Employee Personalities Are Important...Which Assessments Really Help?

Assessments now come in all shapes and sizes, and the employment assessment industry continues to grow at a rapid pace.  The good news is that there is greater information available now regarding these assessments.  The bad news is that there can be so many to choose from that it is difficult to determine which ones are best for your business.

There are hundreds if not thousands of different employment assessments available today.  So many of them are developed by small companies and only sold locally that it is impossible to know exactly how many there are.  So let’s break down the basics:

Employment assessments generally fall into 4 categories:

1. Behavioral Assessments (Personality Characteristics and Traits)
2. Cognitive Assessments (Speed of Learning and Problem Solving)
3. Skills Assessments (Measure hard/learned skills and capabilities)
4. Attitude Assessments (Measures attitudes and self-admissions to certain behaviors such as honesty)

Some of the basic ways that employment assessments are used are:

1. Pre-employment screening
2. Coaching
3. Team Building Training Succession Planning Outplacement

Steps to take “prior” to choosing employment assessment(s):

1. Outline or review your corporate human resource strategy.  Where is the business or your business unit growing or changing, and what people resources are you going to need to fulfill the overall strategy? 
2. Then, it is critical to clearly understand the tasks that must be performed within each job.  Performing a job analysis is a critical step prior to using employment assessments.  If you don’t know what the job requires, it is very difficult to know if you’re hiring people who can be successful in the job.  It is also critical that you are documenting “why” you are looking for particular traits or skills within a job.  Regardless of whether you use assessments, this step is the cornerstone to creating a solid and legally defensible selection system.  To say that “I need to hire people with good math skills” should be “documented” as a skill that is actually important for success in the job versus just being a skill that you “think” is important.
3. Now that you understand what each job requires, you can begin to determine which employment assessment(s) can help you get the information on “Fit”, “Skills” and “Attitudes” within your selection process for each job.  Please see the section below on what you should look for in choosing assessments.

Items of importance when choosing employment assessment(s):

1. The most important thing in choosing an assessment is making sure that it is valid and reliable for the purposes for which you intend to use it.  For example, there are “behavioral/personality” assessments that are completely valid for training and development but not for hiring.  Be sure you are comparing apples to apples when considering various assessments.
2. Choose assessment(s) that have current validation studies and technical manuals that have been updated within the last couple of years. 
3. Unless you are prepared to spend a lot of money on training and professional interpretation, choose assessments that are easy to use and understand.  This will allow you to build an automated process that utilizes technology rather than labor.  Your managers should be able to use the assessments and information without expecting them to become experts in assessments.

Some other things to consider in regard to employment assessments:

1. A good personality/cognitive assessment will allow you to be efficient and utilize the information from the assessment for more than one purpose.  You could use the information throughout the lifecycle of the employee for on-boarding, training, succession planning, team development, etc.   
2. Choose a vendor that can grow with your company over time.  Particularly if you have divisions or departments that are in other countries, choose a vendor that can support international assessment requirements.
3. Choose a vendor that is committed to providing you the highest quality at a reasonable price.  With gains in technology, it is no longer necessary to pay high prices for assessments.
4. Be careful to choose assessments that do not require lengthy time requirements.  Many applicants will not sit through an hour of an online assessment.  The “fall out” rate for qualified candidates is high enough, so you don’t want to ask them to spend more time than is necessary to get good quality assessment information.

As technology becomes more affordable, it will be easier than ever for smaller companies to compete in the global market.  As competition grows more intense for the same products and services, the true competitive advantage for any company is their people.  Hiring, coaching and motivating employees who “fit” their respective jobs is the competitive advantage that can make or break the business!  Today there are high-quality, affordable tools that make the selection process easier and help ensure that you are indeed making great “people” decisions!

Given the importance of assessments to ensure that your company is hiring the right candidates, one of the best ways to explore assessments is to set up a free test drive account.  

Julie Moreland is a founding partner and President of PeopleClues. During the past 20 years, Julie has become a nationally respected authority on practical business applications of assessment technologies. 

Assessments now come in all shapes and sizes, and the employment assessment industry continues to grow at a rapid pace.