By Julie Sturgeon (School Planning and Management, June 1998)

Dave Bowser can't afford to make a hiring mistake when he selects new custodians for his 38-person staff. The supervisor of operations at the Neenah Joint School District in Wisconsin defines turnover in terms of the occasional retirement party. And therein lies the problem: "Being a union shop, a lot of times we can't get rid of under-achievers. We're stuck," he says.

Until August 1997, Bowser relied on a common verbal interview to evaluate candidates: Describe your custodial experiences. How do you want students and staff to perceive you? What kind of supervisor do you work best with? If you walk into the boys' restroom at the end of the day and one young man is writing on the wall with a marker, what would you do? Why should I hire you instead of someone else? And still one gentleman "who blew our minds in the interview and brought some very strong positives to the job" hired under these standards wound up quitting within two weeks.

Jeff Sherwood, manager of human resources for Washington State's Edmonds School District, shares this outlook within the 110-member custodial staff in his 33 schools. Because custodians there earn approximately $12 an hour plus benefits and vacation, his voluntary turnover was a mere 10 percent. However, hiring isn't a centralized function – each building administrator hires independently – so Sherwood ran into problems with staff who couldn't handle supervision, consistently stick to a cleaning routine or get along with others. "One in 10 problems that crop up deal with the job itself. The other nine are attitude or behavior situations," he notes. "I spent years firing bad hires."

Blame that conventional job inter-view setup – it offers only a 50-50 chance of success, says Mark Tinney, President of Scheig Associates human resources services in Gig Harbor, Washington. "Often you connect to somebody you like in a social setting, yet that person is totally inappropriate to the position," he explains. "If you depend only on technical competence to admit these people through the interview door, often you screen out good candidates and screen in others who aren't the best match for the job."

So independently, Bowser and Sherwood decided to tilt the odds in their favor by implementing an employment test to front-load the interview process. Now each district tests to find a likely match in behavior – Scheig's statistics reveal this accounts for 80 percent of job performance – instead of the 20 percent technical competence. Both supervisors chose Scheig's system because its thoroughness outstrips what they could conceivably uncover in a face-to-face setting.

A Three-Part Test

This particular pre-hiring strategy consists of three phases. The 101 questions in section one require candidates not only to indicate their technical competence but their willingness to do that task, too. The details range from "reports unsecured money and valuables to proper authorities" to "knocks and announces self before entering  bathrooms." For the applicant, an answer of "unwilling" is not a mistake – think of it as a counseling tool or a prompt for the interview discussion. Surprisingly, Tinney's research reveals that 20 percent of prospects will answer with an honest "no" in this format – something they won't do in conversation.

"Interviews fall prey to that auto-pilot nodding syndrome: 'Oh yes, I'll do that. I love doing that. I love vomit, and I'll clean it up until the cows come home,'" he points out. "The best compliment is when someone doesn't even finish the assessment – we'd rather know that up-front than to have the new hire back away from real-life tasks once they're on the payroll."

Section two takes advantage of behaviors top-performing school custodians across the country deem important to success. This collective panel identified more than 400 behaviors such as taking notes during shift, keeping hands out of trash and giving credit where credit is due – "the most thorough job description most people will likely have ever seen" as Tinney labels it – then ranked them in importance. The test pairs a high-performance behavior with a lower performance one, worded so both sound like equally positive things to say about someone, and asks the candidate to select the one that best describes him or her.

The final section provides multiple choice ways to handle a situation, each based on right and wrong ways the superstar custodians have seen colleagues react. "Its not that the personal interview isn't  important," Tinney assures. "But it now becomes a confirmation tool to help us determine if that person is what they represented themselves to be on the assessment. Administrators are focusing on how this person will fit into the team, rather than whether this person is a good match for the job."

Because the assessments are scored on a bell-shaped curve, Scheig maintains that those with T50 or higher numbers bring higher success  odds. Chalk up Bowser as a believer. In the case of his janitorial gem who quit before the operations supervisor received the go-ahead to process his assessment test, the results mirrored reality. The guy scored a T48 – below the threshold for job success.

