Slacker is a common word nowadays to describe a person who exudes laziness, lousy work ethic and a “don’t care” attitude. They tend to avoid working, goof off a lot and also encourage other employees to avoid working and goof off. Once hired they tend to act like super unmotivated employees. Therefore, managers and executives must do everything possible to avoid hiring slackers with a lousy work ethic and find productive and dependable employees. Your company and career depend on keeping slackers off your payroll and hiring highly productive employees and not unmotivated employees..
Pre-Employment Tests Predict If Applicant is a Slacker
You can use employment tests and other methods to assess job applicants so you do not hire slackers.
1. Pre-hire Tests + Work Ethic
For white-collar jobs, use two types of employment tests. First, use a personality or behavior test to predict the applicant’s interpersonal skills, personality traits + work motivations.
In my testing research, I often find unmotivated slackers get personality test scores like the following:
1. super-high score on Friendliness
That means they will socialize rather than work!
2. low score on Following Rules, Policies, & Procedures
They will rebel against your company’s proven work methods!
3. low score on Subjective Reaction to Pressure
They love doing 3 actions: Whine, Moan, & Complain!
4. low score on Optimism
They love wallowing in problems, not solutions.
5. high score on Emotionally-Focused
They crave personal drama, drama, and more drama.
6. high score on Creativity Motivation
They hate using your company’s proven work methods! These are signs their work ethic will not be helpful to your company.
Also give employment intelligence tests. After all, you must know if an applicant has enough brains to (a) learn the job and (be) correctly think through situations they encounter
on-the-job. Make benchmark pre-employment test scores based on test scores of your company’s best, superstar employees in each job. Then, you objectively can compare your best employees’ qualities versus the applicant’s qualities, and see if they are similar or different. You, of course, prefer applicants whose pre-employment test scores indicate they have qualities similar to your best employees.
For blue-collar or lower-level or laborer jobs, give an employment test of dependability or responsibility. Such a test delves tells you about many work-related qualities, especially Work Ethic. You certainly want to focus on hiring applicants who get high tests scores on Work Ethic. You want an employee who will actually show up at work daily and who is a hard-workers or works in a productive manner and not be a part of unmotivated employees.
2. JOB INTERVIEWS
Make sure you ask a lot of open-ended questions. Such questions help you discover the applicant’s thoughts, needs, feeling, opinions, goals and experiences on job-related factors.
For help with interviewing job applicants please see my article called, “Are Job Applicants Fooling You During the Interview?”
3. REALISTIC JOB OBSERVATION (RJO)
If applicant’s pre-employment test scores are similar to your company’s benchmark scores for the job and also applicant impressed you in job interview, then do RJO. To do RJO, have applicant spend a half-day following one of your employees doing the job while the applicant observes. From this, your employee can see if applicant expresses enthusiasm for doing the actual work. And the applicant can see the work actually required on-the-job which may or may not be to the applicant’s liking.
Slackers Never Should Be on Your Payroll
Employment tests, in-depth job interviews and realistic job observations can help you do pre-hire assessments.
Then, you can focus on hiring applicants who are likely to be highly productive and low turnover. And, in doing so, you avoided hiring slackers with a bad work ethic.
