All People Are Different
Fatima Chapkhaeva, Quality Director of Performia CIS
Fatima Chapkhaeva is a Quality Director of Performia CIS, a company training business owners and executives in successful hiring of personnel. For the period of her work Fatima conducted over 1,000 employment interviews. More than 20,000 Performia’s tests were checked under her supervision. Presently, Fatima controls and helps Performia’s trained consultants all over the CIS.
Why is it that two employees, who are valuable individually, cannot get on with each other? Why should you waste your time bringing them together as you do not want any of them to quit the job? Why has a person left their job all of a sudden after working hand in hand with you for many years?
You are hiring new entrants, allocating them duties and then spending the time saved… on establishing and improving relations between the new and old workers. How many times a day are you holding up work to find out who is right? How often are you finishing a day's work thinking: "Did that person fool me?", or "Why does the other person make so many mistakes?", or "How long do I have to keep the peace between salespeople and technicians?" So all new workers (as well as some old ones) can create problems, but not all of them provide a distinct benefit to your company.
All people are different. When you start a business with a close friend, you may discover that you do not know him or her at all. You are faced with a dilemma: you don't want to lose your friend but you can't handle hisher unexpected character traits. You are in a deadlock and it seems to you that the situation is out of control. "That's life", you tell yourself. But I am saying that this problem is tractable. You just need to realise where the threat lies.
The EXEC-U-TEST Personality Test will help you with this. This test is aimed to define personality profiles and is used in most European countries. It consists of 200 questions representing various life situations, which the person being tested has to answer. Studying the answers will allow you to get a picture of the typical behaviour of this person in different circumstances. The test reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the person. Once aware of them, you are equipped.
This is a true story. Mr. X started from scratch in setting up a private business and had to raise a bank loan. After a few years his company has grown considerably and it now controls over 50% of the market. The commercial director has worked for this company from the start, gone through fire and water, and has become a Mr. X's right-hand man. We tested him and found out that this man likes new developments and initiatives. People of this kind become bored after they have mastered their field of activity.
This situation seems to be deadlock since, as a rule, people of this kind dislike marking time and, having achieved their goals, they are eager to conquer new summits.
Our client learned the test results and foresaw the resignation of the commercial director. In order to forestall this, Mr. X suggested that they should establish a joint enterprise. This solution avoided him losing a friend and partner and allowed him to create a new business jointly with a trustworthy person!
Your employees are no longer enigmas to you when you see their results from the EXEC-U-TEST Personality Test. For example, the test reveals if your salesperson will allow unreasonable discounts or if he or she will sell at the highest price. You will know for a certainty if your purchasing director overprices. You will realise why people at one company are always nervous and drowning in tears while employees of another company come to the office an hour late and stop for a smoke a hundred times a day.
Here is a case history. A representative office of a Western European company in Russia pirated an employee through the help of a recruiting agency. That man was appointed to a highly-paid senior position. After six months none of his projects had made any progress, however he was giving sound reasons in every case. Although the employee looked always neat and presentable and spoke "properly", there was something wrong with him. Furthermore, he never showed any actual results. Then the manager of the Personnel Department requested us to test the employee.
The test showed that he had a pliable nature; his clothing fits the circumstances; he speaks and acts in accordance with expectations of people around him; he never holds to an opinion… but gets his own way anyhow. In other words, if something goes wrong with the business, that person will be the last we suspect to be at fault.
However, we believe that any person can be productive, that is able to achieve headway, irrespective of his/her personal qualifications. Productivity should be first, second and third, while the schedule should be only fourth among our aims. It is important also to assess the contribution of each employee to business development. So, our next step was to consult former employers as to the character of the individual, as a part of the complete cycle of employment.
It is important to clarify this stage. We never ask: "What do you think about Mr. Y?" Our questions (which are relatively few) are worded in such a manner that personal feelings and responses have little bearing. By the end of a talk you will know what to expect from an entrant, depending on his/her previous results. Certainly, we understand that the former employer is not infallible, but the results of their work (or lack of any) are indicative.
