Answering to your most common questions

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What Are Your Assessments Measuring?

One way to think about assessments is that they answer questions about an individual’s skills and abilities and allow us to predict their potential as an employee and even their promotion or executive-level potential. When hiring, companies may review many different candidates who seem to be a good fit but once hired, may be the complete opposite of what the company wants. The new employee may not be a good cultural fit, may not possess the needed skills, or may have an attitude not conducive for the role.

Each position is unique, and may require an individual to have a different set of skills and personality traits (soft skills) to perform the job well. Because behavior can’t be accurately assessed using a resumé, it is often difficult to know whether an employee possesses the necessary soft skills or not. Even when conducting an in-person interview, your view of the candidate may not accurately reflect the existence of them. To assess soft skills, employers are increasingly using competency-based assessments during the search and recruitment process to gain insight into a job candidate as a whole person.

Hard Skills, Soft Skills

In the search to find the best-fit individual for a particular position and organization, companies are realizing that the hiring market is becoming clouded with people listing skills on their résumés that they don’t possess (Sullivan) or people who may seem to fit the company culture in an interview, but are completely different once selected. Assessments help determine bestfit individuals by providing a standardized method of decision-making and a resource that companies can refer back to.

What Is The Basic Assessment Process?

Our basic assessment process, designed for entry level and nonmanagerial positions, begins with the 16PF questionnaire and the Personnel Report (a proprietary property). Presented in an easy-tofollow format, the Personnel Report breaks down the 16PF results into an understandable language that provides a specific assessment of an individual’s work-related personality characteristics.

There are some personality characteristics that may raise concerns about how well the candidate can perform almost any job. For example, people who are easily frustrated or extremely impractical are likely to have trouble adapting to most kinds of work. Other personality characteristics are relevant only to particular jobs. For instance, while friendliness or being highly social is usually an asset for sales or customer service, it may interfere with job success in positions like computer programming or bookkeeping.

The Personnel Report (PR) covers both types of personality job interactions. On the general side, it can indicate areas of potential concern to be assessed by further evaluation. On the specific side, the traits discussed in the narrative description of the subject’s personality assist decision-makers in finding the person whose characteristics most closely align with the job.

Imagine having this kind of comprehensive information readily available to assist you in making selection, placement, and promotion decisions based upon job effectiveness and reliability as you compare the skills and competencies necessary for the job.

How Long Do Assessments Take?

A candidate typically spends, on the average, approximately 30 minutes on any one of our online assessments. One assessment in our battery is timed at only 20 minutes, while another could take up to 40 minutes to complete.

What Are Your Goals?

When it comes to human capital initiatives, there are a variety of goals that companies may want to achieve. For example, in order to retain high-performing employees, companies may invest in development programs to keep staff engaged and motivated. Developmental programs can consist of assessments of leadership potential and of personal strengths and weaknesses.

With the rapid rate of retiring professionals, companies may want to identify and develop a successor out of their already brimming talent pool. By using post-hire assessments, organizations have an objective way to determine the critical competency levels for talent, addressing who’s ready to move up or over in an organization. This keeps the succession pool active and ready without the need for constant outside hiring.

Our clients also use assessments to evaluate their current executives to discover room for improvement or development. Organizations often use a 360-degree review, which provides input on the individual from his or her peers, boss(es), and subordinates. Among researchers and coaches, most agree that 360-degree feedback can increase self-awareness and increase individual and team effectiveness.

Why Should My Company Use Assessments?

Our clients are companies who strongly believe that people and their performance are vital to their success. When companies feel that people really do make a difference, the decisions about those people become especially important. The high cost of turnover is yet another reason companies must understand the capabilities, strengths and weaknesses of the people they hire and retain.

What Will I Learn From These Assessments?

Too often, hiring is based on “I know a good one when I see one.” And “I’m a pretty good judge of character.” Or, the resume is taken at face value, the reference check only confirms employment, and the interview lacks an open-ended discussion of successes and challenges in previous roles.

