''Facts, facts, facts, and also keep the HR contacts in mind.'' In Germany, this is any job applicant’s motto, before he or she sends off their resume. And they are quite right, because the majority of positions are still filled on the basis of CVs and reference documents. These are the first “hurdle” that an application has to jump over before he or she makes it to the shortlist. Only then do the soft factors get a chance to be factored into the personnel decision. This is also true for promotions, where measures of success and documented expertise are the decisive factors in most cases.

This is a system error that exacts its revenge because it is precisely those soft factors that are taken so little into account that determine whether a position has been effectively filled or just occupied for a while. The best of expertise isn’t worth very much without any basis in the areas of personnel management, self management, personality development, stress management, communication, etc. In an interview with Germany’s well known manager magazin, executive coach Karin Siegle-Kvarnström was rightly of the opinion that the majority of executives do not fail due to a lack of professional know-how or intelligence but because of soft factors. In other words, new managers do not fit to the team they are supposed to lead. The management skills they display do not work with their new employees. They ignore the corporate culture prevailing in their department. And this continues until the personnel merry-go-round starts to move again.

The victims are many: employees, managers, superiors, HR departments and, of course, the company as a whole as well. At the end of the day, every position that has been erroneously filled generates huge expenses. From job ads to staff absences that result from lack of motivation, stress and frictional loss, for which there are no accurate statistics.

The consequence needs to be a change in the focus of personnel selection. We need to move away from figures, data and reference documents that in fact do not say a great deal, and take soft factors more into account. Solutions such as the persolog Employee Integrative System, which enables HR representatives to compare applicant expectations concerning the actual position, corporate culture and management with those of the company itself point to a new direction –a way out of the system trap.

Ulrich Bischoff
Public Relations, persolog GmbH