Prevue has been a pioneer of both computer and online testing and scoring for almost 20 years. However, in today’s online world there is definitely no room for resting on one’s laurels. The speed of change in the development and delivery of job fit testing and all other aspects of HR management is breathtaking. Almost every day there is a new tool, a new competitor and new concepts being introduced to the world of HR management. The Prevue business strategy and product offering will therefore be evolving as follows to keep abreast of this fast changing landscape:

• Basic Business Direction: Prevue will move from its former focus on the development and sale of Prevue Assessments to delivering comprehensive HR management solutions or systems that include the valid and reliable Prevue Assessments as a cornerstone. The primary focus will be on the development of online tools and facilities for the Prevue Hiring System described below because that has historically been the largest market for Prevue Assessments. Attention will also be given to the development of facilities that support the other stages of the employment life cycle, namely coaching, career planning and succession planning through alliances with third parties who are focused on these aspects of HR management.

• Prevue Assessments System: Prevue Assessments and their use in the hiring process will continue to have top billing in the Prevue product offering. They are after all our major asset and our core competency. The ongoing development of Prevue Online and the Prevue Assessments System will continue to evolve both as a stand-alone offering as well as a component of other HR management solutions like the Prevue APS offerings and the Prevue Hiring System described below.

• Prevue APS: The first major step in implementing the new business strategy has been the introduction of applicant processing systems (“APS”) that are powered by Prevue. You’ve no doubt seen evidence of this initiative with the quiet introduction of the Prevue APS Pro product over the last 6 months. The reception of this product by clients has been very positive. Active promotion of APS Pro will commence in the fourth quarter of 2011 following completion of upgrades that have been prompted from experience in working with the beta version of this product. The longer range plan calls for adding the following additional APS to better service the following markets:
  • A simpler less sophisticated APS designed specifically for small businesses.
  • Integration with larger enterprise APS that are available through companies like Taleo and HR Smart for larger companies who are users of Prevue Assessments.
  • Industry specific APS offerings with customized facilities for recruiting, screening and selection.

• The Prevue Hiring System: The Prevue Hiring System is founded on the following seven step Prevue Hiring Process:
  1. Job Description/Job Analysis Development
  2. Candidate Sourcing (sometimes referred to as Job Posting or Recruiting)
  3. Applicant Screening
  4. Testing/Assessment
  5. Interviewing
  6. Evaluation (Background and Reference Checks)
  7. Selection Decision and Job Offer

The Prevue Assessments System and the Prevue APS offerings are the first major components of the Prevue Hiring System. The Hiring System will be developed in several successive versions with new tools and services being added to automate all seven steps in the Prevue Hiring Process. The first version has been initiated by the integration of Prevue Assessments into Prevue APS Pro to automate aspects of steps 2 through 4 of the Prevue Hiring Process. There are many online tools that will be added in future versions such as skills testing, background checks, reference checks, and interview systems, some of which will be developed by Prevue and others through alliances made with third parties.

• Job Description Builder: The next major component of the Prevue Hiring System that is now under development is the new Prevue Job Description Builder. Job Description Builder is an online job analysis facility for developing Job Descriptions and Prevue Job Benchmarks for any position. It will provide a tool for addressing the very important first step in the Prevue Hiring Process, a step that is often overlooked or poorly addressed by most employers. This product utilizes research that started in 2008 to map the scales of the Prevue Assessments to the O’NET Job Content Model developed by the US Department of Labor and will ultimately provide a Prevue Benchmark Library for the more than 1000 positions in the O’NET-SOC Job Taxonomy.

• Prevue Alliances: We recognize that many Prevue Users and Distributors use Prevue Assessments for aspects of HR Management beyond recruiting and selection. Coaching, training, career planning and succession planning applications are all markets for the use of Prevue Assessments, as well as providing extra value to those who use Prevue Assessments for screening and selection. We intend to expand the offerings in these areas primarily through alliances with parties who focus on aspects of HR management that are beyond our specific expertise in job fit assessments and the hiring process. Such alliances have already been successfully established to support the Prevue Assessment System and in designing and developing Prevue APS Pro.

