Making the right hire can be a daunting task. At MPS, we see hundreds of resumes each year and, although almost all of these applicants tell us they are sure they are right for the role, how can WE really know? Hiring the wrong person for the job can be costly; time is money and hundreds of hours can easily rack up in the recruiting, hiring and training process. So, what’s an HR department to do? As a leader in productivity, MPS integrates tools like the DiSC Assessment early in our recruiting and hiring process.

The DiSC Assessment is a non-judgmental tool that provides us with valuable information that resumes just don’t show. Evaluating the candidate’s experience, education and skills are still obvious initial steps in the recruiting process, but as soon as we are considering that first interview, we send them the DiSC Assessment to complete.

Our internal departments are made up of Sales Teams and Support Teams. DiSC works for both.
It comes in handy when we are recruiting for our Sales Team, since the creators of DiSC have identified behaviors and attitudes that top sales teams share. We do our best to determine where our Sales Candidate scores on those behaviors and attitudes and this data puts us ahead of where we’d be if we were recruiting on resume and work experience alone.

DiSC helps us with Support Teams as well; recruiting and growing them into high-level teams that work well together. Specific behaviors are highlighted in the individual’s DiSC profile, which identify how they may cross-function with others and what may be potential conflicts. Miscommunication can stop a project in its tracks and sometimes all we need is a bit of insight into each other’s behavior styles to see where we are disconnecting and find a simple solution.

For example, let’s take Izzy, a High I (optimistic, creative, enthusiastic). Izzy is teaming with Carol, who is a High C
(compliant, analytical, accurate). These two may find themselves in conflict around a project with multiple solutions and a firm deadline. Izzy may enjoy exploring all the possibilities and creating engaging arguments for each of them. All the while, Carol may be feeling stress around staying on course, meeting the deadline and finding the best solution inside the parameters that have been set. Izzy may get emotional because she feels she is being stifled and micromanaged. Carol worries that the project will never get done on time and wonders if this will be a negative reflection on her. Carol can’t help but project some hostility, which Izzy then takes personally – she just wanted to have fun and create a fantastic solution! This team has the potential to be a disaster, but it doesn’t need to be.Teams like this may simply need to schedule a “brainstorming” meeting with a clear time limit, to allow Carol to feel like the project is staying on task, while encouraging Izzy’s creativity to explore solutions.

Throughout the year, we have plenty of other opportunities to use the DiSC data. We publish all our DiSC Profiles on SharePoint so that teams can use them to understand how best to communicate and work together. As we conduct regular performance reviews, the DiSC comes into play once again. Leaders can see how behaviors and attitudes may create time wasters or potential areas of miscommunication. They can encourage the individual to work with their team to avoid those conflicts and achieve top performance.

We also find our employees use DiSC outside of the workplace. These assessments can be truly eye-opening for individuals, who typically tell us that they felt the report represented them well and uncovered familiar-sounding behavior and communication styles that were presented with more clarity. This enabled them to identify those behaviors and see the ways they contribute, not only to our organization, but to their personal relationships.

At MPS, we specialize in performance for individuals, teams and organizations, so DiSC is a great fit into our culture, empowering us to create aligned and focused teams and bringing increased balance to the individuals who work here.