As others mentioned correctly, the human element also comes into play and in several ways. First, with the understanding of the job and defining the correct criteria. An assessment should have a tool to help bring together multiple views of a position and a process for synthesizing a single profile.

Second in the application of the resulting data. An assessment tool gives you insight into the individual that would not otherwise be available. A competent interviewer will use that insight to ask better questions and reach a better decision.

A good assessment tool will improve every aspect of the hiring process but will never replace the human interaction needed to finally select an ideal applicant.

Steve Waterhouse
http://www.predictiveresults.com

For example, being smart enough to learn and solve job-related problems; being able to plan and implement activities; being able to get things done through people’ and, so forth. Professionals call this ‘job-analysis’.

Matching people to jobs is a function of knowing exactly what you need (e.g., job-related mental skills, people skills, and motivations discovered from the job analysis), then using professionally-developed tests to evaluate applicants.

An interview is just another form of ‘test’. It has questions, answers, and a scoring guide. What makes traditional interviews inaccurate is 1) lack of clarity about what itty-bitty skills are needed, 2) poor questions, 3) self-reported answers, and 4) subjective scoring guides.

Behavioral and siutational interviews MAY more accurate…but only when they are based on a job analysis, interviewers are trained in best-practice questioning technique, multiple interviewers integrate their individual data, and answers are standardized.

Anything less and you ‘role the dice’ with the organization’s money…about 50/50 is the average.

A request to the readers: please don?t send me an email about how wonderful and valuable are the tests you sell to companies!

Cheers,
KH

* I suspect that (like voting systems) there is an inherent trade-off between a number of factors that we consider valuable/good in tests, but I do not know this for certain, and hope I am wrong?.

In fact, CPP, Inc. (publisher of the MBTI) clearly states that it is not ethical to use the MBTI instrument for hiring or for deciding job assignments. MBTI is neither sufficiently reliable nor sufficiently job-related to conform to the U.S. Department of Labor?s Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures. Dr. Williams seems to agree. Yet, MBTI and a plethora of copy cat, four-quadrant personality tests still serve as ?pillars of the hiring process? for many unwitting employers.

MBTI type mappings onto job titles is not what ?Job-Match? means to those who advocate best-in-class practices in hiring and promotion. As a proponent of real job-matching, I was disappointed to see an apparent connection being made between the term, “Job-Match”, and what Dr. Williams characterized as: “similar to the ?see what sticks? approach, except worse”.

In the words of Jim Collins (”Good to Great” (c)2002) “Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus and the right people in the right seats.” Getting the right people (employees) in the right seats (employee roles or jobs) is what job matching is all about.

There are highly reliable, thoroughly validated, job-matching assessment instruments that consistently outperform alternative employee selection procedures (e.g. behavioral tests and standard interviews) by a significant margin.

Real job matching starts with a thorough ?job analysis? ? i.e. What does it take to perform well at this job in this employment context? Only then, can reliable, valid and sufficiently comprehensive assessments gauge the extent to which particular candidates may have what it takes.

Job analyses examine (i) the activities and tasks that make up a job, (ii) the conditions under which they are performed and (iii) what the job requires in terms of aptitudes, attitudes, behaviors, values, interests, knowledge, skills, abilities and other qualities.

Dr. Williams intentionally used a “Bad” example of “Job Match” to make his point. I want to point out that “Good Job-Match” represents a best practice that employers can use to systematically build high performance organizations. It?s not just me saying it. Job matching is the answer to Jim Collins mantra, from a book that has topped best seller lists for five years, now. We’ve known the power of job match for decades and today’s best online assessments make it more straightforward, more powerful and more affordable, than ever