Although we appreciate the new Prevue business strategy is ambitious we know it is manageable and assures a bright future for the Prevue product offering. The response from Prevue Users to the implementation of the plan that started with the introduction of Prevue APS Pro and the www.prevuehr.com website has been very encouraging. We will however need the support and participation of the worldwide community of Prevue Users and Distributors to make all this happen. We trust we will have your support and we look forward to receiving your feedback on the new components of each of the new Prevue HR systems as they are introduced.

Written by: Ken Danderfer, Prevue HR Systems Inc. August, 2011.

Activities are a major component of PrevueOnline.com, which is your administration site, which communicates with www.assessmentstation.com where candidates take their assessments.  Generally, the activities bring together the assessment scope and the position scope, to determine how many assessment sections you want the candidates to complete and which assessment sections you wish to view when the candidates have completed the assessment.  Activities then communicate to www.assessmentstation.com to indicate which sections that site should allow a candidate to access.  Without association to an activity, your candidates may receive a message on the assessment website indicating that they have completed all of the necessary assessment sections, although this may not be true.

Activities also a number of functions to be carried out, such as allowing self-registration, categorizing candidates, indicating which report package you will pay for after candidates complete the assessment and which assessment scopes to use.  It also allows you to customize the emails that are sent out from Prevueonline.com.  You may customize the invitation email, status notification emails and report emails.  You may also use the Activity to establish which reports you wish to view later, so that the status notification email can include hyperlinks to the PrevueOnline.com reports you wish to view for each candidate associated to a particular activity.  If required by the Activity, the reports can also be emailed to the predetermined recipients indicated within the Activity.

Question: Are our assessments set-up to send an invitation email to the email address entered for the candidate?   I used my own email address to send myself the candidate’s invitation, but I never received the email.

Check the Email Message History page, located under the Administration column, to determine how emails are being sent out.  If the emails are going out from info@prevueonline.com the site is using the System Standard Email address.  This is the system default email address and it could be going to your junk mail.  If not, then it may be blocked by your mail server since it is a server generated email and you will need to ask your IT department to safe list this.

It is also important to check your candidate list and note whether the candidate has a last invite date listed next to their name.  If there is no last invite date displayed, this means the candidate was not added to an activity and no email was sent out from PrevueOnline.com.

Generally, this could mean that the candidate was likely added using the New Candidate Page, and an Activity was not selected using the Activity drop down menu.

To send an invitation to an existing candidate, go to the Prevue Wizard; choose an activity from the drop down menu and then click on “Choose from Existing Candidates”.  Find your candidate in the list on the left, highlight the name and add the candidate to the Selected Items side.  Once the Candidate appears in the list on the right side of the screen, click OK at the bottom of that page to return to the Prevue Wizard.  On the Prevue Wizard page click “OK” again at the bottom to send out the email.

As for the confirmation page, there is no way to see that information again without using the Prevue Wizard and inviting the candidates again.  You can obtain the candidate login details by going to Candidate List, clicking the magnifying glass next to their name, and reviewing the summary at the top left.  You may also review the Email Message History page to see exactly which emails were sent and to which email addresses.

Confirming the Value of Assessments

• Aberdeen research into the use of talent assessments over the last four years has shown that assessments are an incredibly valuable tool in the hiring, development and future planning processes in an organization. Organizations using assessments saw on average 18% more of their organizational goals achieved and 15% more of their new hires achieving their first performance milestone on time. (Aberdeen)
• The data gathered demonstrates again and again that as powerful a tool as assessments are in improving hiring decisions, when combined with a process for ongoing assessments throughout the talent lifecycle, they become even more valuable. (Aberdeen)
• Despite a still-tepid hiring climate, spending on assessments rose about 20 % in the US last year to between 1.5 and $2 billion annually (Workforce)
• The biggest reason organizations use a personality assessment comes down to job fit. Skill is important but skill is something you can teach.(Aberdeen Group)

Current Goals for the Use of Assessments

• Organizations are looking to assessments to help them make better selection and development decisions. When an organization invests in hiring it is not only looking for the skills required today, but to also meet the challenges of the future. (Aberdeen)
• Top performing organizations place more value on assessment data for more decisions than average or poor performing organizations. The major area of difference is that top performing organizations use their assessments to help them understand the future potential of their workforce. (Aberdeen)
• There is continued but slow movement in thinking that assessments should be an engaging experience for the applicant (Dr. Handler) – but that appears to be more talk than action. Although 80% of organizations say they are conscious and concerned about the candidate’s experience in applying for a job with their organization, less than half that number are taking steps to monitor applicant reactions (SHL)

