Portrait of Ideal Employee: Part 1

How to paint a portrait of a successful employee, to visualize, and to realize in reality? Why do you need to do that, where will it help, and which three groups it is better to divide the competencies into? CleverControl got the answers from Russell Jones, HR Director in "CropLogo".

Russell, where to begin in creating the portrait of a successful employee? - Firstly, you need to understand what we mean by the concept of "a successful employee". Our understanding is that it is the employee who achieves success in fulfilling the goals and objectives that the company set him or her personally and his or her department. An efficient employee is someone who achieves results with minimal energy and material costs. In addition, each person has the personal characteristics and values acquired in the course of life or with education. Values are part of a person’s worldview and rarely change throughout life. It is, therefore, important that they coincide with the values of the company. It will be difficult for the employee to effectively cope with his/her responsibilities if the task that he/she was entrusted with contradicts to his/her convictions. If the company defined core values they should be reflected in the portrait of a successful employee in the first place.

What information should the profile of a successful employee contain? - It must contain the approved competencies for each of the four blocks: corporate competencies, managerial competencies, professional competencies, values. Corporate competencies reflect an employee's ability to correlate his/her interests with the interests of the company and the employee’s effectiveness; managerial competencies it is the leadership potential of the employee; professional competencies are his/her knowledge, abilities, and skills acquired from learning and subsequent professional experience; values are life priorities, principles, and morals. The specific content of competencies depends on the position and the corporate unit in which the employees work. The fuller and better the portrait is the more inappropriate candidates will drop-out at the initial stage. - How to define which qualities are paramount during the selection and which are not? - To highlight the most important qualities of the employee you need to determine what the rules of the company are like in the present, how they will develop in the near future, what the company’s further strategic plan will be. Analyzing which competencies are the most important ones for successful work in each division should be based on business processes and functions with consideration for the prospects and strategy development of the company. The identified competencies should be ranked taking into account the corporate culture. In the profile of positions for candidates we divide the competencies into 3 groups: "useful", "important", and "necessary". They help us define an ideal candidate’s portrait. Of course, perfect candidates don't exist, that's why we arrange competencies in order of importance. The group "necessary" includes basic competencies without which candidate will not be able to work in the position. Then there is the group "important"; there are skills that, if necessary, may be acquired or developed in the process. It is crucial to analyze the main characteristics of candidates on the market, given that each industry in terms of job seekers has its own aspects, and to compare the results with the needs of the company. Take, for example, the portrait of Commercial Directors: we understand that the knowledge of sales techniques is “necessary” for this position. But the lack of skill of working with documents is a disadvantage for a candidate but you can easily teach that in the company. We also separate the group of "useful" which includes competencies that are not required but more of an additional bonus. For the seller, a “useful” skill would include tendering which is a specific skill that not everybody has. - Is the successful candidate's profile made based on the assessment of existing employees of the company? - Of course, it is easier to create an ideal profile of competencies when you already have an example of an effective employee. If the position already exists but there is no profile we start with the evaluation of employees. If such a position has never existed before we visualize a profile of that employee and fill out the competencies that he/she needs to have: for specialists, professional competencies are more important, and for managers are managerial skills and leadership potential.

Do you try to make the profile more full or more realistic? - We aim to make the profile more flexible and realistic. In addition to the competencies required for employment in the profile, we include competencies that the employee must consequently acquire in the position. For these two blocks, we conduct the assessment center. It is important to distinguish between the recruitment request and the competencies profile – they are not identical documents. The recruitment request is based on the job requirements and in the competencies profile we see the extended list of necessary qualities. For example, the competencies profile includes a range of knowledge and skills: knowledge of sales techniques, tendering, and basics of Economics. They can be combined into a single competency – professionalism. The more precise the search request matches the profile the easier it is for the recruiter to comply with the wishes of the executive. The job profile is needed to make a list of requirements as objective as possible. Here is a very generalized example. For example, in the recruitment request it may be indicated: "a model-looking female", then we open a job profile, where it says, "gender doesn't matter", "age – from 27 years to 45 years", "total work experience of 5 years", model-like appearance is nowhere to be found...

Part 2 of the article is available here.