How much does turnover cost your company?

If it's like many employers, you can count on costs ranging from two months' pay equivalent for hourly employees to six months' pay equivalent for managerial employees. This includes recruiting costs and time, hours of retraining, productivity loss and negative customer impact. Obviously, there are many reasons for employee turnover. Some, like personal reasons, are out of an employer's control. But employers can control their turnover costs by matching the right person to the job.

The first step sounds easy, but it's actually the hardest part of the interviewing process and requires the most thought. Begin by having a department discussion on the success criteria for the position you need filled. What skills are necessary to make this person successful in this job? The technical skills, or "can" skills, are easy to identify. It could be specific experience or knowledge in acute care or home care nursing. Or an applicant may need certain state licensing. These criteria might be the "knock-out" criteria: If an applicant doesn't have certain knowledge or experience he/she doesn't qualify for the position. But in reality, there are minimal "can" skills.

Most supervisors say they want employees who can work well with others, have a positive attitude, can learn quickly, have a good work ethic, show initiative and work well under stress. These attributes are also called "will" success criteria. An employee can do the job, but the real issue is will the employee do the job? Failing to interview for these "will" criteria may give you difficulties with employee relations down the road.

Identify Behavior
The next step is to identify the behavior that we want to see for each of the "will" criteria. It's not necessary to have more than three or four "will" criteria. By limiting the number, you have prioritized the innate skills that are most important for your environment.

Let's look at an example of how to identify the behavior. The ability to work well with patients and peers is your most important skill. This quality may look different to each person. Does the applicant need to be able to handle situations when a patient is upset, argumentative or angry? Does the applicant need to show initiative in helping others when it's not his/her job? Does this mean always demonstrating a "can-do" attitude in front of peers and patients? Does this mean that the applicant uses nondefensive communication when working with others?

As you can see, there can be many different definitions of the ability to work well with patients and peers. It's important to be clear on how this behavior appears before you start designing your interview questions.

Assess Past Behavior
Your next step is to design questions to find out if the candidate can and will perform the job. Remember to ask questions to assess past behavior as a predictor of future performance. An ineffective question would be: "What would you do if a patient becomes angry during a catheter procedure?" The candidate will give a textbook or rehearsed answer. Instead ask these questions: "Describe a time in your previous position when a patient became angry. What did you say or do? How did the patient respond?"

Here are other questioning techniques to assess past behavior:

• Ask open-ended questions. Open-ended questions get the candidate talking and provide information the interviewer needs for follow-up questions. Close-ended questions prompt no information-sharing. Open-ended questions begin with why, what, how, tell me about, describe and explain.

• Avoid telegraphing responses. Telegraphing means that you give the answer in the question. For example, "Our center is very fast paced. How do you work in this type of environment?" A more effective way of asking the question would be: "Describe a typical day in your previous position. How did you feel about the work environment? What did you like best and least about it?"

• Ask for situational success and disappointment stories. Situational success or disappointment stories are good techniques for assessing skills, personal work characteristics and motivation. They also get the applicant to prove statements. Let's say we want to assess a candidate's ability to show initiative in performing outside the realm of his/her duties. A good question might be: "Describe a situation in your previous position when you took matters into your own hands although your peer should have handled it. What happened?" Or, "What do you do in your job that isn't covered in the job description or general job duties?" Listen carefully to the candidate's tone of voice. Was it a real chore to jump in and help or no big deal?

• Ask testing questions. This is like a verbal exam to assess the applicant's knowledge and judgment. "What clinical techniques have you used in your previous position? How did you use them?"

• Ask for self-evaluation questions. This technique gets the applicant to describe or rate himself/herself. Then ask for follow up with a situation story. If we are trying to figure out if the applicant is multi-task oriented, we could ask: "How would you evaluate your ability to handle a variety of tasks at the same time? Describe a situation where you had to do this or couldn't do this."

• Ask for outside perspectives. This is a great way to evaluate how other people perceive the candidate. If we are interviewing for dependability in coming to work, we could ask: "What would your supervisor at your previous company say about your attendance record?" This also implies you might call the supervisor for a reference.

• Ask preference questions. Too often we concentrate only on the positives or things we liked most. Asking the contrary is very valuable information. If we are trying to find a good supervisor-employee match, an appropriate question is: "What did you like most and least about the management style of your previous supervisor?"

• Ask legal questions. Your questions should always be job-related. Avoid topics that relate or imply to race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, marital status, pregnancy plans/family, child-care arrangements, sexual orientation, disability, financial status or arrests. If you're unsure about legal interview questions, take a class or ask the company's employment attorney to send you more information.

Conduct the Interview
You are now ready to prepare for the structured interview. A structured interview enables you to follow the same format for each candidate and objectively evaluate each candidate against your criteria, not against one another.

A 30-minute structured interview looks something like this:

1. 3 minutes-Small talk to help candidate feel comfortable. Use topics like weather or directions, not personal topics that could be perceived as illegal.

2. 1 minute-A bridging statement that describes what will happen during the interview. "In the next 30 minutes, I want to ask you questions about your experience and knowledge, tell you about the position and answer your questions."

3. 5 minutes-Questions: "Can" Selection Criteria

4. 15 minutes-Questions : "Will" Selection Criteria

5. 5 minutes-Information about the specific position and company

6. 1 minute-Closing remarks, applicant's questions and next step.

Avoid the Pitfalls
Watch these common interviewer pitfalls:

• Prejudging based on a gut feeling or a common interest

• Talking too much

• Forcing a fit

• Getting off track

• Telegraphing too much about the position before you ask questions

• Trying to wing it.

Sue Romero, owner of Susan Romero Consulting, Englewood, Colo., is a human resources consultant specializing in employee relations issues, manager coaching and management training. She has over 20 years experience coaching managers on enhancing their effectiveness. Visit her website at www.romeroconsulting.com.

For More Information

Read Sue Romero's "The Art of Management"

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