PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY: A measure of the capacity to be answerable for personal actions. Someone who takes ownership of the situation, admits when they’re wrong and lives in solutions!
Statistically, 50 percent of our population is above average in personal accountability and 50 percent is below average in personal accountability. All businesses should seek to hire employees who are personally accountable.
We find that personal accountability is a requirement in nearly EVERY job/position. This illustrates the importance for all hiring managers to totally evaluate each position as it relates to being personally accountable plus making sure that everyone they interview brings personal accountability skills to the job.
People who are personally accountable will do the things necessary to achieve above average or even superior performance. For example, people who are personally accountable and employed in a career that requires them to achieve a “quota” will keep driving for their number until the bell rings. They won’t make excuses. Instead, they’ll find creative ways to succeed. (Sales people who lack personal accountability will fail unless they have a protected area with repeat customers.)
Here are some great interview questions to help you dig deeper into the amount of personal accountability a candidate will bring to a position:
- Tell me about a time when it was necessary to admit to others that you had made a mistake. How did you handle it?
- Give an example of a situation where others had made an error or mistake and you had to take the blame for their actions. How did you feel about doing that?
- What is the worst business decision you ever made? What made it the worst? Would knowing what you do now have helped you to avoid making that decision?
- Give me an example of a lesson you have learned from making a mistake. What did you do differently going forward?
- Give me an example of someone you know whose personal actions led to disastrous results. How answerable is that person for what happened? What advice would you give to that person?
- What person from history do you most admire for taking the blame for a failure? What did taking the blame do for that person?
Note: Candidates that hem and haw, cannot give you examples of the above, can’t relate a previous experience or always seem to blame their mistakes on someone/something else most likely have a low level of personal accountability.
If you ONLY HIRED people who were personally accountable and your competitors hired people who were not personally accountable, you would own the marketplace!
Ready to begin measuring PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY in all of your candidates?
Contact us today and indicate you are interested in learning more about ASSESSMENTS!
At RMi, we use a patented job benchmarking process to eliminate the bias-based, myth-based hiring decisions that are typical in most organizations. It’s true today and from this Harvard Business Review report from 1980 it was true back then too…you will increase sales performance results and reduce turnover when you select new team members based on criteria that make a better match between the person and the job. According to the report (in high turnover industries), 39% of job matched hires were in the 1st or 2nd performance quartile after 6 months versus only 12% of those not job matched. Further, turnover was nearly double for the not job matched people. In lower turnover industries, results are even better! Hiring on a job matched basis far outweighs age, sex, race, experience or education.
While error-free hiring is probably a Utopian idea, hiring managers will significantly increase their hiring success by not just posting a general/bland job description, but developing a job description that includes key accountabilities for the position based on a thorough understanding of the functional requirements of the job, the behavioral requirements of the job and the values that will motivate success in the job.
Ready to increase your sales results and hiring success? Call or email us today to learn more about our job benchmarking and assessment processes.
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” That’s basically what the cat told Alice in the Disney Classic, Alice in Wonderland. The same is true in hiring… if you don’t know “who” you’re looking for, you’ll take anyone you can get.
So, next time you begin a hiring or recruiting project, don’t just dust off that same old job description and change the title…step back and “Begin with the end in mind!”
Sit down with the key stakeholders for the position (hiring manager, HR, someone affected by the position, current top performers, etc.) and decide the exact employee you are looking for by creating a scorecard/benchmark:
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Clearly define the purpose or reason why the position exists
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Determine 3-5 results/accountabilities you expect from the position
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Identify top skills, behaviors and values necessary for success in the position
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Determine non-negotiables such as years of experience, education, etc.
Once you’ve designed your benchmark, advertise for the position based on your benchmark and then score the candidates you screen and interview against the benchmark until you identify and hire your next “A” player.
Beware…to avoid this critical step is to invite costly, frustrating mis-hires.
