Using a variety of psychology-based tests can streamline the recruitment process.
An organization with a unique corporate culture that is able to select people who fit that specific culture (soft skills) will have better performers and a higher retention rate.
So-called “soft skills” relate to an individual’s specific work-related personality and interests, what motivates them, while “hard skills” refer to items such as education, past experiences and qualifications.
Quantifying “soft skills” is a vital component of the recruitment/ selection and succession process — and quite often the most time consuming and expensive. It is so costly because, traditionally, it is introduced later in the selection process (after all the hard skills-based advertising and screening), it is very time-consuming (the cost of having a manager sit across from a recruit) and mistakes are easier to make (interviews and “gut feels” are not great predictors of future success and are not easily scalable). Even the Internet has not been able to improve the situation very much.
So what are leading corporations beginning to do to combat this slow, and inefficient, chain of events in today’s talent shortage? They are using more comprehensive, computer-based assessments to validly match applicants with their own top performers in key jobs, increasing accuracy and decreasing time-to-hire.
These companies have realized that if they can accurately identify potential top prospects faster, then they can spend more time selling themselves to the right prospects and less time selling themselves to the wrong ones.
TYPES OF ASSESSMENT
What type of assessment is right for accurate and defensible hiring? There are around 10,000 different assessments in this unregulated industry, so buyer beware! The number of assessments grows more rapidly every year as the Internet increases information dissemination, in some cases to a point of absurdity.
Because the assessment industry is not regulated, be wary — anyone can claim that they have a valid assessment, even if it has no documentation to support that claim. Even with some of the most familiar assessment names, be sure to ask for documentation on their validity and reliability — a technical manual should be made available. On some familiar assessments it will say right on the test booklet or computer screen, “Not intended for use as a hiring tool.”
The growing use of psychological assessments has to some extent outpaced the level of sophistication and knowledge about them. To understand the merits or otherwise of a given test, it is necessary to understand the ways in which they work. Commercially available tests fall into two broad categories: Cognitive and Personality.
IQ
The word cognitive stems from the Latin cogno, meaning knowledge. The cognitive test analyzes intellect in the form of IQ and in terms of perceptual, spatial and mechanical ability. It is ideal for simply testing a person’s ability to do a given job.
Personality tests deal with habitual behaviour — how one deals with situations. These tests fall into two distinct categories — normative and ipsative.
“NORMATIVE” ASSESSMENTS
The most useful assessment tools for employment on the market are called “normative assessments.” Normative tests allow for the comparison of people. The normative test measures quantifiable characteristics of an individual against confirmed patterns of statistical normality (i.e.: statistics relating to representative statistical samples of particular groups or populations).
People can be compared to jobs. These tools quantify the soft skills of a particular applicant and compare/cross reference the results to those of existing top performers for a particular role. These tools are typically comprised of more lengthy questionnaires (accuracy and defensibility means being thorough).
“IPSATIVE” ASSESSMENTS
The other type of test on the market is called “ipsative.” The ipsative assessment focuses more exclusively on the individual. The job candidate is forced to describe his or herself in such a way that certain aspects of personality are highlighted at the expense of others.
The critical difference between the two types of assessment is that they are scored on different scales. Normative tests measure person against person, while ipsative tests are geared toward identifying the relative strength of individual characteristics within each person.
To get a well-rounded picture of a candidate, the ideal formula includes a mixture of both the cognitive and personality/normative test. This product would provide a personality/normative position for managers who require a good foundation for an interview, based on comparable factors relating to the job. In addition, the utilization of a cognitive portion would determine if, in addition to the personality analysis, there is sufficient balance in the candidate’s intellect and other ability factors.
SOFTWARE
Many organizations are now moving towards psychometrically based software programs to measure an individual’s work-related personality, interest/motivation characteristics to create their unique “personal profile.”
This data can be modified over time to improve results while maintaining validity.
The software programs go a long way to maintaining a consistent, defensible assessment of individuals by eliminating the need for an in-house expert to interpret the outputs adding credibility to the process at the same time.
For succession planning, a personalized match between candidates and job benchmarks indicates to individuals which jobs best fit their personal profiles. These programs can help to recommend people for positions where their attributes will find optimal expression and where they will find success and satisfaction; the jobs to which they are best suited.
Increased competition in today’s economy has forced firms to increase their productivity and compete against one another based on intellectual capital. People have become recognized as a company’s most valuable asset and primary competitive advantage.
Employers are finding that current recruiting methods are not achieving sufficient returns on investment. To date, Internet recruiting methods have been disappointing job-seekers and recruiters alike as they do not predict future job performance at a high enough level of validity.
REDUCED SCREENING TIME
There are new innovations showing up on the Web that can reduce the screening time even further. There are ASP-based services that companies are looking for that will bring the “suitability” through an assessment up front, to do an initial screen before seeing the résumé, accelerating the screening stage even further — keep your eyes peeled.
Top 5 reasons to use properly validated assessments:
•Greatly reduce costly corporate screening time;
•Help recruiters discover which applicants fit them best — increasing retention;
•Add valid confirmation to “intuition” and “gut feel” in decision-making process;
•Provide a more proactive vehicle for employees for succession planning; and
•Help employees to discover and pursue their most effective career directions.
Ben Baldwin is co-founder, president and CEO of careerXact, an online career assessment and job application tool that quantifies applicants’ personality and interests to instantly match them to the most suitable jobs. He can be reached at [email protected] or (416) 480-6227 ext. 204. George Baldwin is co-founder, vice-president and COO of careerXact. He can be reached at [email protected] or (416) 480-6227 ext. 202, www.
careerXact.com.
