Turnover and training are big expenses for any company by the time recruiting and productivity losses are added in. One company says it has found the solution, a way to streamline hiring to not only avoid turnover but also cut recruitment time significantly.
  Gig-Harbor-based Scheig Associates, Inc. has been hailed by top companies including Washington Mutual, SYSCO, Chevron and SunTrust Bank for its assessment-based hiring system.

“Interviews are time consuming and fairly subjective,” says Scheig Associates President Mark Tinney. “Our assessment has an accuracy rate above 90 percent… You also see turnover rates tend to come down dramatically.”
  Through assessments of top performers in a specific job, Scheig Associates develops 400 to 500 “behaviors” and uses them to create the assessments. For recruiting new employees, questionnaire tests are created, designed to predict how well an applicant matches the position and how well he or she will likely perform. Only those applicants who pass the tests are then interviewed — a much smaller number of people, since only the best performers will come through. Even the interview itself is short after that, only 20 minutes, and it’s more a confirmation than a recruiting tool.

Tinney cites a recent success story: A top childcare company with 80 locations nationwide reduced its turnover rate by 25 percent. In addition, Scheig Associates helped streamline the hiring process — something that “sends the message to the candidate about the importance of the position,” Tinney said. Another success story is a Fortune 100 call center whose turnover rate declined by 82 percent.
  The tests developed by the company are deceivingly simple, but nonetheless tricky. Though some of the multiple-answer choices look similar and both appear positive, Tinney said, one answer may indicate a completely opposite behavior, and thus a different degree of success. Job experience and length of employment are not good indicators either, he says, because long years on a job don’t guarantee success.
  Scheig Associates started out with a couple of clients and one assessment 12 years ago, and now has 70 assessments and more than 1,000 clients in the United States, Canada and Australia. Its range of industries varies from truck drivers and childcare providers to school districts and banks, and even sports teams. The Seattle Seahawks had previously used a Scheig system as an additional tool for new recruits.
  “We are not a recruiting company,” Tinney said. “But recruiting is not really the issue. The companies are just not selecting the right people.”
  Scheig Associates employs about 15 people at its Gig Harbor office, and has tried to embrace technology to the fullest. The assessments, for example, have gone from only pen and paper to being offered additionally online — but either way a representative can score and return them within 15 minutes of completion.
  Don’t confuse the assessments with personality profiles, IQ tests or skill tests: They are not. “We are the antithesis of personality profiles,” Tinney said. “If you have a personality profile, at some point you have to make the leap in making the link (to job performance). We’re turning that model upside right.”
  If Scheig clients quoted in various trade publications are any indication of the company’s success, the consulting firm must be doing something right — and teaching others how to as well.