Recently, I ordered a product that was to be shipped from nearly 2000 miles away. It made it all the way to my hometown, but was delivered to a house on a nearby street. Thankfully, the neighbor brought my package to me. If you were to ask me if I was satisfied with the shipping, I would say “absolutely not”, even though it had correctly covered a great majority of the distance to my home.
They say “The Last Mile” is the hardest thing to accomplish in logistics, and given the example above, I would say they are likely right. “The Last Mile” is the shipping of products from a distribution center to the delivery location. In my case, the shipping company “almost” got it right – but “almost” doesn’t matter in most things, including “almost” delivering a package to the right place.
When selecting applicants for a position, organizations rightly look for appropriate Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs) that are necessary for successfully performing a job. We can think of these KSAs as competencies, or qualities that are necessary to perform a job function. For example, a surgeon must have knowledge of the medical field to be successful. A salesperson has to have people skills in order to be successful, and an athlete must have certain abilities to be successful in a given sport. Clearly, without the necessary KSAs, employees will not be successful.
Coming back to my shipping experience, perhaps we can think of the KSAs, or competencies, as comprising a significant portion of the trek from the warehouse to my neighborhood. If that package had been sent to a different state, there would have been no way it could have been delivered accurately. In much the same way, if an organization doesn’t consider the right competencies for a job, an applicant has no chance at being successful on the job.
Yet, I bet we all can think of an employee who might have had the right competencies for a job, but still failed at the position. A manager may have been an expert on a process or system, yet failed miserably in a leadership position. Many times, the reason the employee fails, even if they have all of the competencies to perform the job, is that they are still missing something. To continue with the shipping analogy, it is as though The Last Mile wasn’t covered adequately.
So, how can organizations ensure they cover that Last Mile well when selecting applicants? The answer, I believe, is to ensure the applicant has appropriate personality traits for the position in question. Finding the right fit should not only encompass the appropriate competencies, but also the right make-up (or personality) of the person. Research has shown that personality traits often compliment other selection approaches by contributing something unique to the selection decision. Consequently, personality assessments should be used in conjunction with other methods to help organizations make the best decision when it comes to selecting applicants.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I don’t want a person who has the best personality to be a mechanic to work on my car if they don’t know the difference between a water pump and a fuel pump. In much the same way, the most appropriate personality traits cannot make up for the necessary competencies to perform a job. But if the employee’s personality is not a good fit for the job, then that poor fit will drain the employee’s energy, leading them to leave the organization or, worse, perhaps engage in some other forms of self-medication. Either way, the poor fit is not good for the applicant, and it is not good for the organization. Hence, in order to maximize the proper person-job fit for an applicant, organizations would be very wise to consider both the KSAs (or competencies) and the personality traits of the applicant when making a hiring decision. In doing so, organizations will ensure that they’ve effectively covered The Last Mile in the hiring process.