During the discussions we found further confirmation of the test results: the individual had not completed any project assigned to him, always giving "logical" arguments why it could not be carried out.
The cost of hiring a wrong person amounted to the cost of services of the recruiting agency, which had identified a "rare" specialist, plus half his yearly salary. Also, there were less obvious costs: time spent on instructing the employee, uncompleted projects, upset staff... The company could have avoided these troubles if they had interviewed the entrant, tested him for productivity and consulted his former employers.
Here is a typical situation: a good salesperson is appointed as the manager of the Sales Department and "suddenly" your best sellers resign one after another, including the new manager. The company has lost its sales service and the director is tormented with the question of why he could not acquire a good manager and why he has lost a good salesperson. As a rule, such "experiments" are expensive for a company. The results of the above test help to forecast the possible consequences. You will not only be able to predict failure but also make a good sales manager out of a good seller.
Over many years you have worked to put together a united team. You have searched for the right people and then provided them with training, investing your time, energy and care in them. You go to work when your family is still asleep and you come back when your family is already in bed. Your children hardly ever see you and every time you think: "Only a few things left to sort out and then…" But just at that point your employees start to grumble and you feel that something is going wrong. You look for the instigators and dismiss those that you suspect of causing trouble. However, the problems do not go away. And then you decide that perhaps you should change all the staff. That is not a very good idea. In fact, only one or two workers are muddying the waters and the skies will clear as soon as you fire them. But how can you track down these people? Usually you are suspicious of people who create a clamour. However, the real saboteurs stay in the background. So, you dismiss the employees that articulate the internal problems. The EXEC-U-TEST Personality helps to find the actual troublemakers.
All people are different. Some may be unsociable and forbidding, but they do the lion's share of work. Others are so quiet and undistinguished that when they are on leave or resign nobody notices.
With the help of the EXEC-U-TEST Personality Test you can ascertain whether a new worker and their employer can pull together. In a few hours you will know the strengths and weaknesses of the candidate. For example, you will understand why your new secretary asks so many questions, and you will be not irritated by his/her impertinent (in your judgment) questions like: "When will you be back?" You will know whether your new driver will tell everybody what you said on your mobile phone in the car. You can tell if you can trust your new financial director with your account numbers and if he/she can discover legal methods to reduce taxes.
The well-known American philosopher and writer L. Ron Hubbard wrote in his book The Problems of Work: "A labourer is not just a labourer. An office worker is not just an office worker. They are living, breathing, important pillars on which the entire structure of our civilization is erected. They are not cogs in a mighty machine. They are machine itself.
"We have come to a low level of the ability to work. Offices depend very often on no more than one or two men, and the additional staffs seem to add only complexity to the activities of the scene."
The PERFORMIA system was developed to make your company a faultless machine. Getting productive people is an essential condition for strengthening a company. The target of our work is to help you to achieve this aim.
Table of contents
Will Kazakhstan Become a Developed, Well-off Country? Yuri Shokamanov
The Oil and Gas Industry: A Year's Auspicious Beginning Editorial Overview
Subsoil Use in 2004: Investment Statistics Elvira Dzhantureyeva
Changes in Kazakhstan’s Local Content Rules for Oil Operations Abai Shaikenov, Anthony Cioni
Oil in the CIS: Economic and Sovereign Rating Implications Special Report of Fitch Ratings Agency
Bogatyr Access Komyr: Investing into the Future Dennis C. Price
Power Industry: Regional Export Potential in Central Asia Loup J. Brefort
IPO: Russia's Experience and Kazakhstan's Outlook Askat Ospanov
New Opportunities in Kazakhstan's Real Estate Market Oleg Batratchenko
Eight steps to launching a brand, the PR way Al Ries, Laura Ries
How to Efficiently Manage a Business Mark DeEulio
Putting Together A Statistical Management System Klaus Hilgers
The Science of Selling Harry Frisch, Michael Bang
All People Are Different Fatima Chapkhaeva