Likewise, when a high school buddy hit up Bowser for a position, the test bailed the supervisor out of a potentially uncomfortable situation. "Although I didn't know his work ethic, I didn't think he'd be a great worker," he confesses. An assessment test tagged the man as a T59. "This guy is now working at one of our middle schools, which we call our boot camp, and he's outstanding. Not one complaint, everyone likes him and his section is as clean as possibly could be expected." According to Tinney, assessment test policies in general provide a legal crutch to lean on when someone slings a discrimination suit your way or asserts  nepotism pressure. Scheig Associates has never been sued to date, and use of its tests has staved off lawyers circling several of its school district clients.

Great Savings, Increased Productivity

Although these districts don't list turnover as a specific problem, the few janitors who do pass through Neenah's and Edmonds' doors on their way to something else can add up to substantial wasted bucks. The U.S. Department of Labor reports in its most recently published statistics (1995) that turnover costs at entry level in any job category hover between $5,000 and $7,000 per employee.

"And there are huge productivity differences between top performers and their barely acceptable counterparts," Tinney says. "If you ask a manager how much more productive Joe is as a custodian than Jim, she'll usually say Joe is 20 percent more productive." Wrong. Controlled experimentation since the 1920s shows that top performers in any job category are 200 to 300 times as productive as their barely acceptable counterparts. In other words, it takes as many as three people to accomplish what one top performer does.

That's one reason Scheig can claim that assessment tests address training dramatically. The learning curve for qualified new hires anecdotally is much higher than in the past - according to Tinney, pre-hire tests can reduce a district's time commitment (and, consequently, soft costs) by half. "Typically personnel sends a mixed bag of potential performers to the trainers, who are expected to work magic," he says. However, he adds, don't confuse a hiring assessment program with needs assessment feedback.

Also avoid relying on the rankings to make the decision for you – the idea isn't to score a winner as you would in a figure skating competition, cautions Sherwood, who has used the test for three years to hire roughly 35 custodians. "If we're choosing between a T56 and T55, we rely on reference checks and personal impressions from the interview," he says. Other no-nos include distributing a test to separate the wheat from the chaff after you reduce the initial onslaught of resumes to a manageable pool – it's a surefire way to waste valuable time eliminating excellent potential candidates. And only asking certain job seekers to sit for the 30-minute self-administered test opens your district to those discrimination lawsuits, so apply it evenly.

"People may think, 'Gee, there's nothing really exciting about custodial work,' but there's a job for everybody," says Tinney. "When we assemble a group of top performers, it becomes very clear that those people love their jobs. It bubbles to the surface. "So in an era when schools are expected to do more with less, the ability to hire people performing at that high level just makes good economic sense," he adds.

Bowser's results have been immeasurable: "testing has given us
confidence in who we hire."

How To Get Still More Mileage

Dave Bowser couldn't contain his curiosity about the new testing concept he introduced to the Neenah Joint School district last August. The former police officer decided to see how he stacked up – just to see how well the test worked, of course! – and submitted his form under a fake name, as did his boss, an engineer. The results revealed that they were well suited to their management roles: Bowser received a T43; the engineer chalked up to T32 (the lowest score the district had ever seen for the custodial position).

"Granted, when I train somebody, I show them how to clean one restroom and then I don't want to do any more," Bowser confesses. "Now I evaluate job performance on whether a guy is living up to his assessment numbers." For the most part, the staff has.

Bowser also offered current staff the opportunity to fill out the booklet if they wished, in an effort to understand his employees better. "In one employee's case, his peers complained that he doesn't pull his share, and his score was a T43. I spoke to Mark Tinney at Scheig – didn't tell him anything about this janitor – and Mark says, 'He talks too much.' Pegged the guy right on to help me confirm my suspicions."

If you want to use an assessment test as a ruler to gauge current employees, Bowser suggests a few common-sense ground rules: Use it to confirm that the test works, and to understand the different job aptitudes you are working with. Do not hold scores again or for employees – and let the participants know this upfront. "We told our staff that we wanted their opinion on whether it was a good, viable test," he suggests.

Ask for volunteers – don't force any current hires to take an assessment.