Use Role Plays as Tryouts in Employee Selection

Do your employees have what it takes to put a smile on your face? Are your employees motivated to perform at their best when they are at work? Are they proud to work for your organization? In tough times like these, if you are like most managers, you are constantly worried about performance. Constantly trying to get your employees to perform up to where you want them. Whether you are hiring one person for a small business, or a large number of people for a large corporation, hiring the right person is crucial to your success. You are most likely inundated with a mountain of resumes to go through, half of which are not even qualified. How do you select the best performer? One alternative is that you could hire everyone and weed out the bad ones. However, this is an expensive alternative and can be pretty damaging to your company, thus not realistic. Another alternative would be to use a high impact approach that will place the right person in the right job at the right time.

When I was the owner and human resources manager for 808image Web Design, an web design company, I have been faced with a barrage of resumes that came to my office in response to employment ads. With the unemployment rate in Hawaii being higher than the U.S. mainland, the competition for a position in my company have been intense. I had applicants that not only send me resumes, but also supporting documents such as papers written for school, documentation of projects completed at former employers, anything that will give them an edge in having me select them to my organization. My role as both the Owner and HR Manager was to evaluate their qualifications to determine a fit with my organization. I help them plan and implement decisions that will differentiate them from their competition for their future success. My areas of expertise in recruitment and selection and training and development have led me to develop a role playing exercise that can be used in the interviewing process.