So-called “soft skills” relate to an individual’s specific work-related personality and interests, what motivates them, while “hard skills” refer to items such as education, past experiences and qualifications.
Quantifying “soft skills” is a vital component of the recruitment/ selection and succession process — and quite often the most time consuming and expensive. It is so costly because, traditionally, it is introduced later in the selection process (after all the hard skills-based advertising and screening), it is very time-consuming (the cost of having a manager sit across from a recruit) and mistakes are easier to make (interviews and “gut feels” are not great predictors of future success and are not easily scalable). Even the Internet has not been able to improve the situation very much.
So what are leading corporations beginning to do to combat this slow, and inefficient, chain of events in today’s talent shortage? They are using more comprehensive, computer-based assessments to validly match applicants with their own top performers in key jobs, increasing accuracy and decreasing time-to-hire.
These companies have realized that if they can accurately identify potential top prospects faster, then they can spend more time selling themselves to the right prospects and less time selling themselves to the wrong ones.
TYPES OF ASSESSMENT
What type of assessment is right for accurate and defensible hiring? There are around 10,000 different assessments in this unregulated industry, so buyer beware! The number of assessments grows more rapidly every year as the Internet increases information dissemination, in some cases to a point of absurdity.
Because the assessment industry is not regulated, be wary — anyone can claim that they have a valid assessment, even if it has no documentation to support that claim. Even with some of the most familiar assessment names, be sure to ask for documentation on their validity and reliability — a technical manual should be made available. On some familiar assessments it will say right on the test booklet or computer screen, “Not intended for use as a hiring tool.”
The growing use of psychological assessments has to some extent outpaced the level of sophistication and knowledge about them. To understand the merits or otherwise of a given test, it is necessary to understand the ways in which they work. Commercially available tests fall into two broad categories: Cognitive and Personality.
IQ
The word cognitive stems from the Latin cogno, meaning knowledge. The cognitive test analyzes intellect in the form of IQ and in terms of perceptual, spatial and mechanical ability. It is ideal for simply testing a person’s ability to do a given job.
Personality tests deal with habitual behaviour — how one deals with situations. These tests fall into two distinct categories — normative and ipsative.
“NORMATIVE” ASSESSMENTS
The most useful assessment tools for employment on the market are called “normative assessments.” Normative tests allow for the comparison of people. The normative test measures quantifiable characteristics of an individual against confirmed patterns of statistical normality (i.e.: statistics relating to representative statistical samples of particular groups or populations).
People can be compared to jobs. These tools quantify the soft skills of a particular applicant and compare/cross reference the results to those of existing top performers for a particular role. These tools are typically comprised of more lengthy questionnaires (accuracy and defensibility means being thorough).
“IPSATIVE” ASSESSMENTS
The other type of test on the market is called “ipsative.” The ipsative assessment focuses more exclusively on the individual. The job candidate is forced to describe his or herself in such a way that certain aspects of personality are highlighted at the expense of others.
The critical difference between the two types of assessment is that they are scored on different scales. Normative tests measure person against person, while ipsative tests are geared toward identifying the relative strength of individual characteristics within each person.
To get a well-rounded picture of a candidate, the ideal formula includes a mixture of both the cognitive and personality/normative test. This product would provide a personality/normative position for managers who require a good foundation for an interview, based on comparable factors relating to the job. In addition, the utilization of a cognitive portion would determine if, in addition to the personality analysis, there is sufficient balance in the candidate’s intellect and other ability factors.
SOFTWARE
Many organizations are now moving towards psychometrically based software programs to measure an individual’s work-related personality, interest/motivation characteristics to create their unique “personal profile.”
This data can be modified over time to improve results while maintaining validity.
The software programs go a long way to maintaining a consistent, defensible assessment of individuals by eliminating the need for an in-house expert to interpret the outputs adding credibility to the process at the same time.
For succession planning, a personalized match between candidates and job benchmarks indicates to individuals which jobs best fit their personal profiles. These programs can help to recommend people for positions where their attributes will find optimal expression and where they will find success and satisfaction; the jobs to which they are best suited.
Increased competition in today’s economy has forced firms to increase their productivity and compete against one another based on intellectual capital. People have become recognized as a company’s most valuable asset and primary competitive advantage.
Employers are finding that current recruiting methods are not achieving sufficient returns on investment. To date, Internet recruiting methods have been disappointing job-seekers and recruiters alike as they do not predict future job performance at a high enough level of validity.
REDUCED SCREENING TIME
There are new innovations showing up on the Web that can reduce the screening time even further. There are ASP-based services that companies are looking for that will bring the “suitability” through an assessment up front, to do an initial screen before seeing the résumé, accelerating the screening stage even further — keep your eyes peeled.
Top 5 reasons to use properly validated assessments:
•Greatly reduce costly corporate screening time;
•Help recruiters discover which applicants fit them best — increasing retention;
•Add valid confirmation to “intuition” and “gut feel” in decision-making process;
•Provide a more proactive vehicle for employees for succession planning; and
•Help employees to discover and pursue their most effective career directions.
Ben Baldwin is co-founder, president and CEO of careerXact, an online career assessment and job application tool that quantifies applicants’ personality and interests to instantly match them to the most suitable jobs. He can be reached at [email protected] or (416) 480-6227 ext. 204. George Baldwin is co-founder, vice-president and COO of careerXact. He can be reached at [email protected] or (416) 480-6227 ext. 202, www.
careerXact.com.