Ideas on How to Make Better Use of Assessments

• The use of assessments for pre-hire boosts performance on several key metrics, but using them for post-hire boosts performance even further. The primary post-hire areas where top performing organizations commonly use assessments are: (1) Onboarding; and (2) Career and Succession planning.(Aberdeen)
• Top performing organizations use multiple assessment tools for specific employee groups and decision points but the top three are (1) behavioral based personality assessments, (2) skill-based assessments, (3) cognitive ability assessments. (Aberdeen, Workforce & SHL)
• A large majority of best-in-class organizations have automated assessments into their recruitment process, integrating them with their career portal and applicant tracking or processing system. This automation is yielding impressive performance improvements in key hiring metrics including improved hiring manager satisfaction and greater reduction in both time and cost to hire. (Aberdeen)

Interesting Trends

• The use of remote testing (on home computers) continues to increase with over83% of professionals indicating they allow candidates to test remotely (SHL)
• Testing via mobile devices (smart phones and other handheld computers) is emerging slowly but is expected to increase significantly in coming years.
• Social media is being used to advertise job openings and source candidates by an ever growing number of organizations. Of those organizations who are using social media in the recruitment process over 1/3 use social media to contact prospective candidates through networking sites such as Linked In and 30% use social media to source or locate candidates, essentially using social media as an advertising medium. (SHL)

If you would like more information on these studies or if you have questions on how the use of Prevue Assessments products relate to these study findings please contact your Prevue Assessments representative or support@prevueassessments.com.

Article contributed by: Kenneth J. Danderfer, Prevue Assessments. July 2011

References:

• Assessments 2011, Mollie Lombardie, Aberdeen Group, May 2011.
• Trends in the World of Pre-Employment Testing for 2011, Dr. Charles Handler, February 3, 2011.
• 2011 Global Assessment Trends Report, Sarah S. Fallaw Ph.D. & Tracy M. Kantrowitz Ph.D. SHL Previsor (Link to Report)
• More Companies Go With Online Tests to Fill in the Blanks, Ed Frauenheim, Workforce Technology

Book review  contributed by Dona Plewis of Grasslands Group

The inside cover of this book aptly summarizes why the topic of staffing assessments is important, what the reader can achieve from the book, and how the book is organized. This book review will provide a narrative of the key points I gleaned from reading the book.  As the book is written so clearly, many of the statements or paragraphs below are direct quotes, starting with:

“People are not your most important asset.  The right people are.” Jim Collins, Good to Great¹

This premise begins the introduction to Hiring Success and is supported throughout the entirety of the book.  With the multiple types of staffing assessments on the market, finding a book that clearly, decisively, and extensively discusses every aspect of staffing assessments in a non-technical manner is refreshing.

Why do we use assessments?  Ultimately, the reason is to improve performance outcomes which are measured through improved employee retention, increased productivity, better customer service, and the chance to achieve higher sales revenue.  For an organization to be effective, they require people with diverse attributes and skills.  If an assessment is used that places all candidates into one mold, that will negatively affect operations.  Hiring departments need a tool which allows them to focus on hiring candidates whose mix of skills complement each other.

One phrase that struck me was “the choice to give or deny someone a job is not a trivial decision”.    Every hiring manager is looking for the answer to “if I hire this person is he/she going to do what I want him/her to do?” and “will they remain on the job long enough to justify the costs related to recruitment and training”?  They seek a way to answer these questions and look to assessments to provide the answer.

The author very concisely covers many of the common criticisms of staffing assessments.  He also discusses the various (13) assessment methods and gives recommendations on what assessment methods to use.  One comment he made about Method 9: Localized Scoring – is that assessment results are only meaningful if they provide information that allows us to accurately predict whether some candidates are likely to be more or less effective than other candidates who might be hired.  This method (9) involves norming and criteria validation and optimization – this is one of the key areas where Prevue Assessments are aligned with the recommendations set out in the book.

We all know that assessments should be used whenever the value they provide by increasing the accuracy of the hiring decisions outweighs the costs associated with using them.  As the final hiring decision is made by people, assessments only work if they are being used appropriately and consistently.  There is a chance that, once implemented, the turnover rate of the company may increase in the short term as new employees are assimilated into the organization.  As the company fills vacancies with the new employees, the work environment will shift and the high-turnover rate will become the retention rate.

