Personal factors: These are characteristics of a person that last for long periods of time. For example, personality traits or intelligence. While it is true that personality traits and intelligence of people vary at different stages of life, the truth is that they are generally over long periods of time, for example ten years. And companies cannot wait that long because they operate at a different speed. That is why we are going to consider personal factors as something permanent that does not change.
Competencies: These are knowledge and skills that a person may or may philippines country code not possess. Unlike personal factors, competencies can be developed. The objective of training is to develop competencies. Competencies are not only intellectual knowledge (for example, knowing or not knowing how to calculate costs), but can also be attitudinal (for example, knowing how to receive criticism from a client well).
Motivation: It changes over time and depends on several factors. A person may have all the personal characteristics for a position and have all the necessary skills, but if they are unmotivated they will not perform well at work. When the same person has changes in their performance in the short term, it is usually related to their motivation.
In other words, performing well can be compared to the characteristics of a good pianist: you need to have piano fingers (personal characteristics), take piano lessons (skills), and want to play the piano (motivation).
When selecting staff, it is useful to consider primarily personal factors.[1]. Since personality traits do not change, it is necessary to select them, since there is no way to work on them later. Secondly, it is also useful to select according to the skills required for a position, although it must be kept in mind that there are no perfect candidates, and that the skills that a candidate lacks can be developed along the way. Finally, it is a mistake to select the most motivated , because that is something that can change from one day to the next.
There is no single way to select staff. The more resources you have to make the selection, the better the results will be. I want to propose a method that can be useful for many small entrepreneurs, since it is simple, fast, and incorporates some good practices suggested by specialists.
Personality
There is a questionnaire called “the big five”, which explains five personality traits of people, and which are related to performance. These traits are explained in the following table[2][3]:
The way to evaluate personality traits is through a simple questionnaire, which each person must fill out. It can be completed for free on the website http://en.outofservice.com/bigfive/
Structured Interview
A well-done interview can be an excellent tool for selecting[4]. The problem is that many times, due to not knowing how to do it, questions end up being improvised, and the person interviewing selects the candidate he or she likes the most. And it has been proven that this type of more improvised interview is much less useful than a structured interview. To prepare a good interview, it is advisable to follow the following steps:
Step 1: Define exactly what skills are required for this position. For example, a restaurant needed people to serve the restaurant, so the required skills included punctuality, effective communication, and customer orientation. For a position as an administrator in a business, Excel skills, analytical thinking, and leadership were required (among other skills). In the interview, you will be evaluated based on these skills, not on your intuition.
Step 2: Define a list of questions for each competency. A typical mistake is to ask questions where it is very easy for the candidate to “sell themselves.” For example, when asked “How are you at working in a team?” a candidate may well say “I am excellent!” But it is very easy to say that one is good! It is therefore important to ask in a different way. A good question focuses on what the candidate did in the past, because past behaviors are the best predictor of future behaviors. In this case, a better question would have been “Tell me about a situation in which you had to work in a team with other people. How was it?” and then other questions can be asked such as “How was your contribution? What was easy for you? And what was difficult for you? For example, a business looking for an administrator identified competencies, made a list of questions to evaluate each one, and assigned scores in the following table: