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Focus on Assessment: Collaboration

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What is collaboration? The first thing that may come to mind is “teamwork”, but they are two different things. Teamwork is the ability to effectively work with others in a group to produce a common goal. Collaboration can be defined as working effectively with others in the organization outside the line of formal authority (such as peers in other units or senior management) to accomplish organizational goals and to identify and solve problems. In other words, collaboration is not working with your own team, pod or usual group of coworkers, but with an outside set of peers whose job goes hand in hand with yours. For example, Sourcers working with Recruiters; they do not have the same position or necessarily work together, but one’s successes can depend on the other.

As such, the competencies needed to be an accomplished collaborator differ from those of being a good teammate. Often in times of collaboration, one may need to provide services to another group without sufficient amount of knowledge or experience on the problem at hand. A good collaborator will adapt to his/her surroundings, ask appropriate and time-staking questions to get the proper information needed to help, and go from there. They will not use inexperience as an excuse to stay out. On the other side of things, a good collaborator must also be able to give simple yet defined information to someone on the outside in an efficient manner. Collaboration goes both ways.

We’ve all been in situations when the same set of eyes and ears have been dealing with a problem, and something just isn’t working. Maybe the solution is to pull someone from an outside party for a different perspective on the matter. A good collaborator will not hesitate to ask for help outside their own group, even if other members are not thrilled. Some people see this is a sign of weakness and are afraid to ask for help in fear of looking unqualified. However, in my experience, senior managers enjoy being pulled in for their expertise. They know a lot and are (usually) happy to share their knowledge any way they can. Moreover, they would rather help find the solution to a problem than have no solution at all, as it can obviously reflect on them, too.

When success of the business is on the line, why delay in collaboration? A successful collaborator understands the value of collaboration. As stated earlier, this person is not afraid of asking for help and giving help if both parties can benefit from it. Any company can reap the benefits of collaboration if used effectively and appropriately. Are you a good one?

Focus on Assessment — Oral Presentation

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It is no secret that oral presentation is not everyone’s strong suit, even though it is a crucial competency in the professional world. Oral presentation, for our purposes, can be defined as presenting ideas effectively to individuals or groups when given time for preparation (including nonverbal communication and use of visual aids); or targeting presentations to the characteristics and needs of the audience.

Oral presentation is a competency needed to illustrate important ideas internally to higher-ups or externally to current or potential clients, for example. These types of presentations require similar skills on the part of the speaker and are of the utmost importance regarding both internal and external ventures.

When interviewing someone for a job that requires superior oral presentation skills, make sure that they can:

1. Present to superiors and peers with equal effectiveness: Someone should be able to speak just as well to superiors as they can to their peers. Their skills should remain consistent no matter what the occasion of the presentation or who is present.

2. Use multiple approaches to communicate: This person does not rely on the same, overused technique each time they are required to present information. They are able to utilize various forms of communication to present in the best way possible for that particular situation.

3. Handle demanding presentations: Performing under stress and on short notice is a reality of any business. A skilled speaker can handle a lot in a short amount of time, and do it successfully.

4. Keeps attention of large groups: We can all relate to sitting through a boring presentation. So much can be lost on a group if the speaker does not keep its audience engaged.

Of course, these are just a handful of important assets to someone with high oral presentation skills. Oral presentation is a hard competency to test for unless that person is put into a real situation. Ask the interviewee to give thorough examples and to play out the experience as best they can.

Focus on Assessment – Integrity

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INTEGRITY is a word that is used in many corporate behavioral constructs. It is not unusual for the 12 or 15 behaviors of a Fortune 500 company to have INTEGRITY listed either as a value on its own or to be weaved into that value system across the board. I do find it using that although INTEGRITY seems to be something that most corporations take great pride in, when I asked how do you measure for it during your assessment process they seem to be a bit at a loss.

There may be several definitions or interpretations of what INTEGRITY is, but in regards to assessment for a new hire, I’ll try to use a definition is broad enough so it can be assessed . INTEGRITY involves maintaining and promoting social, ethical, and organizational norms and conducting internal and external business activities. INTEGRITY is something that typically is not as such taught as much as it is reflected and were learned great care to be taken to avoid condoning behavior that indicates “low integrity”. If a manager exhibits the behaviors that are “low integrity”, it is likely that the team that reports about will believe that “low integrity” is approved within the organization.

It has been my experience that integrity is something very personal. As such, you may want to get a better understanding of the hiring manager in their style in general, so that you understand what integrity needs to know.  When considering competencies or experiences to measure in order to assess integrity, you may want to consider certain questioning based on the function specifically. As an example, if you are measuring integrity for sales personnel, you may want to measure how someone up sells the customer with a strong value proposition. If you are measuring someone who is in quality, you may want to better understand how to maintain accuracy consistently.

