Where have all the good employees gone?
At a recent leadership development training program, Derek Stockley, a training, learning and performance management consultant based in Melbourne, asked a question:
Knowing what you know now, how many of your current employees would you re-employ?
Answer: About 60%
This answer is consistent with previous groups he had trained as well as in general employment survey research. It means that poor employee selection decisions are regularly made. Suitable candidates are not being found. 
About 40% of employees are not performing well or as expected. In some way, they cause their management a problem. It may be:
●    poor attitude 
●    interpersonal problems
●    they cannot perform their duties properly

Does sound employee selection practices matter?
Especially in the SMEs of Nepal, which are not branded in the minds of potential recruits, hiring tends to take the following approach:
1.    A need for staff is ‘felt’ after receiving multiple complaints of being understaffed by existing staffs and customers.
2.    Various means of getting the word about vacancies in the company are used.
3.    Few candidates who would fall in the “very confused and I’d do anything” category, apply.
4.    Their CV is scanned on the spot without much hope.
5.    Interviews are done with lots of breadth, meaning general talk but very little depth, identifying strength, weaknesses, values, and aspirations.
6.    If there is a ‘click’, the punch line “Can you join tomorrow?” is uttered, without the setting of any scope, limitation, expectation, HR policies, and career path.
How sound is this selection practice? Obviously not very much. This process produces only 60% performers as per Derek’s experiment earlier. It is pretty much as good as tossing a coin, 50:50 chance, on whether to hire a certain individual or not.
The problem with “feeling” the need of a staff and “click” effect 
Most entrepreneurs are ‘feelers’, driven by passion. They succeeded in the career by ‘feeling’ opportunities and ‘click moments’ when they met that business partner with whom they are able to sit on the pile of cash they have now.  However, for every 10 such ‘click moments’ leading to success, 10 ‘click moments’ lead to bankruptcy and criminal lawsuits.  
Hence, without any other frameworks, entrepreneurs from SME’s would keep relying on their guts to select hundreds of employees over their career. However, the only problem is that unlike selecting partners, selecting employees is a continuous process. Here 50% chance means 50 wrong men in the wrong job. That can be a quite to mess to fix and a huge burden on the company’s finance.
Pareto’s 80:20 rule
Pareto principle goes even further than the law of chance invited by the ‘feel’ and ‘click’ method of selecting employees. If the principle is to apply in HR, 20% of employees produce 80% of the results. If we have 100 people in our payroll and only 50 are best fits, we will be getting only 40% results. That is bad and expensive.  

Scientific selection process
The bottom line is that we need to spend more time to make a good decision while selecting employees.  

1.    Establish clear requirements
Which department; what is the job description; what type of past salary, experience, education, personality would excel in this job; what is the career prospect for the employee after this job; can the department fail, if so what to do with the recruit; 
2.    Probe the candidates in a variety of ways
Is he coachable; can he take ambiguity; is the candidate employable or better off as an entrepreneur; how confused is he about his career; is he a people person or ‘thing’ person’; how much IQ and EQ he has; what level of stress test he can pass?
3.    Consider how they compliment the other team members
Can the candidate be dominated by the existing boss; how will the strength weakness of the new team members complement each other; is he the solo player, the ‘free rider’ or the team player; 
4.    Make sure you are fully satisfied
Before saying, ‘You are hired’, take your time to assess not only your emotions but your mental processes. Besides, the ‘good feel’ and the ‘click’ how many requirements of the job can you match with the strength and weaknesses of the candidate? If you are intellectually satisfied, turn to your gut for the final approval.  

Conclusion
Going through this common sense approach, might be standard for many managers, however it might be a novelty for other. We are never too old to change our ways.  
The best employees are waiting to be discovered.  
Now you know how to unearth them.