Recently I was playing golf with a friend of mine and we were paired with a father and son we didn't know. After a couple of holes I asked the son, engineer or accountant? He smiled and said, Mechanical Engineer. As a certified professional behavior analyst I recognized fairly quickly that his behavioral style (or personality style) was consistent with someone you would expect to be successful in engineering or accounting, and I guessed correctly.
I began using DISC in my hiring process in 1997. Before that I was a skeptic. Personality profiles were hocus-pocus and a waste of money. Plus, it was obvious to me that the people I hired could have done a good job if they wanted to, they just chose not to and I had to fire them. It was their fault, not mine. But I couldn't ignore that my turnover rate was stubbornly high and that my business unit was not performing as well as some of my peers' business units. At the urging of my CEO, I began incorporating DISC into my selection decisions.
The results were almost instantaneous and within two years my turnover rate had dropped to among the lowest in the company and my branch performance had risen to among the top as well. Was it all because of DISC? No, we made some other adjustments too, but DISC was a big contributor.
We observe contrasting behavioral styles all the time. Some people are naturally outgoing, others are more reserved. Some people are more detail-oriented, others are more achievement-oriented. Some are animated, some have a poker-face. Some are sensitive, others are more about getting the job done even if people get their feelings hurt. It only makes sense that people who are in a job that rewards a certain natural behavior style are going to perform better if they share that style.
The problem I had prior to using DISC was that I judged candidates on the combination of their technical skills and their interviewing skills. But I eventually figured out that we could train technical skills and that interviewing skills weren't that relevant to nor predictive of performance in most jobs. I began to focus on finding people who were trainable, had a demonstrated work ethic, and had a DISC profile that was compatible with the natural demands of the job. That proved to be the combination that lead me to start hiring winners.
If your good hire percentage is lower than you'd like it to be and you're not utilizing DISC in your selection process, contact me and I'll show you how easy it is to benchmark a role in your company so that you can hire more people who have a chance to be great and hire fewer people who are likely going to hate the job.
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