We provide an objective assessment of the capabilities and competencies of potential candidates as well as existing employees to gauge their performance potential for their new role or future roles in your company. From the shop floor to the Executive suite, our goal is to provide information to help you make sound hiring and promotion decisions.

Assessments provide valuable information to consider during the hiring process and beyond. Can the individual handle the position? Are there gaps and if so, can they be trained? Do the behaviors revealed through the assessment process match those necessary for success at the position?

Included with the other information, assessments become a part of a balanced scorecard approach to determine if your candidate is a good fit for the job. It is a valuable source of information about performance potential throughout the life cycle of the talent management process.

What Type Of Information Will Be Received?

The input we provide our client companies depends on the client and the nature of the position under consideration. In general, our reports provide an overall opinion about a candidate’s general fit for a position. The other is a detailed behavioral profile of the candidate’s motivations and behavior as they relate to the duties and functions of the job. Our goal is to paint a detailed portrait of an individual to determine the fit between the candidate and a given job within the organization.

Note: It is important to understand that we are not the final employment decision makers. We do not make any estimate of an individual’s functional skills, expertise, or product knowledge. Our clients alone decide whom to hire or promote, or what job changes, if any, should be implemented.

Does This Assessment Process Work?

Yes. You will never realize the full potential of your business unless you get the people process right. Do you have the right people in the right place? Do you have a process for selecting the right people? The full potential of your business lies in harnessing the talent of your people.

Hiring and developing organizational talent are two of the most important areas your company needs to master. Getting the people process right impacts productivity, morale and longevity within your company. Fully engaged employees are the most productive.

For over 27 years we have been helping companies develop and implement talent management systems that optimize talent to drive business initiatives.

How Long Does It Take To See Results?

Clients can expect to receive a report generated from the results of the assessments within 24 hours of the candidate’s completion.

What Types Of Improvements Can I Expect In My Business?

The Executive Group adopted the philosophy of treating each client as a partner whose success is as important as our own. From the beginning, we understood the most pressing needs of any organization lies in their people process. Our specialty is to facilitate an organization’s ability to identify and develop leadership, maximize sales force effectiveness and select and maximize talent at all levels.

We start by listening. Clearly understanding what our clients are facing allows us to customize a strategy unique to their needs and their culture. Our practice combines over 40 years of business experience with expertise using an array of valid and reliable assessment products to select and optimize talent and to create sustainable business strategies for future growth and success.

What Sets The Executive Group's Assessments Apart From What We Would Get From Other Companies?

The Executive Group’s objective is to tailor the assessment(s) to the complexity and significance of the position. We incorporate a variety of additional methods and instruments for any level in the organization. Using this process, we help clients select a battery of assessments and report which will do the best job in linking the data to the role and aid in making sound hiring, promotion and developmental decisions. All reports provide information about strengths and weaknesses in a language relevant to the situation and position.

Our basic assessment process, designed for entry level and non-managerial positions, begins with the 16PF questionnaire. The 16PF is a 185-item multiple choice assessment available in 40 languages. Taken online, it assesses 32 different dimensions of personality, reasoning skills, 5 global factors, and 3 validity scales. The first 170 questions measure a candidate’s feelings and/or responses to situations. The last 15 reasoning questions use analogies, patterns and simple mathematics to determine thinking skills.

The 16PF provides a two-tiered system of personality measurement that goes well beyond the scope of basic behavioral assessments. Sixteen primary scales make up this two-tiered system. While basic behavioral assessments only look at four areas of personality, the 16PF measures five areas – commonly referred to as the Big 5 Theory – and goes deeper to examine a total of 32 different dimensions of personality.

For higher level roles, more in-depth or job-specific information may be required. In these cases, we recommend one or more additional assessments. As an individual advances within an organization and takes on more responsibility, the more essential critical-thinking and problem-solving skills become. The information provided from the additional assessments will reinforce and confirm the results of the 16PF and provides greater insight into an individual’s behavior and emotional intelligence at a minimal cost.

