Candidate Profiling & Assessment

The cost to the firm of replacing leavers can be up to 24 times their base salary (Source: DBM). Therefore, it is increasingly important to fit the right job to the right person when recruiting and also managing their transition through the business.

Formally identifying and measuring candidate competency against the requirements of the role, using a variety of assessment techniques (e.g. assessment centres, psychometric tests, role-play and group exercises), can ensure that you make a more informed and objective recruitment & development decision. It provides more information about a candidate than the results of an interview alone, which inherently relies upon the skills of an interviewer who may not be a recruitment specialist.

There are a number of organisations that can help with candidate profiling and assessment, here are two companies that could be worth giving consideration to when trying to obtain these services. Both can operate cross culturally to meet your requirements, DBM is a large global player, whereas Self-Insight is a smaller boutique style company offering a personalised service:


DBM is a leading global Change or ‘Transition’ Management Company and has over 230 locations in 85 countries worldwide. They have a large number of specialist consultants who have worked within the telecoms and IT sectors. Support can include:

 

  • Job Analysis & Competency profiling for individual roles, teams and whole organisations
  • Assessment Centre Design & Delivery
  • Administration & feedback of Psychometric Personality and Ability tests
  • Selection Interview Training and Workshops
  • Design & Delivery of Development Centers
  • Assessment Process Evaluation

Self-insightSelf-insight are experts in applying a rigorous, evidence-based approach to assessment for selection. We seek to predict successful candidates as accurately as possible.

1. Define what ‘great’ looks like. The first step is to clearly define the role, taking into account future needs and organizational culture. Through interviews and workshops with key personnel we establish the skills and competencies that make a difference. 

2. Screening and sifting. When overwhelmed by the volume of candidates we provide online screening e.g. scorable application forms and situational judgment tests.

3. Objective assessment. The two key aspects we focus on are validity and fairness: how well does the assessment predict success, and does it avoid discriminating against certain groups?

  • We provide a combination of psychometric testing, interviewing and assessment centres.
  • We place an emphasis on cognitive ability tests as research strongly demonstrates these are the single most effective technique for predicting workplace performance. Higher scorers generally learn the role, and adapt to new situations more quickly.
  • We also provide skills, values and personality tests. A particularly useful instrument is the Hogan HDS which identifies “dark side” characteristics which lead to career derailment.
  • We conduct in-depth interviews exploring the candidate’s leadership and interpersonal skills, competencies and issues highlighted by the psychometric tests.   

4. Evaluation. We follow-up the performance of successful candidates with the predictions made during hiring, to identify which assessments are useful. Introducing a feedback loop improves the overall accuracy of the selection process.

5.  Career guidance and outplacement. We use similar assessment approaches to help people identify their strengths and weaknesses, clarify their career goals and coach them to achieve a successful transition to new employment. 

6. Onboarding coaching. We proactively intervene to help successful candidates get up to speed as rapidly as possible in the first few months of a new role. This overcomes the productivity loss faced when hiring new staff.

 

Self-insight