Why Use Simulations?

Organizations are only as strong as the people who work for them. That makes people your most precious resource. It also makes the hiring, assessment, and development of employees critical! It’s a must have best practice for every company.

Nobody WANTS to make a mistake in hiring or promoting.

So why is hiring one of the most under taught, under improved processes in all of business?

Enter simulations into the game -one of the best ways to improve your candidate assessment, hiring, and employee development. Unfortunately, less than 2% of all businesses use them, and why that happens is a mystery. This stat SCREAMS: IF you incorporate simulations into your hiring, you can put your business on a higher plane than 98% of the competition.

Who buys a car without taking it for a test drive? What airline hires a pilot who has not proved competent in test flights and flight simulators? So why hire or promote someone without seeing their true ability to perform required business tasks?

Give this a watch and ask yourself, how would you do in this simulation

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Here are 6 reasons why simulations should be an integral part of any hiring, promotion and training processes.

The 5:1 Ratio

A mis-hire/promotion costs the company 5 times the candidate’s annual compensation ($50,000 salary costs the company $250,000).

  • With training it’s just as easy to see the ROI. A business parable for you:
  • CEO said to the CFO: ‘We have to train our people to get better.’
  • CFO says: ‘Yea but what if we invest time and money to train them and they leave us to go to our competitor?’
  • CEO shoots back: ‘What if we don’t train them and they stay?’

Whether it is a mis-hire or an inadequately trained employee, the impact on client relations, revenue, productivity, supervision time and morale are negative, and huge.

The Power of Proof

Have you ever had an interview where the person told you they could not do the job? Or have you ever had a person who “stretched” their abilities in the interview and as a result you were cleaning their messes for days, weeks or months after?

A best practice simulation provides you “Point-to-Point Correspondence” with the job. When the activities found in the simulation are a replica of activities required on the job, you get an accurate portrayal of a candidate’s skill level.

Simulations are also critical to training and a must-do in all continual development. Do you really want salespeople “practicing” on customers? Of course, you do not! General George Patton once said, “The more my troops sweat in peacetime the less they bleed during combat.” Simulations are a must in all continual development.

How Do They Handle the Debrief

Once a candidate performs in the simulation how do they respond to constructive criticism? Are they thin-skinned? Do they gloat? Is their self-confidence warranted? You often discover people’s best and the worst by observing how they handle coaching.

A thorough debrief also opens a window to understanding how candidates learn best. You will discover what they will and won’t respond to. This can be invaluable as you continue to train and develop your team.

Go to the Video

When recorded, simulations help reduce, if not remove bias and subjectivity in the hiring process in one BIG way, “The eye in the sky does not lie.” You do not want he said/she said situations in any business scenario, especially in simulations.

Here is a great example of the benefit of recording simulations: A hiring manager who got a ‘good hit’ off a candidate in an interview might get a completely different feeling after watching a recorded simulation. The candidate might be the most charming person in the world, but when the time came, he did not have the skills he trumpeted. This is a potential hiring disaster that can and MUST be avoided.

Recorded simulations are irreplaceable in training as well. There is nothing better than being able to go back and review specific areas for either praise or correction. Plus, reviewing an individual’s recorded progress or regression is an immensely powerful training tool.

Onboarding

Even if somebody is an A-Player it does not mean they are perfect. Unfortunately, too many onboarding programs fail to adapt to the candidate, thus slowing the learning process and taking longer for the new hire to reach peak effectiveness.

Simulations do more than weed out bad candidates. They also help to assess a good candidate’s specific strengths and weaknesses hyper-accurately. This allows you to design/implement an onboarding process to speed them to max productivity. Not to mention it helps in offer decisions like salary negotiations.

Positioning Your Company as the Best

The War for Talent is upon us; there are only so many A-Players out there. The mistake most organizations make is purposefully making the hiring process easier out of fear of losing the candidate.

Thomas Payne said, “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value.” Being with the BEST requires paying the PRICE. Candidates learn respect for the position and respect for the company by demonstrating how seriously the company takes the hiring process. The best candidates don’t want to be with some company that simply rolls over. Remember everybody wants to belong to The Club that is nearly impossible to join.

87% of people who voluntarily leave a company do so because of a lack of growth and development opportunity. It is human nature to want to improve, to develop new skills, succeed and advance. If you have good people, make them better. Use simulations to train and develop your team continually. And you know what they call the company with the top employees? The BEST!

Hiring, assessment and training are 3 CRUCIAL areas where you can either irreparably damage or exponentially advance your most precious resource and, by extension, your company. This is why simulations are such a critical management tool.

Contact Us

Crucial Link’s Simulations ensures you get the information to make the best hires, that you are developing the best employees and that your training is both impactful and ‘sticky’!

Contact us today to get your free Simulation Assessment.
And check out our Crucial Insights Blog that will have more game changing, business improving ideas for you.