Unless the position has changed, the work can lead to boredom, a poor performance. Here’s a new twist on “Overqualified.”
Jan, a hiring manager, has an opportunity to hire a person with a master’s in business administration. He’s getting resistance from human resources because the job description says the position requires a bachelor’s degree.
He writes: “Why wouldn’t HR want the MBA? More schooling and the same price. It doesn’t make sense.”
Yes, it does. HR is telling you that hiring someone who has more to offer than the job requires may result in her/his boredom. There are two possible results: Poor performance or “I’m quitting because I want a more challenging job.” Neither result is acceptable.
But before deciding not to hire the MBA, you and HR need to review the job description to ensure that MBA-level skills are not required. Often job descriptions are not updated on a timely basis, which is the fault of the hiring manager, not HR. If HR doesn’t have current information, the hiring process is ineffective from Step 1.
Here’s another example. This one is from Donna, a frustrated HR manager. She writes: “Our company recently introduced 360-degree evaluations. The results were shocking. Over 75 percent of our management scored poorly when evaluated by subordinates. We’ve invested money and time in management training and thought we were on the right track. We know we’ve been pushing our people hard, but we’re going through tough times like most companies in our line of business. I can’t make sense of the situation. Any ideas?”
Yes. First, I’m not a fan of 360 evaluations. Who is evaluating your managers? It goes deeper than “the employees.”
How deep? Answer this question: What percentage of your work force performs excellently, good and satisfactorily?” If you said 10 excellent, 15 good and 75 satisfactory, then your 360 responses are 75 percent weighted by the mindset of those who do only satisfactory work.
What’s the likelihood that those that do only average work would assess a manager in the same way as an excellent or a good performer would? Slim and none, because their mindsets are different. When the manager gives a “keeper,” a solid performer, a special project he/she figures out a way to juggle priorities and get it done. If the same project is given to an average performer, there might be complaints about workload and the manager will have to “manage” its completion.
Given this situation, when solid performers are outnumbered by average performers — which are usually the case in most firms using 360s — the “each employee’s response counts equally” aspect of a 360 exercise gives too little weight to the answers of the “keepers.”
Wouldn’t you rather evaluate management based upon what A- and B-game players say than those doing just enough work to get by?
The second problem with any 360 is time-period validity.
For example: Would the responses of an employee who received a poor performance review/didn’t get the raise/didn’t get the promotion evaluate the manager that same way if things had gone in the employee’s favor? I think not. Would the responses of employees in a department that experienced a downsizing be the same as those before downsizing? No.
A work force’s age impacts validity, too. Could the responses from Gen X and Gen Y employees differ from their baby boomer counterparts? Yes, especially if the manager is from one generation and most of the work force is from others.
Length of time in a department affects responses, too. A new manager may be seen as “not knowing what’s going on” by a departmental veteran. A new employee may not have sufficient exposure to the manager to properly evaluate her/him on many 360 issues.
The bottom line on 360s: if you don’t know your input, it’s difficult to properly evaluate the results. Interpreting the results for a given manager requires looking at their employee performance mix, department demography and organizational events.
