The High Cost of Poor Job Fit
Poor job fit is more costly than you might think, both in dollars and human potential. Join us on The Bosshole® Chronicles for an insightful discussion with Sara and John as we explore how optimizing your hiring, recruiting, and onboarding practices can prevent these costly missteps.
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The Bosshole® Chronicles
“The High Cost of Poor Job Fit”
Original Publish Date: 6/25/2024
Hosts: John Broer & Sara Best
John Broer: A very warm welcome to all of our listeners out there in the Bosshole Transformation Nation. This is John Broer, joined by my remarkable friend, business partner, co-host Sara Best. Sara, how are you doing today?
Sara Best: Hey, John. As always, I am real good and it's just a delight to be back together in the studio. Great to see you today.
JB: Good to be back and having another one of these roundtables, as we like to call them, about a particular subject that is near and dear to our hearts and the hearts of our clients. We're going to be talking about the high cost of poor job fit. These days, people are really dialed in on making sure you're optimizing your hiring and your recruiting practices, onboarding practices. If you don't do it well at the front end, it will cost you dearly, and we got some really good stories to share, so should we jump in?
SB: Let's do it, Jjohn, let's go.
Announcer: The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode.
SB: Hey, John, how are you today?
JB: I'm good, Sara. What's going on?
SB: Well, it's nice to be in the studio together. It's been a lot of separate episodes as of late, so it's really good to be recording with you today, and I'm pretty sure we have a powerful topic. Why don't you tell us what we're going to be talking about today, John?
JB: I am happy to do that and, by the way, I just want to say, Sara, thank you for all of those amazing episodes you did in the month of May. I don't want to step over that Mental Health Awareness Month. You did such a fabulous job lining up those four episodes, so I would encourage everybody to go back and listen to them. I think it's a great series, but thanks for doing that that was awesome.
SB: Hey, John, my pleasure. We are really fortunate to be connected to some profoundly excellent human beings who served us well during the month of May with this mental health awareness topic.
JB: Good, stuff, no doubt. Well, today we are going to talk about the high cost of poor job fit. The high cost of poor job fit and I have to tell you this at its core, is one of the most critical things any organization could be thinking about and the thing on which they should be focusing, because if we don't hire well, everything else falls apart. So we're going to be talking a little bit about that. How does that sound?
SB: Very timely.
JB: Sounds good. I think the best place to start and everybody will our listeners are familiar with this we talk about talent optimization. STalent optimization is a framework for understanding how to optimize the people that are in our organizations. Doesn't matter whether you're for profit, not for profit any group of people, talent optimization applies. And so, Sara, I thought it'd be helpful if we just sort of redefine it, share our definition of talent optimization and where job fit fits in that framework. So talent optimization is aligning your talent strategy with your business strategy to get the business results you need, or organizational results, whatever that may be, but it's your talent strategy, and talent strategy is all around the idea of optimizing job fit, manager fit, team fit and culture fit, and it starts with job fit. This whole thing on talent optimization hinges on how well we can effectively hire and create job fit for people that are not only coming into our organization but are already in the organization. When that doesn't happen and I know our listeners are going, you know people are listening to this saying, well, that makes total sense, but when it doesn't happen, the cost is exponentially higher than I think people realize.
SB: Does that make sense? It sure does, John. I wonder if it'd be helpful to just expand a little bit on what we mean by job fit in the world we work in.
JB: Yeah, that'd be great. You want to do that.
SB: Well, sure, I think it's worthy of a short story. If we hearken back to the origin of job fit and listener warning we're going to talk about Predictive Index here, in this episode and I think our listeners know that that is the platform that we use for talent optimization. But talent optimization, as you've often said, John, as a category, is agnostic to any kind of tool or assessment. These are aptitudes. It just so happens that in the work we do, the Predictive Index platform meets the requirements to help us really succeed in those aptitudes. So the origin of Job Fit goes back to World War II and a guy named Arnold Daniels. He was a bombardier. He was extremely successful.
He flew 30 darn near perfect missions and at that time, as we understand it, not anybody else was coming close to achieving that kind of success and safety. So his interest in this joined together with these MIT researchers to say well, what makes a successful pilot of it? And the research that they conducted all the way back there in the early or the mid 1940s was this idea that all the pilots fighter pilots, bomber pilots in the Army Air Corps had the right briefcase. In other words, they knew how to fly a plane. They had the technical ability to fly these aircraft, but it was how they did it that determined whether or not they would live or die or be successful. So, for example, if I'm expecting a bomber pilot to deliver the payload and execute successfully on their mission, we would expect that person to have a few characteristics that are consistent with success in that area.
For example, precise, meticulous, risk averse, likes to follow the plan. On the converse side of that, when we think about a fighter pilot sort of the opposite of that, a risk taker, somebody who can meet the moment and shift gears easily they don't necessarily like to follow a plan. In the research they uncovered that fighter pilots would overfly the bomber planes. They would stay out too long, they would see what other kind of trouble they could get into. They'd run out of fuel and therefore a disastrous end, you know, would meet a disastrous end. So the upshot is hey, you know, it's one thing to have the right briefcase, but it's more essential to know how that person will deploy that expertise to determine if in fact they will be successful.
JB: Yeah, and that is a perfect example. And again, it shows you how the research and the validated data is. With the Predictive Index it goes all the way back to the 1940s. But I just finished a great series on Apple TV. It's called Masters of the Air. So Masters of the Air is all about the - It's called the Bloody 100, but they were a bomber group stationed in England and they flew over into Germany to start to soften the defenses before D-Day and they flew during the day. But the point is, you start to learn about these pilots and you can see, you know there was a crew of 10 and every single one of these bombers, they had to have a certain wiring, behavioral DNA, as we talk about, in order to do this successfully. And then, what's so interesting, at some point, that they had these fighter escorts and these and the fighters were doing just what you talked about. You know, in the moment I have to go and I have to defend this bomber group because they're they're not moving out of formation, they are, you know, static in their formation and they're going to their target. So it makes total sense. We've known this for nearly a century, right, and? But we're still experiencing this in business, aren't we, we're putting the wrong people in the wrong seat.
SB: Yeah, said another way. We shouldn't be surprised when, for example, a fighter pilot overflies a large piece of equipment, because they're very agile and they're risk-taking, they're fast moving and they like to get results. We shouldn't be surprised if a person who's more steady and consistent and meticulous moves too slow when the risk is high and even shuts down. This is what we're talking about, and so in many cases when people hire just had a conversation with a client recently oh, they interviewed so beautifully, they just blew us away. That's their briefcase and they have no idea. Well, of course they do. Now, because they use predictive index, they had no idea about how this person would deploy that experience, that expertise, all that cool stuff they know in their environment.
JB: Right, right, well, and so let me share a very specific and recent example too, and this is where it gets really costly. We have an organization we've been working with them for years great organization, and they've embraced the whole idea of talent optimization. They had a position open and they created a job target. And in our platform, you can create these job targets. What are the factors, the drives and the combination of drives that are necessary for a person to be successful in this role? In other words, it's like saying what does it take to be successful as a fighter pilot and what does it take to be successful as a bomber pilot? Distinguishing those two things. So we, just in modern day, today, we in the civilian world, we do it for jobs. So they had this all ready. They had six or seven candidates and they sent them the behavioral assessment. They have the data back, and so what the what the platform does is iIt shows you, it compares your target, your behavior, your job target, with their behavioral data, doesn't eliminate anybody, but it says, of these seven people, here are the match scores. Match scores are one through 10, one being the lowest, 10 being the highest. There were two people that had a 10 match score. They were a rock. Now, by the way, all of these candidates were sent were given the opportunity to complete the assessment as part of the larger process because they had the right briefcase. So, to your point, Ssarah, they all could fly the plane they all could fly the plane. Yeah, how they would do it was dependent on what was needed in the position, but they all had the right briefcase for this particular role. So I'm talking to our client. Actually, this came as a result of our client calling and he said John, I'm having a real issue with this person on the team. I said can we get on a call? And I said, sure, no problem. So we got on a call and he he brought up this individual's data and we looked at the their data compared to the job target not even close and we went into the job target and saw the other candidates this person had like a three or four match score and the other people there and I saw them all and the other there were a couple of people that had a 10 match score. I said I have a question because we were talking about I said so, in other words, the issues that they're facing were completely evident in what we were seeing in the data. And I said let me ask you a question. You had two 10 match scores. Where did these people end up in the process? And he said one of those two people I wanted to hire. They were perfect for this position, but their salary requirements were too high for where we had this position in a salary band or the range, and I said, okay, now this was like six, eight months prior. So they decided, well, this person may not have a great match score, but they got a good briefcase, they have the right credentials and, as we all know, there is no correlation to performance when it comes to the briefcase. And they hired the person. And now this happens all the time. Six, eight months later we're having this conversation of this person doesn't fit and, Sara, I love the way you always put this is you know, we hire somebody and in this case, they knew full well that this was not a good behavioral fit, and now they're experiencing it, but we can't blame that person. You know, we can't make them wrong for not being the right person. Does that make you? You know what I'm talking about?
SB: Yeah, I do, I do. I think a lot of managers and supervisors and leaders overlook these important other factors when considering somebody's performance and they start to make it about their character. Like oh, they're just not cut out for this job. They don't have what it takes.
JB: Right.
SB: You know they don't want to try, they don't care. Yes, wWe've talked about this. You know we've had conversations, they're just not. They're not coming along.
JB: No, they just don't get it. And here, as you have always said, you don't go to the hardware store for a loaf of bread, right? And this is a great example of that. So we're having this conversation and he said I have been working with this person trying to coach them. I've used the relationship guide, I've used the management strategy, all the tools, and I said I think you know you may have to just come to the realization that you put the wrong person in the role, because the data shows that, the data proves that. And this is what I really wanted to find out. Find out. I said so, you, you told me that this person's salary requirements were higher than what you were willing to pay at that time and I said what was the difference? And he said $15,000. And I said okay, I just want you to reflect on this for a second. I want you to think about all of your time, all of the lost productivity, the fact that this person is not a good fit for the role and you're probably going to have to let this person go. It is going to cost you several times more than $15,000. And that is the power of predictive analytics. Whatever you're using within that, like you said, talent optimization is agnostic. Just make sure you're using validated, objective data.
And they made a decision. And again, this is a very conscientious person. This is a great organization. I think they were thinking in very practical terms yeah, well, we can make this person work, and it just doesn't work. You're asking this person to do something that they're not equipped and it is going to cost them I'll bet it'll cost them three or four times at least more than $15,000 to replace this person, and this is the high cost of poor job fit. You can control this at the front end. So we see this repeated and I think it only has to happen a couple of times with our clients. You know where they go. No, no, no. We know what the data will tell us, we know how reliable it is, but it still is painful financially and you know for the individual. We've done them a disservice because we now have to let them go and we should give them an opportunity to find something that's a better fit for them.
SB: Well, that's a great segue, John, into a story I can share. It's a little different than yours in that this is a person who had been in a role for some time and the role actually evolved. The role changed based on a new focus within the organization. A new focus within the organization and I mean I can simply say this performer has a low dominance. So very collaborative, very people-focused. They had high extroversion. They also have very low formality. So for our listeners that would love to understand what that means. It just means that they don't attend to details, if at all, and when it's a third sigma low, this is a person who really would do well to delegate the details. But in their role the expectations changed and the D component, the formality part, became more essential to the job tracking details, entering data, keeping up to date on reports and data and in many cases, more structural work, less people work. So that makes me think, Jjohn, about adaptation. One of the things that we need to understand is the degree to which a particular set of expectations would require a person to adapt or adjust. I think about in my previous chapters in one of them anyways, I was working on a spreadsheet, getting data, entering data, and I'm a persuader John's laughing heartily over here because I don't attend well to details. I'm pretty fast-paced, results oriented and I overlook things. I can do it situationally for a minute, like monthly billings At the end of the month, we have to check all of our notes and records and align our receipts. And yeah, I can do that situationally. I might even be able to do it pretty effectively seasonally. So for a time when I know, working on a project for a client or generating a proposal, that's very heavy duty, focus work but, it's over there's going to be an end to that work and get it back to the stuff.
JB: I do really well. Light at the end of the tunnel, right Exactly.
SB: But when it's occupational, that becomes extremely I'm going to just say these two words unfair and unkind to expect someone to perform in a way that they're not naturally wired to do so.
So in this case that I'm sharing, performance suffered pretty dramatically and pretty immediately when the expectations changed in the role, going from a you have quite a bit of a people focus to now you're going to need to manage some details, some processes, oversee some execution of things and and really make sure there's efficiency and accuracy and and not overlook anything. But almost immediately some balls started to drop and, um, the employee feeling, uh, like a failure, feeling really, uh, unhappy and really unhappy and like they're not doing their job says things like you know, I can work on this or I'll get better at this, but the reality is they're not wired to do that. So even their best attempts aren't going to be sustainable. They're momentary successes, they don't last, and all the while, the people working with this individual become frustrated, they kind of lose respect. They start to think, gosh, they don't care, they really just don't care about this job.
They're not pulling their weight. So things get really wonky at this point, because now we're talking about interpersonal challenge and conflict, and then the direct supervisor of this person who thinks very differently than they do, who's actually wired very effectively to perform that role, that's the way they think In our world that's a specialist.
So we're dealing with a promoter and a specialist, a specialist supervisor, who can really not help themselves. But to look at gosh, they're not hitting these marks, they're making these mistakes, they're overlooking these things. But I think the upshot of this is you have an employee who absolutely feels like a failure, an utter failure. It's a person who's very, very committed to the mission that they serve, but they just feel like they're letting everybody down.
And then the harder they try, the more mistakes they make and the supervisor kind of keeps being this drama of gosh. We've talked about this and they know what they need to do and I've even given them a structure to use and it's not working. At the end of the day, you have to come to the conclusion that this person is not the right fit for this role, and it has nothing to do with their character or how smart they are. Let's try to put them in a role that might suit their true superpowers better In this case, for this person happens to be people superpowers. But hey, you know what?
Sometimes it happens that there isn't a place to fit that person Like. They're just not the right person for the role and you have to off-board them or remove them from the organization. This is where I always say okay, well, let's not create a reason to fire them. Let's part ways, but do it in a loving and kind way. Give them some runway, give them a severance, help them find another job or another opportunity, but make it so that it's not about that they failed. How about?
JB: This particular function does not serve you well as the way you work, right, so what they could have done. So, Sara, this is an organization that is using behavioral data, PI data. They had job targets and everything else like that. They made the change in the role, so they could have anticipated this.
SB: To be honest, John, they're using it for new people, they're using Predictive Index now and they're setting job targets for all new hires, but they haven't made any steps to evaluate anybody internally.
JB: Okay, okay. So this is where, again, understanding job fit and optimizing job fit for people that are already in the building this was they just sort of this was a bit of an oversight. It was like, wow, we changed this role. We didn't really dial in on the difference of this person's behavioral data and the new role, or this role, how it's changed, and when they started to fail, performance started to suffer, we blamed them.
SB: Yeah, pretty much.
JB: Okay, it's totally avoidable though, when you stop, when you slow down, as we say in our PI practitioner training gather the data, deliver insights, take action. Let's hold off on the action and the blame and the character assassination maybe, or just yeah, and what is the data telling us? And in both these scenarios it's like you knew what was going to happen. You could absolutely, with a high degree of accuracy, predict, so it's called predictive index. You could predict what was going to happen. Just slow down. Oh yeah, that is very hard, that is extremely hard. All of these scenarios are hard. So now, if you talk about the cost, if I may ask you, in that scenario you shared, Sara, there's the cost of productivity, the emotional cost, I'm sure there is a physical and just a peace of mind cost for not only the employee but also the people around them, and the drag on the organization, because they're not really acknowledging why this is happening and able to make a sound decision. Like you said, either refit them or do them the honor of giving them an opportunity to move on.
SB: Yeah, and to that, John, we like to say data, not drama. Could we be better informed by the data, as you indicated, and just let it explain for us what some of the performance challenge would be.
JB: By the way.
SB: This is not minimizing the fact that there are other performance issues and challenges that are related to character or things besides job fit, but this is a huge one we could avoid if we were better and well-intentioned about using this data.
JB: We're better and well-intentioned about using this data. Yep, isn't it interesting and we'll just start to wrap this up because, you know, I think it's interesting that I'm thinking of another scenario where the word strategic, the word strategic, has bounced around a lot these days. Oh, we need to be more strategic, we need to be, we need this person to be strategic, and that's actually.
SB: Or I need this person to see the big picture. They need to see the big picture, they need to understand the big picture. We hear that a lot too.
JB: That's right, that's right, and and what I think people don't realize is that the data actually helps us understand how people see the picture.
SB: Yes, it does.
JB: Yes, it does. You and I are wired to see the big picture. I mean you and I tend to be very strategic by nature, naturally wired that way. There are a lot of people that are very, very much looking at the part of the picture, a smaller, very specific. They're more tactical by nature and they're not wrong for that. But when we say we have somebody who is wired to be more tactical, more precise, you know really focus on the details, and say we need you to think bigger, we need you to be strategic or I love what you said, sSee the big picture, and when they can't we get, we get upset with them and we blame them. And it is, it is totally avoidable.
SB: These are things that leaders and managers and supervisors can develop competence around as they experience success or failure with job fit. I think a similar example we should talk about, John, is when a role becomes more complex. I mean, the one you shared is a common one. I just need them to think bigger. I need them to be more strategic. This one is more about complexity. So when a person is elevated you know we talk a lot about Bosshole prevention we put people in the Bosshole zone. When we elevate them to responsibilities and a scope of work that are beyond their true capabilities, it's like, you know, throwing it out there in the deep end, let's see if they can swim.
And the reality is sometimes people fail, not because of the wiring, but because of the complexity that there's too much now to manage, or over people, and process becomes too complex, and then the same sort of pattern we see happens where their leader or manager will say well, I was concerned, they weren't cut out for this, they just don't have what it takes. They're not giving it their all. Not stepping up to the plate. It's like wait a minute.
So we haven't really talked a lot in our podcast about the cognitive ability of our employees and candidates, but as you've often said, John, that is far and above the best predictor of success in a role. So we also have to imagine that sometimes it's not about their values or their heart, it's not even about their briefcase. It could in fact be because their learning agility does not align with the complexity of the role you've placed them in.
JB: That is a great point, we will. I'll tell you what. I've had it on the list for a long time to have an episode to talk about general cognitive ability and just so everybody knows, like Sara said, it's a person's capacity to deal with complexity. It's not, we're not measuring somebody's IQ. We're measuring their ability to deal with complexity, which is hugely predictive. No-transcript. We talk a lot about manager fit here on the Bosshole Chronicles. Grasp with objective data to control the high cost of bad hiring decisions or poor job fit and poor manager fit. It goes right to the you know what. This is the stuff your CFO wants to talk about. This is the stuff that will save an organization not a little money, a lot of money.
SB: So I do have one other thought, John. Since the job market and the employee selection candidate pool is so unique, we're in very unique times right now.
JB: Right.
SB: Sometimes the candidate pool is not as diverse or effective as we might like. Oh, yeah. So we have candidates, but they're not good job fits. They might be a three or a four, and to that I would also say then is there something about the expectations that you can adjust, or are you looking at your own team to talk about the distribution of responsibilities and the briefcase scenario? I mean, we still stay so locked into. You know, this is what this person does, this is what they know how to do. We still stay so locked into you know this is what this person does, this is what they know how to do, and we spend very little time on developing people's capability based on how they work. So I just want to offer that. Sometimes, I think hiring managers and leaders feel stuck Like we don't have anybody. We don't have any good candidates. Well, you have data, though. Who are you getting or who could you get? What could you adjust in your expectations? How could you set this person up to succeed, and could you put that in the context of all the people available to do the work you have to do? Maybe we should do an episode on that sometime, John.
JB: I think it'd be awesome, great, great ending point. Sara, thank you for that and, yeah, thanks for having this conversation. I hope it's been beneficial to all of you out there. This isn't some esoteric sort of idea. It literally goes to the bottom line of every organization out there. Job fit, manager fit, team fit, culture fit. But thanks, this is awesome.
SB: You bet, John.
JB: Thank you and we will see you next time on the Bosshole Chronicles. We'd like to thank our guests today on the Bosshole Chronicles and if you have a Bosshole Chronicles story of your own, please email us at mystory@thebossholechronicles.com. Once again, mystory@thebossholechronicles.com. We'll see you again soon.