Talent Assessments enable business leaders, talent acquisition professionals and hiring managers to leverage Science to hire the best possible candidates.
We would never go to a doctor that solely relies on intuition and past medical history to make medical decisions. Instead, we go to highly trained medical professionals skilled in using scientifically validated methods of diagnosing health issues.
Yet somehow, it is very common for organisations to hire based on intuition and a CV’s impression.
In 2022, companies no longer have to use ‘gut-felling’ or outdated recruitment and selection methods.
Business organisations worldwide can now join an Elite group of high-performing businesses that utilise scientifically validated Talent Assessments for Hiring.
The Impact of Talent Assessment for Hiring
When choosing the correct Talent Assessment solution, they can help:
• Business owners and executives improve corporate performance and employee productivity.
• Talent Acquisition and Human resource professionals enhance the quality of the talent they select and how smoothly they onboard new employees.
• Project managers and team leaders assemble and retain high-performing cross-functional teams.
• Direct managers find the right team members and coach them to success.
• Employees find roles where they are ready to grow and perform to their full potential.
What are Talent Assessments, and why does it matter?
Assessments help companies hire the best talent by weighing in on a candidate’s potential. Talent Assessments are also used to determine if an employee is right for a role and what they need to grow within the company.
Talent Assessments can be used to hire and coach every role within an organisation, including managers and executives. Pre-employment Assessments can help organisations with hiring decisions and work on profiling candidates based on personality traits, cognitive abilities and relevant knowledge.
A best in class talent assessment solution is scientifically validated, unbiased, time-efficient and scalable. Hiring the wrong candidate for a role can cost organisations millions of euros in lost productivity, training and turnover. The problem with traditional hiring methods is that they rely on gut feelings and subjective opinions, leading to bias and poor decision making.
By using our scientifically proven assessments, companies can objectively determine whether or not a candidate will be successful at your company based on their cognitive ability and behavioural drives. As a result, talent assessments help hire better people faster than ever. The predictive Index Hiring Platform allows Hiring Managers to prioritise candidates who have the best chances of succeeding in the role.
The Predictive Index Job Assessment
The Predictive Index Job Assessment looks beyond focusing on a subjective wish list of tasks and skills and generic Job Characteristics. The predictive Index allows its users to build the perfect behavioural and cognitive profile for any role in the organisation. Ensuring that Job Advertisements resonate with the correct target audience and that the recruiters understand the ‘perfect fit is as objective as possible.
The Job Assessment can also help create truly relevant Job Advertisements by giving the recruiter objective Job Characteristics based on the results of the Job Assessment. The Job Assessment does not have to be used exclusively by new hires. Still, it can also assist in succession planning or identify the cognitive and behavioural requirements of every existing position in the organisation. By combining the Behavioural, Cognitive and Job Assessment, hiring managers further reduce Biases in the decision making process and let proven Science guide them in Evaluating a candidate’s fit for any role.
The PI Behavioral Assessment™
The PI Behavioral Assessment™ is a free-choice, untimed personality test that will revolutionise the way you hire employees. For more than 60 years, thousands of businesses around the globe have used the EFPA-certified behavioural assessment to understand their employees and candidates behavioural drives.
Behavioural fit is one of the best predictors of future job performance. Over 350 scientific studies have confirmed the validity of the PI Behavioural Assessment.
How does the PI Behavioural assessment work?
The PI Behavioural Assessment is a highly effective yet simple science-based assessment that can predict workplace behaviours and motivating needs. An individual’s behavioural pattern is created based on the four behavioural drives.
To generate these insights, participants answered two questionnaires; a list of adjectives on how others expect them to act and another list of the adjectives they would use to describe themselves. Once the assessment has been completed, the Predictive Index software generates a descriptive report on the participant’s behavioural profile and the candidate’s unique behavioural pattern.
A candidate’s behavioural profile is compared against the job target to evaluate their fit. Then, to take it to the next level, recruiters can use the insights to build relevant structured interview questions to understand the candidate’s behavioural fit better. The application of the PI Behavioural assessment does not stop at hiring. The PI Behavioural assessment is also used for coaching, succession planning, talent strategy and improving employee relations.
The importance of Behavioural Assessment
Poor hiring decisions can be extremely costly to both the organisation and the employee. Issues created by poor hiring decisions include employee disengagement, poor job performance, increased employee turnover and lack of motivation.
The Four behavioural drives that the Predictive Index measures
Dominance (A)
Dominance is the drive to exert influence on other’s or events. Respondents with a high dominance will value work environments that give them more independence and autonomy. Low dominance respondents would accept roles where they have to accept the authority of others who are more interested in more collaborative tasks.
Extraversion (B)
Extraversion can be defined as the drive for social interaction with other people. High-extraversion employees will generally be very happy to engage with other employees and enjoy opportunities to participate in social activities at work. Employees with low extraversion may be exhausted and maybe even disengaged when expected to work in an environment with a lot of communication.
Patience (C)
Patience is the drive to have consistency and stability in one’s environment. Patient employees are calm, steady, and consistent. They work at a moderate pace and are satisfied to do routine tasks over a long period. Employees with limited patience have little need for stability and consistency. They will be energised and driving instead. They refer to things being dynamic and flowing instead of static and unchangeable.
Formality (D)
Formality is the drive to conform to rules and structure. High-formality employees approach their tasks with diligence and seriousness. They are concerned about doing things correctly, which explains their concentration on precision. They are well-organised and pay close attention to the smallest details. Employees that work in a low-formality environment are more informal, casual, and spontaneous. They will tackle nearly every endeavour with a flexible mindset. They are more interested in how the results are obtained than how they are obtained.