In organizations of all sizes, the difference in value of a great hire and the cost of a bad hire is apparent.   The financial value of this high- versus low-performing employee is referred to in the book, as “the performance variance”.  Assessments prove to be most valuable when they are used to select candidates for positions that have high levels of performance variance.  That said, if companies have a high turnover rate for jobs with low performance variances, assessments can provide substantial value.

The final chapter discusses the principles of implementing staffing assessments into a Company’s hiring process with examples listed on processes for entry-level and professional level positions.

With approximately 25% of the world’s six billion people being employed, the author contends that if they end up working in the right job, it will have a profound effect on every aspect of their life.  Unfortunately, suboptimal staffing decisions create job failures.  With the correct use of a staffing assessment and the Internet access, companies have a variety of choices to improve their odds of making good hires.  The question isn’t whether staffing assessments work but how do we get more companies to take advantage of the value?  This book stated its goal to be to ‘help companies hire people who are more likely to succeed in their jobs’.  If more companies read this book and take greater advantage of the benefits of staffing assessment tools, the author states that the results will be a happier workforce  – resulting in more production, satisfied customers, increased profitability, a stronger economy and, ultimately, a more stable world.

^1. Collins., J (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap…and others don’t. New York:HarperCollins.

Article Contributed By: Alissa Henriksen & Mary Nutting of CorTalent.

So you have used Prevue assessments to assist you in making the ‘right’ hire but did you realize that most of your new hires  decide whether your firm is the ‘right fit for them’ within the first 18 months of their start date?  An effective on-boarding process will encourage your new hire to conclude they have made the right career decision in accepting your job offer. Most new employees are yearning for feedback and training and the opportunity to discuss their ramp up goals on an on-going basis. If your organization does not have an effective on-boarding process in place, read on to help you jump start a new program.

What is on-boarding?

On-boarding is the last stage of the recruitment process and the first steps toward retention.  It should be a key part of an organization’s talent management plan and the process for integrating new employees into their new work environment. A good on-boarding process provides:

• A strong employer welcome to the new hire
• A structured process that provides new employees with complete and accurate information about the culture, mission and goals of the organization.
• Assignment of a mentor plus interviews with co-workers, managers, and executives during the employee’s first few months to strengthen the employee’s bond to the organization and its people.

What is the difference between orientation and on-boarding?

New employee orientation generally involves a first-day session or a first week of activities that familiarizes the employee with the organization’s structure, mission, and policies.  It typically includes a review of the employee handbook and the completion of necessary payroll and benefits paperwork.  On-boarding is a much more comprehensive approach that starts before orientation and extends anywhere from three months to two years, depending on the position.   It provides a more strategic plan for employee success than orientation.

Why is on-boarding important?

Statistics show that employees are most vulnerable to leaving an organization in the first 18 months after they are hired. In most cases they have simply not found their way within your organization. Making a good first impression on the new hire is therefore critical.  Effective employee on-boarding serves three interrelated purposes.

• First, it ensures the employee feels welcome, comfortable, prepared and supported. These feelings increase the new hire’s desire to make an impact (i.e become productive).
• Second the feedback from a new hire allows you to consider changes that will promote employee job satisfaction and long term effectiveness.
• Third a well-designed on-boarding program reduces training costs, hastens time to productivity and improves retention.

What makes on-boarding work?

On-boarding is successful only when Human Resources and hiring managers are both actively involved.  The goal of this partnership is to establish a long-term relationship with the employee that starts before the employee is hired and endures the everyday trials of the workplace. While HR plays a key role in the early recruitment and orientation phase and in guiding the on-boarding process, the hiring manager must be engaged in the employee’s successful integration into the organization over the longer term.

Prevue in the on-boarding process.

You used the Prevue Selection report to support the hiring decision; however we all know that almost no one is a perfect match. Virtually every new hire has a few areas where they didn’t quite match the Prevue benchmark for the position. These are the areas where the new hire may find some challenges in meeting the demands of the job. The hiring manager can get a jump on understanding and addressing these challenges by reviewing a Prevue Personal Development report for the new hire. It will provide the manager with:

• An overall personal profile of the new hire.
• A job fit benchmark that highlights the new hire’s strengths (where the new hire’s scores match the benchmark for the position) and the areas where the new hire may be challenged (scores off the benchmark).
• Suggestions on how the manager can assist the new hire to address the challenges the new hire may encounter in the new position.

