Imagine a stack of resumes that rises far over your head, towering up to the sky as far as the eye can see.

That’s what it can feel like to hire a new employee. The stack of resumes may not rise to the ceiling, but it certainly rises in your inbox. Yet there are hidden patterns within that stack, and if you know those patterns, you’re more likely to pick the right person for the job.

After researching 500,000 people, I’ve found patterns within the hiring process.

The sheer crushing volume of resumes favors people who know how to look good on paper. Yet often, the best hire for you will be the quietly methodical communicator who doesn’t radiate charisma in an interview, or the pragmatic detail manager whose advantages don’t always shine on a job application.

You can turn an average team into a high-performing team. You don’t have to clean house. You just need to identify each person’s personality “specialty.”

The Fascination Advantage® assessment will help you understand your talent around you, so you can create better relationships, grow your business, and become intensely valuable to those who matter most.

It’s understandable that managers will unintentionally hire to replicate themselves, or that a gatekeeper will evaluate on the basis of resumes submitted, yet this is not necessarily effective. It leads to imbalanced teams and conflicted cultures.

It’s tough for members of a team to each add their highest value, if nobody knows each other’s highest value in the first place.

Hire To Optimize Your Team, Not Replicate Your Team

You probably already recognize strengths. If you want more value from your team, start to recognize differences.

Your Fascination Advantage results will identify your unique Advantages, and the Advantages of your team.

A team will succeed in predictable areas, and lag in others, based on the composition of Advantages within that team.

HR managers can handpick certain Advantages, hiring specifically to balance and complement existing team members, or hone specific specialty traits for the overall group.

The more accurately you’ve assessed how a team is seen by the outside world, the more precisely you can guide that team’s interaction with customers and clients. Corporations can better understand and optimize their employees for anything that requires communication, from sales and customer service to hiring and nurturing high-performing talent.

It’s even more important for each team member to understand which of his or her Advantages are most valuable to the team.

Diversity isn’t just about hiring a balance in terms of ethnicity, gender, and age. It’s also about hiring a balance of personalities.

Each speaks a different “language,” based on his or her approach to communication.

Often you’ll find raw gems of potential hidden underneath layers of one-size-fits-all expectations.

The 7 Advantages are…

Innovation: the language of creativity

Passion: the language of relationship

Power: the language of confidence

Prestige: the language of excellence

Trust: the language of stability

Mystique: the language of listening

Alert: the language of details

If your company has become stale and you struggle to innovate, you probably want to recruit people with a primary Innovation Advantage, because they’re creative and tend to challenge the status quo. If your team is chock full of enthusiastic, larger-than-life characters, then you will do well to recruit people with a primary Trust or Mystique to balance the team. Each Advantage contributes a different form of value.

If hiring someone new isn’t an option, that’s okay. Get a clear look at what Advantages already exist on your team, so you can maximize those.

Hiring Based On Advantages

Consider new hires in terms of Advantages and personalities, rather than just skills and experience.

HINT: On the Archetype Matrix (found at HowToFascinate.com/matrix), find the adjectives that describe the qualities you are seeking in a job applicant, a committee seat, or other role. Then, fill the role with a preference for those Advantages.

If you want precise analysis, for instance, you might screen prospects to find someone for Alert. If you want a conversationalist who can quickly draw in prospects, you might search for an applicant with Passion or Power.

By supporting and accentuating each person’s natural traits, companies can increase engagement. Engaged employees are more satisfied, and more likely to satisfy customers, which in turn leads to greater revenue and higher goals.

Your dream team is waiting for you. (And you might not even have to sort through that enormous stack of resumes to build it!)

Your free code to the Fascination Advantage assessment:

+ + THE FASCINATION ADVANTAGE + +

Most personality assessments tell you how you see the world.

Only one measures how the world sees you.

Here is your private code to find out how the world sees you:

—-> 1. Go to HowToFascinate.com/YOU

—-> 2. For the access code, enter TCHAT

The Fascination Advantage is the first marketing-based personality assessment. Answer just 28 questions, and you’ll find out how others perceive you. Created by Sally Hogshead, and based on results of 500,000 participants, this test will reveal the very best of how the world sees you.

World-class branding expert Hogshead has discovered a new way to measure how people perceive your communication. Find out what makes you intensely valuable to others, so the world will see you at your best.

Hogshead rose to the top of the advertising profession in her early 20s, writing ads that fascinated millions of consumers. Over the course of her ad career, Hogshead won hundreds of awards for creativity, copywriting and branding, and was one of the most awarded advertising copywriters right from start of career, including almost every major international advertising awards.

Note: Sally Hogshead will appear on the February 11th edition of the TalentCulture #TChat Show.

About the Author: Sally Hogshead is the creator of The Fascination Advantage™: the world’s first personality test that measures what makes someone most engaging to others.

photo credit: giant stack of resumes via photopin (license)>