The discussion of simulations interests me greatly. One of the reasons I use what I use is that self-report instruments in the hiring environment are less that satisfying. What sales candidate will circle “passive” as a descriptor? I once had a candidate say, “I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to lie or not,” when handing in a self-report assessment.

I use a 10-15 minute process that goes a step beyond “simulation” and measures a person’s actual judgment and decision-making pattern. Becuase of the 30 years of research that’s been done on this process, this yields accurate and objective measures of any trait based on judgment. This includes talent, ability to access the talent, attitude, and ability to translate that talent and attitude into skill. That covers quite a bit of the ballfield in hiring. The results are profound.

To my mind, this methodology represents the assessment technology of the future and, oddly enough, it didn’t come out of the field of psychology.

I invite you to see what I mean. (It’s not mine, I get it from the developer.) I’ll be happy to share my access with you and show you how your results were derived. Let me know and I’ll send you a Password. We who have used it can document times when it was to our chagrin (and sometimes shame) when we ignored its results and hired anyway.

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I agree with Joseph that the assessment market continues to evolve and improve.

One thing that separates off-the-shelf assessments from what Joseph calls ‘performance modeling’ is Job Matching or Benchmarking to determine what makes a top performer.

After spending over 32 years running retail organizations and working with a list of competencies and situational interviewing with less than horrible results, assessments are accepted not only by companies looking to recruit the best talent, Gen-X, Gen-Y and the Millenial generations understand their substance and expect to be asked to complete an assessment as part of the hiring process. In fact, they expect their results to be shared with them.

But it doesn’t stop there. A quality assessment, integrated with a well-developed benchmarking, job matching, and a hiring process, can also provide additional coaching after hire and can also be of great value througout the employee’s career with the company. It can serve to promote the right person, create succession plans that can be re-generated as people and jobs change, write newer, more exact job descriptions, even help you right-size or down-size defensibly, and create legal interview questions that will clearly separate the average from the superior people.

If the assessments you are looking at don’t offer all of this up front, contact me.

While I can appreciate simulations, most companies want an assessmetn that delivers just what I outlined above … on the ground running right from the first meeting.

Rich Hayes
TR Hayes and Associates
Better People
Better Business

Simulations are alive and well and being integrated into staffing processes across most industry sectors. Brand conscious organization with high volume hiring into a few core positions are readily investing in custom simulations. Grounding the investment in a simulation on performance modeling and return on investment projections makes it is easy for companies to justify the time commitment and dollars for such a solution.

From our experience, custom assessments consistently outperform off-the-shelf assessments. Companies that take the time to make an apples-to-apples comparison are able to see the difference.

Off-the-shelf assessments and simulations measure off-the-shelf traits and predict generalized behaviors. Brand conscious companies seeking competitive differentiation require measurement methods that predict brand specific behaviors.

Custom simulations provide measurement rigor and discipline for the business process most critical to the brand promise – staffing. The effort involved in crafting company and job specific simulations increases staffing’s ability to identify and hire those best suited to deliver the brand promise.

Custom simulations are a “killer app” and one of the best forms of Web 2.0 technology for staffing. Candidates expect more from the web – simulations deliver an engaging and informative multi-media experience. Recruiters are growing tired of poor decision support data from traditions ATS systems – custom simulations deliver candidate profiles in a company-specific language of performance. CEOs are expecting staffing to report the contribution from investments in recruiting technology – custom simulations by their nature and design document ROI. Custom simulations deliver CEO validation before EEO validation.

Joseph P. Murphy
Shaker Consulting Group, Inc.
Developers of the Virtual Job Tryout®