Fundamentals of Human Resource Management 5th Edition by Raymond Noe, John Hollenbeck, Barry Gerhart, Patrick Wright

Exercise 4

Hiring Clones
Entrepreneur Todd Morris made an all-too-common hiring mistake. As BrickHouse Security began to grow, he brought in individuals who pressed hard to get results and worked independently. Morris possesses the same qualities, and they enabled him to get his company off the ground. But as Morris hired more and more people, they needed to be able to collaborate. Instead, they were overly competitive and began complaining about one another.
Morris hired a consulting firm to help him figure out what was making the work environment so poisonous. The consultants gave all the employees a personality test, which showed that Morris had been hiring people who tended to lack the kinds of human relations skills that are related to cooperating and listening. Morris now makes personality testing part of the selection process at BrickHouse, and he looks for people who are less like himself-the independent entrepreneur-and more like team players.
Morris's lesson is one that many companies could benefit from applying. A recent survey found that when an employee doesn't live up to expectations, the most common reason is that the employer failed to match the candidate's skills to the actual job requirements. Effective hiring decisions are not like making friends at a party. Instead of simply picking the individuals they feel most comfortable around, careful decision makers first establish the qualities they are seeking and then choose methods that consistently identify those qualities.
Morris felt he needed to be hard-driving and independent to get a business off the ground, so he looked for the same kinds of people to carry out the business. How would you rate the validity of his approach to choosing employees? How would you rate its reliability?