how interviewers can screen out candidates who will have attendance problems

In response to a previous post from someone frustrated that her co-worker is chronically absent, one commenter asked:

If anyone has suggestions on how to screen for this issue of not-showing up for work, please let me know.

I work in a call center, most of the folks we hire know what that type of environment is. And yet we still end up terminating people on a regular basis for not showing up for work. Extremely frustrating!

As a side note, we do everything we can to make it a fun place to work and whenever we do hire we have people recommending their friends to apply so I like to think it's not the environment.

The fabulous Jamie responded:

If there is a way to screen for those who are internally rather than externally driven, I am sure AAM knows it (I certainly do not).

I do think most performance problems, including going AWOL, come down to how people approach their jobs far more than the job itself. I temped for quite a while when I was starting out - and some of those jobs were awful. But I showed up on time and did the best job I could because I wasn't doing it for them - I was doing it for me. I couldn't abide people thinking I was a slacker or incompetent, even though I would never see them again. Hire someone who will do a good job because of their own ego, and not as a favor to the company, and then at least there will be consistency.

For what it's worth, when I was on the market I would never apply to a place that claimed to be a fun place to work. I interpreted that (rightly or wrongly) as being lax and not performance oriented - and I personally have to be in a performance oriented environment to find any job satisfaction. I'm not implying that your workplace is lax - just that the wording might be a red flag to those of us who love the days the metrics are published and loathe the birthday cakes and company picnics.

Here are my thoughts on this:

First, no hiring process is perfect. No matter how thorough your screening processes, you can't screen out attendance problems with 100% accuracy. However, there are a lot of things that you can do to minimize it:

1. Really probe for motivation in the interview. For instance, you can ask things like, "Tell me about the workplace you were most satisfied with. What made you so satisfied? What about the time you were the least satisfied?" You're looking for people who talk about getting satisfaction out of productivity and results and a feeling of accomplishment. Also, if you're really probing deeply into past work experiences (getting them to walk you through a past project in detail, with lots of questions), you're going to start getting a sense of what drives the person and how they think about work.

2. In the interview process, talk explicitly about your company's culture and values. Talk about having high standards, a strong work ethic, a commitment to results -- because some candidates will self-select out if they're not a good fit with that environment.

For instance, I'll sometimes say in phone interviews, "One thing to know about our culture is that we hold ourselves to high standards. We strive for excellence in everything we do and the work ethic here is higher than anywhere else I’ve worked -- you'll never see someone on Facebook during the day, or spending an afternoon goofing off in the kitchen. And we’re direct about addressing it when things aren’t working out. Some people absolutely love that, but it’s not for everyone."

Candidates who will fit in well with that culture become excited and more invested in the job prospect at this point, and candidates who aren’t good matches tend to reveal that through their responses or drop out on their own.

(This gets into Jamie's point about what you choose to emphasize -- candidates who respond to hearing that you have a "fun" culture may be different from candidates who respond to hearing that you have a "fast-paced, results-driven" culture.)

3. Reference checks can be extremely helpful at ferreting out this kind of thing. Aside from asking straightforward questions about attendance and reliability, find ways to make it "safe" for references to give you the truth about the candidate. For instance: "Some people are at a point in their careers where work is a top priority and they're really throwing themselves into it with enthusiasm. Other people are looking more for a 9-5 job that pays the bills, but it's not a passion for them. Both are entirely legitimate approaches. Where would you put Bob on that spectrum?"

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Now, all that aside, addressing the call center environment question that the commenter brought up initially, I do think there are some jobs where the nature of the work means that there's just going to be a revolving door element to the staffing. Call centers are a prime example of this. You should still do the sort of screening above, and also be very transparent during the hiring process about what candidates can expect once working there, but to some extent, in call center and similar environments, this may be part of the package.

What do others think? Did you ever have an employer do an excellent job of communicating culture to you during the hiring process? How did they do it? Did you ever work in a traditionally high-turnover environment like a call center that found ways to have more staffing stability than its competitors?