There is no better way for the hiring manager to get an inside look at the new hire. And the best thing is that if you used Prevue in the hiring process, the Prevue Personal Development is absolutely free of charge.

Q: Is the online version of the Prevue Test the same as the booklet test?

A: The online version of the test is the same as the booklet, also known as paper & pencil test, with appropriate changes in the instructions to the test takers; however, the online version of the test groups all of the Abilities together at the beginning of the Assessment.  The booklet separates the two Shapes section by placing the Interests section between Shapes 1 and Shapes 2.  You can compare the candidate’s answer sheet for candidates tested using the online version to the booklet test, if you have a booklet available.

Q: How does the test experience between the online versions vs. the booklet version differ?

The online version of the test has an automatic timer that runs in the pop-up window.  Booklet candidates typically have someone timing them during the assessment.

In the online version, the first four sections each have a timer that counts down until the allotted time has run out.  Candidates have the opportunity to review instructions and use the practice questions prior to commencing each section in both versions.  However, online version candidates may opt to take a longer break between sections if they are taking the test off-site.

Q: In PrevueOnline.com, I see the term Scope throughout the site.  What is the Scope?

A: Scope applies in two different ways – Assessment Scope and Position Scope. The Assessment Scope refers to the number of assessment sections a candidate is asked to complete.  The Position Scope determines the number of scales a benchmark will measure.  It also determines the type of JDS or Assessment that the Survey Participants or Concurrent Candidates are asked to complete in the course of developing a new benchmark.  An Activity allows for flexibility in using the Assessment Scopes when bringing the Position Scope together into an Activity, thereby giving the user the opportunity to use a smaller Assessment Scope than required by the Position Scope.

There are six assessment sections, namely, Words (“W”), Numbers (“N”), Shapes 1 (“S1”), Shapes 2 (“S2”), Interests (“I”) & Personality (“P”) currently.  The combinations of some of the assessment sections offered by Prevue create Scopes.  There are five scopes available and these are WNS1S2IP (Full), WNS1S2 (Abilities Only), NIP (Numerical Reasoning), IP (Coaching) and P (Personality Only).

The scope is also used when building a benchmark for a Position.  The Position may have a scope set for it and once the scope is set, it is saved permanently.  The scope of the position will then determine how many assessment sections will be required when assessing candidates for the Position.  If you select a full scope position, then you may opt to assess and/or view any of the other assessment scopes when inviting candidates or viewing reports.  If you build a benchmark with a smaller scope, you will not be able to upgrade to the full scope.

NOTE: The scope of a Position cannot be changed once the position has been saved. Activities can be used to assess candidates on a smaller scope than what the Position requires.  It is therefore recommended that Position scopes be set to the fullest scope available to allow for greater flexibility in assessing candidates at a later time.

NOTE: If you opt to use a smaller scope, you will still pay the same number of credits as the full scope.  Prevue charges for the Report Package and the Reports you wish to view rather than the number of assessment sections the candidate was assessed for.

• Employment prospects are improving and hiring activity is increasing in almost all jurisdictions. The pace is faster in Canada, Australia and New Zealand but all of the G7 countries are trending in this direction.  If you are not hiring right now you will probably need to do so within the next few months.
• As employment and hiring activity pick up, competition for the best candidates will increase which in turn will drive a need to reduce the time to hire. This is already the case for those seeking IT and Software Development personnel.
• Businesses are still licking their wounds and rebuilding balance sheets from the 2009 recession so they need to do everything more quickly, more simply and at a lower cost, while still being effective – a very tall order to fill.
• In comparison to 20 or even 10 years ago businesses are employing fewer people while expecting them to assume greater responsibility and to be more productive than their predecessors. To accomplish this end businesses have to continuously seek to improve the quality of their hires.