Used in conjunction, these assessments measure personality, emotional resolve, critical thinking skills, learning agility, inductive/deductive reasoning, and perceptual reasoning.

What Size Companies Do You Work With?
We work with and support the needs of any and all size companies, from family-owned small businesses with only a few employees to global enterprises with thousands of staff members in many locations.
What Industries Are Best Suited For Your Service?
Our unique talent management process can be suited to any industry.
Are Assessments A One-time Project Or Recurring Project?
We use our assessment batteries for selection, development, coaching or promotion in management roles. The results obtained from the assessments also aid the individual in gaining self-insight, understanding their strengths and weaknesses, identifying their gaps and guiding professional development. To this end, our talent management process can be used from pre-hire through succession planning throughout the career of an individual.

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Growth usually takes on one of two very distinct pathways: a linear path and an exponential one. The latter sounds great, right? Just pull a few levers and watch your organization reap the benefits of exponential growth, making all of your dreams come true. Wait till that next quarterly review, you’ll show them you mean business!

Except that isn’t the entire story, and consistent leadership development results are better than exponential growth that isn’t sustainable.

So why talk about exponential growth in the domain of creating better leaders in the workplace? Well, because it never hurts to have something to aspire to. It never hurts to see what can indeed happen when consistent action is scaled out. That’s the key to making leadership development a potent component in today’s fast paced business environment.

What does feedback really mean? We talk about feedback, but we know that not all feedback is created equal. Feedback should begin with empathy, which is truly understanding the other person's perspective. From there, we want to come forward with evidence that backs up the statements we're going to make to that person. Direct, professional, and straightforward is the name of the game here.

Feedback and accountability go hand in hand within the world of strategically assessing leadership strengths and weaknesses.

What Comprehensive Feedback Isn't

Sometimes it's important to highlight what something isn't before we can really start visualizing what it is constructively. If you want to build or even transform current feedback and accountability processes, here's what to avoid most:

  • Relying on one assessment. There is no perfect assessment, and it's critical to avoid idolizing any assessment as the One True Measure of performance

  • Keeping resources too narrow. This isn't about trying to use as few resources as possible. Pull out all of the tools and see what's reasonable in terms of the specific leader being refined for greater opportunities (the ultimate goal)

  • Don't settle for just covering strengths and weaknesses in terms of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Full insight requires full analysis; KPIs are just a shortcut.

Collecting quantitative data is important, but don’t skip the opportunities to collect qualitative data along the way as well. For example,

Breaking Down Strategic Leadership Assessment - The Best Path Forward for Growth

In order to get the growth needed to stay competitive, it's time to go back to the drawing board. What does strategic leadership assessment look like in action? Well, the important point is that it begins with realizing the end goal: you're getting insight into an individual's makeup and identifying what their true strengths and weaknesses are. We're going back to the 3D Leadership model as one of the key foundational points of this plan.

Staying the Course

Motivation is a big topic in the business world because we're used to watching people quit. Why do people quit before they've reached the finish line? Sometimes it's a matter of not being able to visualize the end. Or perhaps it's not having enough milestones to reflect upon as they move deeper into their journey. Not everyone will finish their leadership development plan, or approach it with enthusiasm.

Reassurance isn't a bad thing, and it can help bolster morale to the point where employees buy back in. For entry-level employees, leadership development can feel impossible because they're starting their journey with a lot to cover. For the more seasoned leader, development often takes a "been there, done that" feeling.

Dive Deeper Into Refinement With Developing World Class Leaders: The Ultimate Guide to Leadership Development

Digging into the roots of better leadership development isn’t an easy journey. Yet it is absolutely essential for companies of all sizes.

Did you miss the deep dive on assessments? Check out the Strategic View of Hiring podcast episode, Exploring the World of Assessments.

Check out the book store and order a copy of Developing World Class Leaders: The Ultimate Guide to Leadership Development today.

To receive a copy of our Leadership Competency Inventory, complete with 64 competencies, just send an email.