A Great Resource For A Manufacturing Company In Sun Prairie
“We’ve been using the Drake P3 system for a year and a half and it is a great tool,” shares Tara Conger, VP of Human Resources for Palmer-Johnson Power Systems in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. One of the main ways they use Drake P3 is for hiring. “We are able to learn much more about a candidate and see how they will work best with the manager and team.”
Many employers never look at how a new employee will work with existing employees. However, Palmer-Johnson considers new hires and how they might mesh. “It’s also nice to see how a candidate compares to our internal top performers,” Conger added. “It complements our whole hiring process and it’s been a great resource to have in our toolbox. There is so much more that we can do in the system and we are looking forward to utilizing more of it.”
Hiring For The Right Fit At A Regional Bank In Maine
“If we are hiring a teller there is a certain band of things we measure. Tellers need to be good with customers, able to do repetitive transactions over a long period, strong on detail and adept at working in a rule-bound environment,” said Marsha Sawyer, senior vice president of human resources at
Bar Harbor Bank & Trust in Maine.
To get someone who really fits this profile the bank doesn’t just rely on interviews, they use Drake P3 as an assessment tool. It’s a tool they find “incredibly accurate” and it helps them navigate the subtleties of getting the right person for a job.
Sawyer explains, “A teller needs to be people oriented, but if you get someone too extroverted they spend too much time talking and are slow in getting onto the next transaction. We look for people who fall into a particular range of extroversion.”
Bar Harbor Bank & Trust has an admirable turnover rate of 12% but it wasn’t always this way. Before Bartlett Consulting was involved, turnover was running as high as 85%.
“The high turnover occurred for a variety of reasons and it was awful. Everyone worked hard at fixing that. I can’t
give Drake P3 all the credit but it certainly helped.”
Of course, adding an assessment tool to the hiring process involves some extra effort but Sawyer doesn’t hesitate in waving that concern aside. “When I think of the amount of time it takes to exit someone, go through the hiring process to find a replacement and then wait while they go through the learning curve—well the time and money we spend on using the assessment tool is small in comparison.”
Drake P3 isn’t the only method the bank uses to assess people; they consider experience, education, and what they hear in the interview. But the Drake P3 helps to improve the probability of selecting someone who will be successful in the job.
“You need to understand that just because someone doesn’t match the profile, it doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t do the job. But if it’s not a fit it’s unlikely they’ll be happy in the long run. We don’t want to invest in someone who discovers after six months that the job isn’t right for them. It helps us and the candidate avoid a mismatch.”
Sawyer has looked at competitive products but says “I just couldn’t find a reason why I would want to change. We’ve been using Drake P3 for ten years now. It’s proven its value.”
About The Bar Harbor Bank & Trust – The Bar Harbor Bank & Trust is regional bank with 12 branches up and down the coast of Maine. It’s the kind of place where they know the names of their customers, their customers’ kids and the dog’s name too. They have just under 200 employees and serve the tourist business, commercial lending, real estate and of course the lobster industry.
Hiring Better Staff In One of the Countries Top Performing Banks
“We use the Drake P3 in our recruitment process,” said Gary Gragg EVP at First Financial Bank in Texas, “We did a study of our star performers and created a composite profile of their personal characteristics. Now when we are hiring we compare candidates to the profile and so we have a better chance of bringing in new star performers.”
First Financial is a holding company which oversees ten different banks. As you can imagine each bank has its own personality, even so, one thing they have in common is that they all use the Drake P3 assessment tool.
Gragg shares a story of how the Drake P3 can help with hiring decisions.
“We were looking at candidates for our loan review area, which is where we train people who are just starting in lending,” explained Gragg. “The Drake P3 showed that one applicant was extremely introverted. Our composite profile of successful loan officers shows they should be somewhat extroverted. With his degree of introversion he would have struggled in that job. This insight helped us choose another candidate who had a better chance of doing well in the bank.”
“We have a better chance of bringing in new star performers .”
The Drake P3 assessment isn’t a knock-out tool, but First Financial uses the information from the assessment to help guide their judgment. Gragg recalls another example of how the Drake P3 assessment helped the bank avoid a poor hiring decision.
“I remember one time we were looking at hiring a loan officer,” said Gragg, “and this fellow looked like a really good candidate. He fit in all the boxes of the profile except for one and that one was conformity. So this was an area we explored in our interview. We discovered he was a big picture thinker and not particularly good at dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. Unsurprisingly, it turned out he’d had problems with the paper work in previous jobs. Well, we don’t want our loan officers to be sitting at a desk all day, we want them out meeting customers, but in the loan business getting the paper work right is paramount—this job wouldn’t have worked for him all. We did him a favour and saved ourselves a headache by not putting him in that role.”
Making a bad hiring decision is very costly and at First Financial they take the time to get the right people. One of the ways they can be better than their competitors is by having better people and they appreciate the role Drake P3 plays in finding those people who really fit the role.
“All the bank’s presidents are believers in the process and have been supporting it for many years.”
“I don’t have any problems with the product whatsoever,” said Gragg. “It’s easy to use and it can do things even beyond what we are using it for. If we can reduce turnover then the product easily pays for itself.”
Effectively deploying HR tools like Drake’s P3 is a reflection of an organization that believes it succeeds through its people. “We’ve been big fans of the Drake P3,” said Gragg, “All the bank’s presidents are believers in the process and have been supporting it for many years.”
About the First Financial Bank
First Financial is comprised of 10 community banks and has 48 locations across Texas. With a history that stretches back more than a hundred years the banks are well established in their communities. First Financial is committed to providing high-quality personalized service.