How can you clear all of these hurdles? The following three initiatives will make your business more competitive and effective in finding top performers for your positions:

1. Know What You Are Looking For: You can’t possibly hire the best if you haven’t defined what characteristics differentiate top performers from the rest of the persons you employ in any position. Job analysis will enable you to identify the key characteristics for job success to provide better job descriptions, job ads and behavioral interview questions.
2. Move to Online Recruiting: Start with a career web site for a central source of job posting and candidate information. Couple your career web site with an online Applicant Processing System (“APS”) that enables applicants to apply for jobs posted on your career web site and enables you to identify the best candidates. These two steps will reduce your time and/or increase your quality of hire – guaranteed. Your APS will enable you to collect resumes and required applicant information, administer screening questions, administer your Prevue Assessments and receive all of this information instantaneously. In a tight labor market you can respond immediately to the best prospects. If there are too many applicants for your job openings your APS can automatically filter out the best candidates with screening questions and Prevue job fit scores. You focus your attention on selecting the best instead of sifting through a pile of resumes.
3. Source Smarter: You have to fill your recruiting funnel with good prospects if you want to make good hires. Give some thought to where the best applicants for your types of job postings will likely seek employment and make sure you are positioned to get in front of those applicants. This could be a paid job board like Monster or an industry specific job board. Expand your search to social networks and the hundreds of free job boards that should be accessible through your APS. You should be able to automate the posting process through your APS to source the most qualified candidates faster. Also consider going beyond the job boards to sourcing passive job seekers who are not actively seeking a position through postings on major social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

If you think these three steps sound too time consuming or expensive, you are wrong. Your Prevue Distributor can show you how to implement all of these steps efficiently and economically.

Written by: Ken Danderfer

March, 2011

We have all seen and read countless studies, articles and ads like the recently published “Research Brief:  Quality Candidates and Quality Process” from Aberdeen Group¹ that concludes “talent acquisition is at the heart of talent management”. This Research Brief like many other publications on the subject confirms that following best HR practices in hiring new employees will assure a more talented workforce. Now this sounds good, but there is one key thing missing – how do we define and describe the “talent” required for a specific position and how do we identify people who have that talent?

Although we frequently use the term, do we really know what “talent” means? The dictionary defines “talent” as “a special natural ability or aptitude”. But what happens in the hiring process when we get down to the final interviews with the most qualified 2 or 3 applicants – how do we identify who has that “special natural ability or aptitude” for the position? We know whether they have the right credentials and experience and we know what questions to ask the applicants in these areas. But what information have we collected in the hiring process to tell us whether they have the desired “talent” to excel in the position?

At Prevue we have historically identified “talent” as job fit. Prevue Assessments and the automated Prevue Assessments system can help to provide answers to the questions posed above in several respects:

• The Prevue Assessments system can identify the “talent” (in terms of the “natural abilities or aptitude”) required for top performance in any position through the Prevue Benchmark Development process.
• The Prevue Benchmark Description Report provides an outline of the abilities, interests/motivation and personality profile that effectively describes the “talent” required for any position. This information can improve your hiring process by creating better job descriptions and job ads that focus more attention on describing the job in terms of the talent required for top performance in the position.
• The Prevue Assessments system provides an online tool to match each applicant’s “talents” to those required for top performance in any position by matching the applicants profile of abilities, interests/motivation and personality traits to those reflected in the Prevue Benchmark developed for the position.
• Last, but maybe most important, the Prevue Selection Report provides interview questions that identify areas where an applicant may have “talent” or job fit challenges that should be examined in the interview.

My editor advises this article might be a bit too advertorial and I apologize to anyone who might be offended. However the questions raised in this article deserve consideration, even if you find the conclusions overly promotional. After all, how can you acquire and develop a more talented workforce if you haven’t defined what “talent” is required? Throughout 2011 we expect a number of writers will express opinions on talent acquisition and management. If there are topics you’d like to see addressed on this subject, we would invite you to pass those on to us at support@prevueassessments.com.

¹ Recruitment Technology: Quality Candidates and Quality Process; Aberdeen group, September, 2010

Written by Ken Danderfer

January 7, 2011

1.         “While selecting the best people is an important goal in itself, a parallel goal of no less importance is screening out undesirable candidates. The consequences of choosing the wrong people are substantial, as they lead to increased turnover rates, recruitment costs, and training expenses, along with lost productivity and decreases in morale. The high costs associated with replacing poorly performing individuals make it all the more important to identify and select the best performers in the first place.”

