Measuring Up

A new generation of assessment tools goes beyond measuring personality traits. They take a more holistic approach to evaluating a candidate's ability to perform a job successfully.

By: Colleen Aylward

Claire is a typical Microsoftee: She's hard driven, has a quick mind, and is not about to succumb to the status quo. Or, in Profile XT terminology, she scored a 9 in her Learning Index and Verbal Skill, with 10s in her Numeric Ability and Reasoning, topped off with a 10 in Independence.

The Profile XT, from Profiles International of Waco, Texas, is one of a few "next generation" online assessments that measures more than just "personality." In this case, the Profile XT measures a person's thinking style (cognitive skills & abilities), key work-related behaviors and primary occupational interests.

Employers are increasingly using assessment tools such as the Profile XT in their hiring process. Gone are the days when great local candidates littered the streets and high-tech startups could go through them like napkins at a barbeque. Employers also have become savvier--and more wary--about employee replacement costs, which can reach six figures in some cases. They are determined to do it right the first time and are utilizing skills tests and assessment tools to identify the perfect candidates. They don't want to end up hiring people who look good on paper, but cannot function effectively as a member of their teams. Essentially, these new assessment tools enable an employer to identify job success factors with greater precision than ever before--helping them find people who best meet these requirements.

Consider Kevin Kelley, CEO of a new company, DUX>AREA, Inc., which deals in advanced research of environmental atomization. He needed to hire five regional directors and about 50 district managers across the country for his Seattle, Wash.-based business.

There were plenty of resumes and headhunters to help fill these slots, but Kelley knew that once the product was ready for market, he had one initial shot at getting it in front of the right people quickly, which meant he needed to be sure his new employees were up to the task. He chose to include an online assessment tool as a mandatory step in the hiring process, administering it to the three finalists for each position. In fact, Kelley even went further by taking a few hours with an assessment consultant, Lou Kertesz, to build his own templates or patterns that he wanted the finalists to match.

"Our introduction of an innovative and market-changing technology into an existing market required us to prove market acceptance quickly. Using an assessment tool was critical to comparing and sorting the large number of qualified sales candidates--and we hired only the best," Kelley says. "As a result of using this tool from the beginning, we now have a profile database of the most successful traits of our employees. We believe this is another competitive advantage." "I believe we have the best trained, most highly skilled workforce in the industry and our continued use of the information obtained in the assessments has built a very strong team," Kelley adds.

In fact, Kelley has assessed all his current employees as well, in order to do two things. One is to offer his employees a peek at each other's patterns to assist them in team building and understanding their behaviors in an environment that is often stressful. Two, continued use of the information also has allowed Kelley to build a pattern library of the successful templates for later hiring.

Lou Kertesz, one of the top assessment consultants in the U.S., has been evaluating and administering assessment tools for over 25 years. He began using these tools as a junior human resource professional and continued their use when he held vice president-level positions in both large, well-established firms and smaller, high-growth companies. Now, he runs a consulting business, which helps companies use technology to greatly reduce hiring and performance management expenses.

"Using this technology is simply smart management. If you can't measure it... you can't manage it. This new generation of assessment tools is more powerful than any before it," Kertesz says. "When assessment results are linked to actual job performance data, which is what I do, the combination provides actionable management information that can be tracked over time. With these tools, a company can build success profiles than enhance hiring and promotion, and develop ROI models that show how well they are working," he adds. "The results are significant, and most clients experience positive financial returns within six to nine months."

Today, the most effective tools in the hiring process are those that evaluate not only personality patterns, but those that also measure cognitive skills and occupational interests in the same assessment tool. When assessments like the Myers Briggs or DISC products came out in the 1920s , they were remarkable for their time and still have some utility today in team-building and identifying primary communication styles. But on the market today are a handful of next generation assessment tools that test more deeply for job-related fit. They offer data that can be analyzed when looking for certain combinations of scores to pinpoint potential strengths and weaknesses for a particular job description.

These are a few of the more affordable, yet robust, examples of assessment tools:
Profile XT by Profiles International (www.profilesontheweb.com)
Profile XT measures a person's thinking style, behavior patterns, and occupational interests. This tool is unique in that it has a "distortion score," which indicates the degree to which the candidate attempted to present a more favorable impression than is factual.
TotalView by HRD Press (www.hire1-2-3.com)
TotalView also measures thinking ability, specific behavioral traits, and motivational interests.
ASSESS by Bigby, Havis & Associates (www.bigby.com)
ASSESS measures thinking, how the candidate works with tasks, and how they work with people.

Although the naming conventions for the traits of these assessments may differ, each of these assessments measures cognitive ability, key personality traits, and the types of work a person likes best. Also, each offers a written narrative and graphic representation of the candidate's results. I believe that the data from any of these tools would make a powerful contribution to interview.

Finally, you can use the tools to test your existing employees, using the scores of your current top performers in a specific position (such as sales) to see how closely a candidate is naturally aligned with your top producers. Knowing this information pre-hire can save thousands of dollars in lower turnover and greater productivity in the long run.

Learn more about Colleen Aylward.