The Predictive Cognitive Assessment™
This test assesses a person’s general mental aptitude and critical thinking capacity. You’ll learn more about someone’s chances of success and work performance in just 12 minutes than you would in an hour-long interview or typical aptitude test.
A candidate’s cognitive ability has been the number one predictor of job performance. Therefore, companies should combine cognitive ability assessments with behavioural assessments and structured interviews to get the best picture for any position they hire for.
How does the cognitive Assessment work?
The 50 multiple-choice questions on the PI Cognitive Assessment are divided into three cognitive aptitude areas (verbal, numerical, and abstract reasoning) and nine subcategories. It evaluates a person’s ability to study at a rapid rate.
Hiring managers should leverage the Predictive Index Job Assessment to identify the cognitive demands of the role. However, to get the maximum benefit from the cognitive assessment, it is always best to use it with behavioural data.
Is the cognitive Assessment an IQ test?
IQ tests are usually standardised exams that include logical, visual, spatial, categorisation, analogical, and pattern-driven questions. The difference between your test score and the average test score of people your age determines your IQ. The IQ test is a rough approximation of general intelligence that is considered an inaccurate predictor of future performance.
The PI Cognitive ability assessment has been developed and validated for hiring purposes. Cognitive ability assessments also do not consider the age and have specific areas of measurement (generally speaking, verbal, numerical, and abstract reasoning). Cognitive ability is solving problems, processing new information, and learning new information.
Other Assessment Methods
Skills-Based Assessments
Skill-based assessments test the knowledge, skills, and judgment needed to be competent in a certain topic. A good skills assessment will help you understand in what percentile candidates are distributed and some breakdown on the level knowledge on each skill being assessed. We suggest ensuring that your preferred solution has anti-cheating features, a vast library of questions and time limits.
Skills-based assessments could even help benchmark the knowledge of existing staff and can help with Learning and Development efforts. With that being said, skills-based assessments should never be used in isolation. They should also never
First of all, a skill-based assessment reflects past knowledge acquisition rather than potential or current learning ability. Secondly, a skills-based assessment does nothing to assess how the individual will adapt to the job and what motivates them to perform at their best. Skills can be taught; skills can become redundant or need to be adapted based on the market’s changing needs, changes in the industry, or subject domain.
Behavioural tendencies normally remain constant and cognitive ability will generally remain fixed throughout adulthood. An individual may not have the needed knowledge today, but motivation and learning ability can quickly exceed those expectations with the right amount of training. Skills-based assessments should only be used to complement behavioural and cognitive data.
Grit based Assessments
Grit refers to a person’s commitment to achieving long-term goals. Grit isn’t the same as talent. Grit isn’t a result of chance. Grit isn’t about how badly you want something right now.
The success of the greatest elite athletes is normally attributed to their level of Grit. The idea is that because they put in more effort than other athletes with a similar level of mental and physical ability, they could achieve much more with the same resources. Grit is also evaluated during military selection, especially for special operations units. However, it would be more accurate to refer to those activities as tests instead of assessments.
The problem with attempting to measure or assess Grit is that there is no accurate or scientifically validated method to do so. However, when taking a Grit based assessment, it is fairly easy to identify how to answer the questions to get the highest score possible. Trying to measure Grit through interviewing can also be very subjective. In most cases, our understanding of an individual level of Grit is probably influenced by the impression that they give instead of an objective level of their perseverance or passion.
So while we don’t have anything against looking for indications of Grit, it should always be used to complement more objective and measurable signals of a candidate’s success in the role.
Work Assignments
Some companies may require candidates to do some take-home assignments. But, again, this can be a great opportunity to examine a candidates skills and ability to stick to deadlines. It may also give the candidate a taste of the kind of work that they can be expected to do. Some companies even pay for the candidates time.
However, work assignments have several problems when used for hiring purposes. First of all, it may appear as work from free and could lead to some reputational issues when a candidate is not selected and not given sufficient feedback on their work.
Secondly, from our experience, assignment tasks are chosen very subjectively and rarely simulate the type of work the person would be doing. Hiring managers are trying to understand how suitable the candidate is on the one hand. Still, they will most likely be unwilling to reveal any standard operating procedures, tools or resources that the person should be using. The work presented in the assignment can look very different from the work produced.
Thirdly, candidates can hire someone else to do the assignment for them. Unfortunately, assignments are normally so vague, inconvenient, inconsistent, and offer such little value to the candidates that this is a common complaint among companies who stopped using assignments for hire.
Finally, assignments are rightfully job-specific and will sometimes be radically different for the same job. Unfortunately, this means that establishing an authoritative methodology, set of best practices, or even Science behind great work assignments is probably impossible. Therefore, hiring managers and talent acquisition professionals should stick to scientifically validated indicators of predicting future performance, such as general cognitive fit and behavioural fit to the role.
The Predictive Index and Progressica
Progressica is a Certified Partner of the Predictive Index in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Portugal, Cyprus, Italy and Malta.
We sell, promote, consult and provide training for PI products in our dedicated markets. Our qualified associates will assist you in becoming experts at putting the correct people in the right roles and producing high-performing teams that match your cultural values and ideas.
How to start optimising your talent with assessments
Organisations ready to maximise their success by applying cutting-edge scientific solutions are welcome to book a free demo of the assessments and the talent optimisation platform with a member of our team.
