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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.

Focus on Assessment – Persuasiveness

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Persuasiveness is using appropriate interpersonal styles and communication methods to gain exceptions of an idea, plan, activity, service, or product from prospects and clientele. This dimension has a “outward” orientation within or outside an organization. It can replace the concept of individual leadership for many positions and, of course, for sales positions. It is important to recognize that taking orders and selling/persuading are not the same thing. When assessing persuasiveness, you should be listening for evidence that the candidate has actually caused someone to change his/her mind.

When evaluating persuasiveness, you must realize there are several competencies that should be evaluated. Competencies such as how one works with different types of buyers; how one uses different sales approaches in order to address a problem; or how one uses training to improve their own persuasiveness is very important. It’s also important but a person understands failure and appreciates winds when persuasiveness is being assessed.

Be sure to think about the type of function or servicing, and what the end goal would be on how to use persuasiveness. Someone can persuade somebody to buy a product may not be as good as persuading someone to buy an idea.

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.

Linking Interviews with Performance

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Take out one of your team member’s last performance review or their development plan. Now go ahead and pull out the screening questions and interview questions that you used to hire one of your team members.

Is there ANY linkage whatsoever? Well their should be. Interesting how we tend to measure performance after we hire someone but we tend not to directly ask or measure performance capability during the interview process.

When you hire, you are not only measuring the ability for the candidate to perform against the tasks, you are measuring the gaps they have so you can build a strong development plan for them so they can be a strong performer for your team. That builds a stronger ROI on the hire, and better retention of the employee.

Try Problem Solving as a competence. You know your team should be able to solve problems for business leaders, and create strong solutions for their needs. As such, see if you can list the following:

  • What interview question (and follow up deep dives) would you ask to determine if the potential employee has mastered problem solving?
  • What development tools or techniques would you use to increase the competence of your team member regarding problem solving?
  • How do you measure their ability to problem solve, and will you grade it objectively come performance review?
Of course this linkage needs to be done across dozens of competencies – but its straight forward – and important to the development of strong players and future leaders.

Wasting Leaders as a Resource

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The most under utilized resource that recruiters and HR have access to are respected leaders and managers in their business. Period.

We spend so much time trying to figure out what recruiters should be doing – boring. Spend time on what managers and leaders should be doing during the recruiting process. And I don’t mean get leaders to simply interview or review resumes. Try these ideas on for size:

  • Transfer employee referrals to leaders. Switch to leaders marked as high potential, employees in rotational programs, team leaders with great results, or employees who won awards for performance. Name somebody better in your organization who is better to vet someone that was recommended by a fellow employee. Your employee referrals may go down in number, but up in quality.
  • Give your candidate an exercise during the interview, and have a leader sit in and watch them think and perform. Its amazing how people learn about someone when you watch them work. Results are easy to assess, but if you want to know the thought process, you have to see the work getting done.
  • Have a leader who is NOT the hiring manager run the interview debrief session. Recruiting should advocate and prompt here when needed, but get your leaders to take the reins – they will absorb more accountability and hold the hiring manager accountable too. You probably have to prep them before, but sit on your hands during the session – let your leaders challenge each other.