I disagree with a few points you made.

Jim Baran
Owner, Value Stream Leadership

Now take it back to a third party talent manager who gets one shot – maybe 45 minutes to an hour – hopefully face to face – but for the mid level roles probably on the phone – to learn these idiosyncrasies- 90% not a chance…but if you’re really diligent to the core assessment principles – can provide stellar people that are competent and with luck of meshing well (we always make adaptability a high sought after trait in addition to the rest)- can successfully marshall talent that perform very well for 2-3 years…when 18 months is the average job length for folks under 35 – its more than passable…(we moved to this demographic when we carefully reviewed the generational gaps in the market…)

For example, if I know I need X-level of intelligence for a job, I try to verify if the candidate has X-level of intelligence using behavioral interviews, case studies, validated tests, and so forth. I always use the three-bears approach…not too little…not too much…just right.

The object is to balance the type, number and expense of assessments against the risk of job failure. For example, I might only use BEI with low level jobs that anyone could perform, however, I throw-the-sink at professionals, managers and executives who could cause some real damage to the organization. I’ll also do more assessment and validation documentation if the organization is a litigation target.

Think of assessments as stairsteps…each one adds more accuracy to the hire: starting with chance (the casual interview) and ranging upward one asessment at a time. In my experience it can rise to about 90% if I clearly understand HOW a job is to be performed and if my candidate passes all my HOW assessments. When that happens I have 90% confidence that my candidate is intelligent enough, has the right kind of interpersonal skills, likes the job, has the right planning skills, and so forth to be successful.

Now, if he or she goes to work for a jerk or decides to have a mid-life crisis, then all bets are off… good people do not work long for bad managers.

Finally, managers seldom understand correlation or validity numbers, so I explain it to them this way… While we don’t have performance data on people who don’t pass interviews (e.g., they don’t get hired), we do know that people who are hired quickly sort themselves into a bell curve of about 20% high performers, 20% low and the rest in the middle. This is very easy to see in training programs, sales, turnover, and other situations where the performance is somewhat easy to see.

A good asessment process tends to shift the mid-point of that bell curve dramatically to the right. So much so that today’s average was once yesterday’s high.

I read this last year in the actual magazine and am glad to have it copied in my files from the website or future reference…

It is a terrific article and spot on for this discussion!

Most Likely to Succeed: How do we hire when we can’t tell who’s right for the job?

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell#ixzz0Xos8RDEO

He’s a pretty smart guy, that Malcolm Gladwell ;) The article is definitely worth the read.

As for Fund Managers and that “whole bunch of different circumstances”, just what is it that makes the circumstances of tomorrow different than the circumstances of yesterday? Reliability is just another way to say, “playing the odds”. And odds are, there will be thieves, crooks, bad legislation, and greed tomorrow too. But individuals will still be investing and I’ll still play the odds-on favorites. “Them that does, is them that knows”.

In a company, if it is for a game changing position, the same mistake could sink the business – I am not willing to make that risk if I can help it and that is exactly what we are discussing here – there are numerous indicators of performance that if combined together can get us about 70% there (not just a test) – but with only reviewing what they previously did in some other space, at a different time, with a whole bunch of different circumstances,etc. etc. – I think that we can do better than that.

By the way from an investment perspective, somewhere I read that, “yesterday’s masters of the universe are today’s cosmic dust…” I don’t believe that any financial advisor can identify in advance the top performing fund managers – no one can – and I would avoid those who say they can do so!

In addition, goals, objectives, and quantitative results are the keys to my position. I hire people. I don’t offer people up to be hired. In that capacity I get to choose the performance indicators that best match the position I’m filling. Most importantly, the objective data provided along with that indicator is mine to accept or reject as relevant. If these are categorized as job competencies, so be it… but I want to look at the quantitative data related to the performance of that competency, not the test scores that say they have them.

As for Fund Managers, you can choose the one that best fits your assessment tests and I’ll choose the one that has 15 years of success and one huge failure. We’ll talk again in 10 years.

Keep in mind that I’m not saying that there is a 1:1 relationship between past and future performance. I’m saying it is the best predictor.

In our people centric world what really drives returns is a knowledge of the six keys to assessment succeess that are outlined at the beginning of this article.

For example, consider the following:

a. Salesperson X is ‘unsuccessful’ selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door at $100 USD+.
b. Same-said Salesperson X is ‘successful’ selling enterprise level software packages at $1 Million USD+.

OR . . .

a. Recruiter X is ‘unsuccessful’ in a high-volume hiring environment involving hiring primarily transactional roles.
b. Same-said Recruiter X is ‘successful’ in a highly targeted hiring environment involving the recruitment of highly tacit roles through relationship selling.

These are rudimentary examples, yet ones we can all relate to. I have met many Recruiters who would perform sub-optimally in a ‘body shop’ (i.e. org with high turnover and low morale) while they would thrive in a more high-performance environment despite the complexity of the roles they would be recruiting.

Good-performer-bad-manager syndrome? Otherwise known as GPBMS?? Will HR forever try to broadly identify causal relationships by assessing individual interactions? This may work with huge data sets (and reliabilities/validities that “support” a decision) but in the real world we hire and fire one at a time.

How about: Past performance is still the best predictor of future success. Therefore, the Director needs to perform due diligence on the Manager’s performance.

I doubt if you will find a more direct, easy to grasp primer on the basics than what Dr. Williams has written today. It is the road map for how to implement and what to include. Thankfully, it will be extremely difficult for companies to incorporate, leaving market openings to those willing to fill the void for them.

There are a ton of assessment companies in the marketplace – many of them excellent, many of them not. In most cases the successful ones create industry, company and job specific measurement tools to benchmark against for 60-70% accuracy of predicted job performance. The problem is that hiring managers will still revert to the caveman instincts that Dr. WIlliams mentions – ignoring the data in front of them. If there was a source of information that provided both the clear job indicator measurements and the “I love you Man!” feel for hiring managers to review before meeting a prospective new hire – the world of hire turnover rates may begin to decline somewhat…but of course we will have to kill the resume off first…(OK – one thing at a time).

The best predictor of future success is past performance. Period.

Demand documented, verifiable, evidence of past performance and you’ll save time, money, and acronyms.