2.         “…. there are in fact many widespread selection techniques that provide little more than chance estimates of who will succeed in a given position. Some examples include education level, training and experience ratings, and academic achievement, which are all common selection methods that nonetheless provide minimal predictive utility. Other popular selection methods, such as unstructured interviews, vary considerably in their effectiveness and are far from optimal.”

3.         “Why, then, are ineffective selection techniques so popular, when there is a large body of scientific literature detailing best practices for performance prediction?  … one of the most common reasons for not employing optimal selection methods is that many human resource practitioners and top managers simply do not believe in the real-world effectiveness of empirically validated selection tools. …  Despite the many studies that examine the utility and validity of different selection procedures, the results of this research have not fully permeated the awareness of managers and decision makers.”

4.         “In order to take advantage of the large individual differences in productivity, it is first necessary to identify the top candidates. In this respect, it is clear that hiring the best people requires the use of the best selection procedures. Based on meta-analyses of numerous validation studies … the most effective and efficient method for selecting the top performers involves testing for both cognitive ability and personality (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998).” The paper then examines these two domains in more depth:

Cognitive ability: “… also known as general mental ability, intelligence, or simply IQ, is one of the best predictors of performance across many different domains. Broadly speaking, it reflects an individual’s ability to plan, reason, process information, and control his or her behaviour. Some would argue that it is in fact the best-validated construct in all of psychology, as its ability to predict performance has been repeatedly demonstrated in thousands of studies carried out across 100 years of research (Schmidt & Hunter, 2004).

• Across all job categories, individual differences in cognitive ability account for approximately 25 per cent of the variability in performance.
• The general factor of cognitive ability predicts performance outcomes even better than aptitude tests claiming to assess the specific skills needed for a given job.
• If only one variable could be assessed to predict performance across multiple domains, cognitive ability would certainly be the most useful.
• While there has been some concern that such tests are culturally biased, there are also non-verbal tests of cognitive ability that do not discriminate against respondents from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds.”

Personality Factors: “The second most important variable in performance prediction is personality:

• While researchers have long used a variety of trait dimensions to predict real-world outcomes, the field of performance prediction has benefited greatly from the five-factor model of personality. The five-factor framework, or ‘Big Five’ model, is a taxonomy that describes personality differences across five broad dimensions of variation (Goldberg, 1993). The five dimensions are extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness. These dimensions demonstrate good cross-cultural reliability, are relatively stable across the lifetime, and incorporate the variance captured by most other personality taxonomies.
• Conscientiousness, which describes individuals who are reliable, hard-working, and self-disciplined, is the best personality predictor of workplace performance and academic success.Conscientious individuals have a strong work ethic, and tend to be more effective at pursuing their goals. An individual who is low in conscientiousness will be more easily distracted, less organised, and less productive.
• Following conscientiousness, the most important personality trait for predicting success across multiple domains is emotional stability. Individuals who score highly on this trait experience less negative emotion and generally handle stress better. In contrast, less emotionally stable individuals will have higher levels of chronic stress and anxiety. This trait is particularly important for predicting performance in highly demanding positions, and is also associated with increased health, job satisfaction, and lower rates of job burnout.
• Certain positions can benefit from the examination of other traits as well. In particular, the outgoing, assertive, and talkative nature of extraverts gives them an advantage in domains that require extensive social interaction. Extraversion therefore appears to be a good predictor of success in sales and management positions.
• Openness, finally, is a good predictor of performance in domains requiring innovation and creativity.

In conclusion, Mr. Hirsh notes that “Across a broad number of domains, there are large individual differences in performance and productivity outcomes. In order to capitalise on these differences, however, it is necessary to use the most effective selection methods. Even small improvements in the predictive validity of selection processes can lead to substantial economic benefits. A large body of research now indicates that measures of cognitive ability and personality are powerful and efficient tools for predicting performance. While some form of selection is inevitable for any competitive position, psychological assessment remains an invaluable tool for identifying the top performers and making an informed decision.”

The Hirsch paper does go on to examine faking and bias response, whether an emphasis on individual attributes and abilities is the best strategy for ensuring organizational fit, and the impact of situational factors on the use of these types of assessments. This article will not address these subjects but future articles for this newsletter will likely do so.

We will be happy to provide you with a complete copy of Mr. Hirsh’s article.  You can requisition a copy from our offices at support@prevueassessments.com.

Written by: Kenneth Danderfer

December 5, 2009