The current economic climate requires that organizations select and retain top talent. This one challenge continues to plague organizations. We are often asked the question - How do you choose the best of the best? Or at least, the best from what applied for the job or was brought forth by the recruiter? Today candidates have access to tools and resources that can help them to present the best or right answers to an interviewers most pressing questions, whether they have the skills/abilities or not!
Many candidates looking to find employment have been personally coached on everything from image, to self-presentation, to arriving and departing from the interview, to mock interview formats, to reference checks, and the list continues to grow. So how do companies get through all the polish and glitz to identify whether a candidate really has the goods?
First off, any organization that is looking to hire a new person into a role needs to fully understand their own performance requirements. This happens before candidates are even a thought. In consulting and human resource circles these performance markers are commonly referred to as Competencies or Capabilities. They can consist of a variety of different Thinking, Relating or Working skills that are linked to the performance requirements of the job in question.
An example of a Thinking Related Competency is Decisive Judgement. The definition is "making good decisions in a timely and confident manner. People who display this competency make sound decisions with conviction and in a timely manner. After they have considered alternatives and possible consequences, they can decide upon a course of action and assume responsibility for their decisions". By adhering to a specific definition of a competency (i.e. Decisive Judgement) it becomes easier to develop and focus behavior based questions that will allow an evaluator to decide if in fact a candidate can or does exhibit the competency in question.
Selecting competencies and developing behaviour based interviews is unfortunately not enough. Companies also need to be able to access a valid method for linking them to output. And here is where many companies fall off the process. In all honesty, identifying competencies is a waste of time, if the organization cannot link the competency to output on the job. Competencies are also useless unless there is a mechanism in place to link the competency to a set of personality or behavioural traits that would indicate whether the person is hard-wired to demonstrate the competency in question in the first place. This is where candidates try to provide the ...but I can... answer. The psychological and behavioural research provides a long and valid history of designing assessment tools that are easy to administer and adhere to the strictest standards of being evidence-based.
Unfortunately, there are far too many assessment tools/processes/consultants that do not live up to the standards of the American Psychological Association. In Canada, many of the assessment tools and products that are available to the business community do not have sufficient Criterion-Related validation to support the connection between competencies and performance output. While I will leave the details of Criterion-Related validation to another article, it is sufficient to say here that this process deals with objectively providing long-term evidence of a direct link between a stated competency and a related cluster of personality/behavioural traits. The person either has the basis for demonstrating the competency or they don't and will need to learn how to close the gap.
Once the competency model is created and measures for related personality have been identified, then it is time to think about the types of candidates that might fit the role. This again is a novel concept in many in hiring circles. In traditional methods, standard interview questions are "found" and there is no real effort created to define performance from the perspective of competency requirements. In the current job market many organizations are willing to forgo in-depth competency analysis because they are afraid no candidates will emerge. We strongly advise against this practice as it only leads to a negative outcome for both the organization and the person being hired. We always coach clients on striving for the expectation of best fit knowing there is no truly-perfect candidate.
If the organization has created a sound competency model to identify the performance they are looking to move towards and they have short-listed candidates based on preliminary analysis of fit with that model then final screening can occur utilizing a combination of a Behaviour-based competency driven interview and a series of psychometric tests that are linked to the competency mapping. By creating or utilizing a competency driven approach to the interviewing/testing of candidates, all inquiries around performance and past experience are focused through the lens of the required competencies. Doing so will allow hiring managers to better evaluate candidates based on fit with the competency model and the performance requirements of the role.
As a result, many organizations are now trying to introduce some sort of standardized and validated Assessment instrument that objectively links the identified competencies to a set of personality traits. There are numerous assessment instruments that can achieve this. The key point to keep in mind is whether the tests has research to support the provision of a direct and validated link between company competencies and a sub-set of personality traits and capabilities.
The advantage of using a standardized and validated assessment process is that it offers up objective matching and identifies gaps between the candidate, the role and the requirements for success. If used properly organizations can rank order candidates based on different levels of fit such as: organizational, competency, team/manager, and fit for the role at hand. Once organizations have access to this type of information it becomes much easier to identify who is likely the best of the best in front of them.
The key to hiring the best is to NOT take short cuts in the process. The best candidate does not always show up early. It takes patience, due diligence and objectivity to find the best person from all that apply. Just remember that no matter how good a person presents in an interview, always strive to collect different data points that uncover, personality, behaviour, capability and competencies. We have heard the following statement far too many times, ... if I would only have had the full assessment done prior to hiring them... Hind sight is 20/20. Let those words be your guide.