If Chicken Little lived today, no doubt he would be running through the streets screaming, “the economy is falling.” The sudden and unexpected rise in unemployment has populated applicant pools with eager, and in many cases, desperate applicants, willing to say and do about anything to get a job. At the very least, applicants needing work may be willing to take jobs they don’t like or aren’t cut out for until they can find something better. Employers who don’t identify the best applicants for available positions, the first time, will have to pay the price of doing it over, and over, and over!

That’s bad news to employers lacking effective assessment and selection processes. Employers should utilize as many employment screening options as are legally available. Pre-employment skill, attitude, personality, and drug testing, are necessities as well as reference checks, background checks, trial periods, and interviews.

Good pre-employment attitude and personality assessments have built in “lie-scales” to detect when applicants fail to answer questions with candor. Modern drug testing technology can identify when applicants attempt to adulterate samples. Hiring without these steps is the equivalent of agreeing to play Russian Roulette without checking all the chambers of the weapon first.

Mason Duchatschek is the president of AMO-Employer Services, Inc., in St. Louis, Missouri, and co-author of the book Sales Utopia: How to Get the Right People, Doing the Right Things, Enough Times. His phone number is 1-800-245-0445, and his company’s website is www.amo-es.com.

Copyright 2001 by Mason Duchatschek

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