afterthought.

Hard skills are usually related to professional knowledge, tools or techniques that allow us to work within our profession.

Most Interviewers Find Soft Skills Difficult To Assess

Some of these could be:

• Repeatedly completing high-quality work on time

• Persuading others to consider different technical points of view

• Coaching and being coached on technical and non-technical matters

• Working successfully for a variety of managers, each with their own individual style

• Remaining flexible enough to handle rapidly changing design requirements, yet still hitting deadlines

• Making tough decisions with limited information and often dealing with ambiguity

• Challenging conventional wisdom and authority

• Helping team members who are struggling

• Taking over without being told that a project is in trouble

• Managing multiple projects to a timeline

• Meeting budget restraints and their implications

• Prioritising with little direction.

Most companies find that these all-important questions are not asked, and, with hindsight soft skills are almost always to blame for a person failing to deliver. When asked what makes the best manager in their business, it’s usually that their soft skills make the real difference.

If soft skills are not discussed, you could easily find that some candidates with extraordinary soft skills have been excluded because they didn’t meet the company’s benchmark for technical standards.

These are the people who could have become your best managers. To assess the area of soft skills, the role has to be reviewed in order to list the soft skills relevant to reduce the probability of job failure or under performance.

How To Identify Candidates’ Soft Skills

Some headlines that could be assessed are:

Planning - How do you work out what your top priorities are?

Initiative - Describe the most recent situation where you found you had a work related problem. What did you do to resolve it?

Communication - Have you ever given instructions that someone didn’t follow? If so, why do you think that happened?

Integrity - Have you had to deal with a coworker who wasn’t pulling his or her weight? If so, what did you do about it?

Leadership - Did you ever need co-operation from a group over which you had little authority? If so, how effective were you?

Persuasiveness - What strategies have you found work best when trying to sway someone to your point of view?

Sales - Describe the main types of people you target. What approach do you use for each group?

At Precision we have embedded soft skill assessments into our client hiring processes by identifying the non-technical skills required for a position. These non-technical skills and assessments are integrated into the interview process.

The interviewer introduces the measurement of non-technical skills early in the interview process, rather than leaving this critical area to the end.

By using this strategy, potentially great hires wouldn’t be inadvertently excluded. One of the best ways to tell if applicants have the skills to perform specific tasks is to directly ask how they’ve used those skills in the past.

To find out more please contact us for an informal discussion of how you can lower your hiring failure rate and make a real difference to your business on 0116 254 5411 today. 

Precision People, the specialist recruitment consultants in the sectors of Engineering, Technical, and Sales recruitment and operating for over fourteen years, are going from strength to strength with the recent creation of a bespoke training academy.

The Precision Academy, consists of a 6-month training course based within a purpose-built room, includes a structured plan of training & activities to give trainees all the necessary skills, knowledge and experience to launch a successful career in the recruitment industry. Supported along the way by a trainer and an additional external trainer who visits once a week.

Trainee Recruitment Consultant, Vanessa commented:-   

“Having not previously worked in recruitment, Precision Academy has been seamlessly paving the way for me to transition into a full 360 recruitment role through a well-thought-out, step-by-step approach. In addition to receiving one-to-one training support on a daily basis through on-the-job learning, we also have assigned days that we spend studying industry best practices with a recruitment specialist in an interactive, classroom-style, learning approach. Having been in training for just over two months, I have already made many successful candidate placements, have a growing client base of my own, and am now being supported by management in carving out my niche area of recruitment expertise.”

Training & Recruitment Manager Natasha commented:-

“The Academy has been an amazing success so far, and I am incredibly proud of all of our trainees who’ve come a long way since starting, just a few months ago. Their determination and focused attitude have allowed them to make great progress, already making placements and receiving commision. I have personally found the experience rewarding, learning new things every day about how the industry is changing.”
 

Trainee, Vanessa concluded:

“Above all, I admire Precision's values and how we are encouraged to never compromise on integrity or quality in business. I also really enjoy the emphasis placed on mindset and goal-setting in recruitment - it's great to see all the employees pin pictures of their personal goals to the sides of their desks to keep motivation and focus levels high!”
 

