Furthermore,like it or not, because questions and answers are used to qualify applicants, interviews are also assessments…and, almost everyone knows interviews are among the easiest assessments to fake.

And, yes, companies hire people like themselves…but they also expect these look-alikes to be competent.

Charles’ article is right on target. The major obstacle to trustworthy and reliable assessments (tests) is that the cost of assessments usually comes out of HR’s pocket…but the benefits of lower turnover and higher productivity usually benefit a line department. Making managers aware of the cost/benefit associated with assessment helps clarify the issue.

Steve Waterhouse
http://www.predictiveresults.com

IMHO, should ATs be found significantly ‘better’ than using the traditional hiring methods, there would be considerable resistance to their large-scale usage. Why? The big secret (rarely mentioned) is organizations do not wish to hire people who can do the job very well- they want to hire people LIKE THEMSELVES who can do the job very well. A true meritocracy would upset too many apple carts.

ICE:
Inquiry
Curiosity
Evidence!

Cheers,

Steve Waterhouse
http://www.predictiveresults.com

I also suggest readers consider the implementation of assessment as developing a measurement infrastructure for a business process called staffing. Companies invest significant resources in measurement systems that add value and support decision making.

Most business disciplines require some for of data capture, storage, analysis and retrieval. Look at ERP, AR/AP, Order Entry/tracking for a few examples. A well developed assessment, or objective candidate evaluation process should be considered a measurement based infrastructure that supports decision making in the staffing process.

If you go out looking to buy a test, any option might seem costly. If you approach assessment as an investment in process control, measurement and improvement, the ROI is easy to calculate.

Job analysis and validation are no different than a well defined feasibility study and business impact analysis. Businesses typically conduct these analysis prior to making an investment. The same should hold true for investments in objective candidate evaluation.

I thought I would share this niche and comparision:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce?s Center for Workforce Preparedness (now: Institute for Competitive Workforce) has been working on a national certification for entry level job seekers intensively for the past few years. At a June 2004 meeting in Washington DC the Chamber?s director of the Center, Natache Mushette, shared that the top issue raised by their three million business members from a recent survey was ‘soft skills.’

?The NWRC helps busy managers by identifying and certifying that an individual has the right communication, interpersonal, problem-solving and learning skills to add value for customers, work in teams and grow with the company. Business leaders now have a simple and effective tool to streamline their hiring and find the right people for their firms. This has the demonstrated effect of decreasing cost-per-hire, reducing turnover and increasing customer value.?

Now just in case you might think things have improved, and think ?that was then and this is now? look at the agenda for the upcoming Fall 2007 Conference and what are being called ?The New Basics: What are the strategies to upgrading the skills of the current workforce now that companies are demanding more digital capabilities, science and math skills, and interpersonal communication??

To address the need for the nation?s employers, The National Work Readiness Council, which developed and manages the Credential, operates a growing network of 45 assessment sites in 18 states around the country.

No doubt there is a big round of applause from the nation?s employers, hiring managers and recruiters for the work done by the Chamber to make it easier to find the right person for the right job, but I?ll bet money there are folks out there thinking, ?yes, great, that?s ok for the entry level stuff, but it doesn?t apply to the kinds of positions that I have to recruit for,? implying that they don?t work with entry level candidates and that soft skills and communication skills are not an issue above that level.

To wit: ?Employers are finding that freshly minted graduates (MBAs no less!) lack key interpersonal skills?? (my insertion).

?When Jack Welch gave a guest lecture at MIT’s Sloan School of Management in 2005, someone in the crowd asked, ‘What should we be learning in business school?’ Welch’s reply: ‘Just concentrate on networking. Everything else you need to know, you can learn on the job.’ Sloan’s dean, Richard Schmalensee, was stunned because ‘Jack was essentially saying a graduate business degree was a waste of time.
Not long after that visit, MIT began a curriculum rethink – dialing back on pure quantitative skills and adding more interpersonal coursework. Wharton, Tuck, Chicago, the University of Virginia’s Darden, and Berkeley’s Haas School, among many others, have also started stressing teamwork and are paying more attention to ‘soft’ skills like listening to colleagues.

What’s driving the curriculum shift? B-schools are acting a lot more like businesses these days (gasp) and responding to their various customers – corporate recruiters and students. ‘MBA students we employ don’t need to come in being finance gurus. What’s much more important is that they know how to analyze issues and communicate recommendations,’ says Ken Barnet, a vice president at State Street Corp. who works with both B-school interns and freshly minted MBAs (my emphasis).?
So we have a ?soft skills? and ?communications skills? issue at the bottom and the top.

I?m sure anyone can readily confirm this on the ground, and I?d be surprised to hear of substantive across-the-board objections. In a conversation that I had with a senior recruiter for one of the most formative entertainment companies of our time, who is also by coincidence a faculty member at a local university, he pointed out to me the continued prevalence of ?valspeak? (Valley speech) in today?s youth in higher education, and they are about as far away from California as one could get. He also noted, and complained that at least some of his students can write incredibly well, and he just begs them to speak as well as they write. If they did, I think the consensus would be that they could write their own ticket for whatever they would choose to do.

OK, so where am I going with this?

?The [National Work Readiness Credential] assessment is a web-based test with that uses questions to ascertain a test takers real world work skills. Most of the assessment is in multiple choice format but does include a state-of-the-art, oral language test in which a test taker responds to digitally generated questions and their response are recorded for later rating. The assessment takes about 2 ? hours to complete and has four modules:

Read with Understanding: 30 minutes
Math for Decision-making: 30 minutes
Oral Language Test: 30 minutes
Situational Judgment: 45 minutes

Tests are administered in quiet and comfortable computer labs and supervised by trained proctors to ensure both a good experience and reliable results. The assessment is value priced at $65 per test.?
While I certainly applaud everything that has been achieved over the years with the development and implementation of the NWRC, the convergence of technological infrastructure in just the past 3 years has created possibilities that just did not exist a few years prior. So, I just have to ask, what would be a better indicator of a job candidate?s ?soft skills? than to see them in a structured video interview?
Structured, employer-driven and job-specific video interviews take approximately 15-20 minutes to take, and are competitively priced by any measure at $19.95 per ?assessment,? if you will, at the employer?s or partner locations.