About Rounded Assessment and its Value to Recruiting

Assessment comes in many forms. Our contention is that competencies need to be identified for each position at an organization, and a level of mastery for some or all of those competencies needs to be identified for each candidate that has applied for the role – whether they are internal or external.

It is the hiring manager’s responsibility to then understand which competencies to leverage, which to develop, and which to avoid in order to have the new employee reach desired productivity in the desired timeline. Competence needs to be assessed, but assessing experience, work habits, cognition, intelligence, and other areas are also critical. We believe that the advocacy of a combined assessment, or “Rounded Assessment” is the job of every recruiter. It is not necessarily their job to assess everything, but rather make sure that the assessment is performed and documented so a hiring manager or business leader can make sound decisions.

This blog post is part of a series of posts that are set to release over a long period of time. In each, Aspen provides insight on the elements and assets within Rounded Assessment.

Focus on Assessment – Energy

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Productivity is absolutely critical to forecast the success, as such understanding a candidates ENERGY in its capacity is absolutely critical. There are many positions that involve intense workloads, concentrated work hours over short period of time, or repetitive tasks over a long period time that some would find mundane.  If assessment on energy is not done for positions where productivity is absolutely critical and has to be compliant, is reasonable to assume that a long-term fit or immediate fit for that role will be difficult to obtain.

As such, ENERGY can be defined as consistently maintaining a high activity or productivity level or even be defined as simply as sustaining long work hours. It’s important to realize that the definition of ENERGY may be very specific to your own organization. When your organization defines as intense or long hours may be radically different than another company considers intense for long hours.

When assessing ENERGY, you may want to consider any number of competencies that could include the following–how a person puts in extra hours when needed, how they follow through processes tirelessly, or how they prepare for completion. It’s also important to measure if someone has awareness of their low energy and if they can persevere even though they have low energy.

About Rounded Assessment and its Value to Recruiting

Assessment comes in many forms. Our contention is that competencies need to be identified for each position at an organization, and a level of mastery for some or all of those competencies needs to be identified for each candidate that has applied for the role – whether they are internal or external.

It is the hiring manager’s responsibility to then understand which competencies to leverage, which to develop, and which to avoid in order to have the new employee reach desired productivity in the desired timeline. Competence needs to be assessed, but assessing experience, work habits, cognition, intelligence, and other areas are also critical. We believe that the advocacy of a combined assessment, or “Rounded Assessment” is the job of every recruiter. It is not necessarily their job to assess everything, but rather make sure that the assessment is performed and documented so a hiring manager or business leader can make sound decisions.

This blog post is part of a series of posts that are set to release over a long period of time. In each, Aspen provides insight on the elements and assets within Rounded Assessment.

Focus on Assessment – Adaptability

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Adaptability is maintaining effectiveness and parenting environment’s when different tasks responsibilities and/or people are present. This dimension has become much more relevant in recent years as companies have become more global,  use matrix hierarchies, use more project teams, and increase their outsourcing.

Additionally, adaptability is reported in the ever-changing world of mergers and acquisitions. In employees ability to shift to a new culture, focus, or value proposition of the business, can certainly weigh in on their retention or ability to promote.

When considering the competencies related to adaptability, several competencies can be assessed. A few include how a person adjusted corporate change, I wanted ask to management styles, how they adapt to different teams were different groups, and how one can transition from one group to another well.

When considering adaptability as part of the assessment for an imposition, consider whether or not adaptability will BEA relevant part of the role. His new leadership is going to be present, if a merger is pending, or a cultural shift is coming, you will  likely need to add adaptability of the candidates into the assessment.

About Rounded Assessment and its Value to Recruiting

Assessment comes in many forms. Our contention is that competencies need to be identified for each position at an organization, and a level of mastery for some or all of those competencies needs to be identified for each candidate that has applied for the role – whether they are internal or external.

It is the hiring manager’s responsibility to then understand which competencies to leverage, which to develop, and which to avoid in order to have the new employee reach desired productivity in the desired timeline. Competence needs to be assessed, but assessing experience, work habits, cognition, intelligence, and other areas are also critical. We believe that the advocacy of a combined assessment, or “Rounded Assessment” is the job of every recruiter. It is not necessarily their job to assess everything, but rather make sure that the assessment is performed and documented so a hiring manager or business leader can make sound decisions.

This blog post is part of a series of posts that are set to release over a long period of time. In each, Aspen provides insight on the elements and assets within Rounded Assessment.