Managing Director, Phil Walker commented:

“We have designed the Academy with the help of some of the most experienced recruiters and trainers in the US and UK. We’ve put together a robust, quality driven training system that is akin to how the professional environments of law would grow their talent. The six-month program is theoretical and practical applications of best practice that is way ahead of most of the ‘same old’ ways of doing things used by our competitors. We have centred the hiring process on the person’s ability to learn, understand and achieve the critical parts of being a professional recruiter, not what they have done in a previous job or how experienced they are. The whole company has embraced the new academy team, raising our overall standards and success in all areas of the business.”
 

Precision is currently interviewing for the next three people to offer academy places to this year, so if this sound like the right career for you or someone you know, please make contact as soon as possible, the new team of hires will be starting early October.

If you are interested, this is the perfect opportunity if you are starting your career or are thinking of making a change.  Get in touch by contacting Natasha Bates, Recruitment Manager on 0116 254 5411.

This press release was recently published in Recruitment International. 

Click here to find out more about the academy.

Senior Recruitment consultant Natalie Chapman, who specialises in placing Sales & Management talent into the Construction and Building products sector, this week, celebrated 10 years at Precision People.

To mark the occasion, Natalie was presented with a card signed by all the team, a personalised cake, balloons and a gift, whilst everyone celebrated with a glass of fizz and listened to Recruitment Director Phil give a heartfelt speech of his first memories of Natalie, joining Precision when their were five members of staff and based on Western Boulevard in 2007.

Precision is now based on the Meridian Business Park with over twenty five staff and growing.

Natalie commented on her ten year’s service:

“I am sure all my fellow recruiters in Leicester will agree, reaching ten years at one company is something very rare in our industry, and something to be celebrated.

I can honestly say that year on year I have grown as a consultant, learning new skills and most importantly, how to recruit using all the tools available and best practice to add value to our candidate and client relationships."

Recruitment Director, Phil Walker commented:

“Nat joined Precision when we were just finding our feet as a business and has been on the long and hard journey of Precision becoming a multi million pound turnover business. It's rare for a person to stay so long in an industry known for job hopping but, Nat has always fitted the culture of hard work, putting the right people in the right seats and for the right reasons. The team at Precision look up to Nat as one of the most committed to doing a fantastic job of being a recruiter, as well as being continually highest achieving.”

Natalie concluded:-

"As a company, we use proven processes to make sure we ‘get it right’. We listen to our client’s needs before offering them a solution. The same applies with our candidates, we understand their drivers and what they want from their next move. This is one of the many factors why I have worked at Precision for ten years.

Personally, I feel that Precision People has allowed me to give my two daughters the life I have always hoped for. I would like to say a big thank you to Precision for making me look forward to Mondays every week for the last 10 years!”

Precision People are currently seeking to hire a Logistics and Supply chain recruitment consultant and a Recruitment Consultant for the Construction & Building Products market to join our amazing team of over twenty five talented people. Please contact Natalie Chapman, Recruitment Co-ordinator on 0116 254 5411 or email natalie@precision-people.uk.

Click here to learn more about joining our team of amazing talent.

Notes to Editors:

Precision People is an established specialist Recruitment business providing recruitment services in three key areas under three sub brands;-

Precision Search - specialising in management and director level search within the manufacturing and logistics sectors.

Precision Recruitment, specialising in engineering, technical construction and sales roles across the UK.

Precision Consultancy - bespoke recruitment training packages for businesses to improve their return on investment before or after hiring talent.

Founded by Director Phil Walker in 2004, the growing team of twenty five itself on it’s passion and integrity to listen to its clients and deliver tailor made solutions.

Precision People is based on the Meridian Business Park near the M1 Junction 21 in Leicester and operates nationwide and also in the US. Precision People are Members of Apsco (Association of Professional Staffing Companies) and were finalists in 2009 and 2014 in the Leicester Mercury Business Awards.