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Assessment for recruitment, selection and talent management

What is it?

 Assessment is considered an evaluation process comprised of various inputs, from individuals’ performance appraisals or psychometric test results to assessment centers. From an organizational standpoint, these different inputs assist the decision-making process in external recruitment, internal selection, promotion, succession planning and talent development.

What challenges, problems and opportunities are typically addressed by assessment?
  • You have 20 applicants for a job posting. Your current recruitment procedures are a little out of date as well as lengthy. How could you make a quick and effective choice?
  • You have posted a job internally. You have 5 internal applicants as well as the external candidates. How will you differentiate between the two populations? Will you use the same criteria for both?
  • You have two internal candidates for a senior position; for both it would mean a promotion. Do they have the potential to take the step up to senior management?
  • You have 5 key people in your organization who are coming up to retirement and you need to start thinking about who will replace them.
  • You have hired three new people into the organization. They are bright, hard-working and ambitious. They want to know what you are going to do about developing them.

How does it work?
  • Assessment can be done with your internal resources, the managers and the HR team. Coming in from outside, we could deliver various services to assist you, give you the tools required, help you find tools which will suit your need, provide on-going support.
  • We would meet with you to explore your situation and find the approach and the tools that would fit your applications.

Our approach and tools
General approach Our approach to assessment is to inform both the participant-candidate and the organization in a helpful and respectful manner.
Psychometric test and 360° feedback results belong primarily to the participant-candidate and it is only with his/her consent that the designated others may receive the results. When information from these sources is not relevant to the profile or other requirements it will not be given to the organization.

Structured interviews		 Structured interviews use competency- or behavioural- based interview methodology to elicit participant’s past experience in specific work situations.
Structured interview guides focus on eliciting the company’s values and behaviours or competencies, specifically those less covered by other tools, such as managing large teams.
Psychometric testing Personality testing using NEO-PI-R (NEO Personality Inventory Revised) covering the Big 5 Factors of extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism (emotional stability).
Research using the Big 5 Factors demonstrates the predictability of effectiveness in performance and leadership, and is more reliable than personality type indicators.
The NEO-PI-R is available in English, French, German and many other languages. In English a report is provided with information about the participant’s preferences in regards to:
•    Problem solving and decision making
•    Planning, organizing and implementing
•    Style of relating to others
•    Personal style

Assessment exercises

Assessment centers

 Off-the-shelf assessment exercises can be taken from a well-known UK-based provider. The exercises are designed for particular populations, such as senior or executive levels, are industry-specific in some instances, and functional specific, i.e. general management, sales, etc.
Assessment exercises can be for individuals or for groups.
Development centers We have also delivered a number of development center exercises for talent management, whereby the participants receive direct feedback in discussion with the assessor-coach. These exercises are made-to-measure and based on the company values and requirements.
360° feedback The Extended Full Range Leadership Model is one of the most cited and rigorously tested leadership models. The model assesses what effective leaders do. Unlike many other assessment instruments, its validity is published in peer-reviewed journals of repute and is amongst the very highest.
The 360° assessment is run by our partner, LNS, in collaboration with a swiss university. It is web-based so administration is minimized. The participant receives a detailed personal report. These results are confidential and may only be discussed with others with the explicit permission of the participant.
The model assess four dimensions of leadership :
  • Transformational
  • Instrumental
  • Transactional
  • Laissez Faire
The assessment also provides information on the satisfaction, motivation and increased effort that others have when working with the participant.
Stakeholder interviews Stakeholder interviews can complement the 360° feedback of raters. They can also be held as a stand-alone. They provide information on the credibility and track record of participants, as well as giving indicators of best performance.
Other self rating tools Cultural Orientations Indicator® is a self-rating tool which indicates participants’ preferences on 10 cultural dimensions. These indicators can be linked to a company’s values or to a management team’s preferences.

The Career Anchors® model represents the individual’s unique combination of perceived career competence, motives and values. It indicates the most important factors that someone takes into consideration concerning his/her career. Research with the High Potential population indicates the anchors which have the most impact.

The Best Reflected Self exercise is a longer process run by the participants themselves and asking for feedback on their performance “when they have shown the best of themselves. It would be a major component of a talent development process.
Performance appraisals Performance appraisals and other performance management related information can be used, to look at the participant’s track record, achievement of objectives and business-related KPIs over the past 2-3 years.

What is interesting and different about our approach?
  • We have tried and tested a number of tools in our practice over the past 30 years.
  • Our tools have been selected for their validity and reliability. They are not the most expensive tools.
  • We can devise made-to-measure interview guides, assessment exercises and 360° feedback surveys that fit your organization.

What’s in it for you and your organization?
  • You can try out an assessment tool without investing heavily in IT-based systems.
  • You can have a made-to-measure approach that is run by your HR team and management to ensure user-friendliness and buy-in.
  • You can have access to independent organizational psychologists who can translate your problems into feasible, practical solutions.

What kind of services do we offer your organization?
A discovery meeting An initial meeting to discuss your needs and to discover more about your organization. We could present each of the assessment tools and show you examples.

Assessments of individual candidates  for recruitment or selection		 You have an opening or a newly created position. You have made your first selection and would like an external consultant to give you more inputs for your decision-making.
We would look at your position description and profile, propose additional criteria if need be, and the tools to use in the assessment. For each assessment, we establish a report for you.

High potential or talent assessment		 You would like to put a high potential, leadership development or talent development program in place, and would like to establish the criteria for assessing the high potentials in your organization. We will work with you to establish these criteria and the tools needed to put in place for your HR team and internal stakeholders.
Putting in place your competency framework You would like to establish the success criteria for performance in your organization, and to create a competency framework for use in your Human Resources activities.
We have created competency frameworks from scratch, or with popular competency libraries, like Lominger and DDI. We have developed them for a division or for the management function, and we can do it again for you.
Assessment or development centers You would like to put in place a development center for a particular function, or for your leadership development program, with assessors who are also coaches and can start the development immediately after the exercises during the center.
We can develop the exercises and case-studies in-house to ensure the cultural and functional fit.

Why work with us?
Kate Lindley Scheidegger, organizational psychologist, was trained in job analysis, position profiling, competency framework development, behavioural- or competency-based interviewing, and assessment as of 1987. She has worked as an organizer, assessor and role-player on assessment and development centers. She is certified by DDI as a Targeted Selection trainer, by Testzentrale Switzerland as an administrator of NEO-PI-R, and has coached many candidates using the XFRLM developed by John Antonakis, in conjunction with LNS.

Jean-Luc Scheidegger has a wealth of management experience and has worked as an assessor on assessment centers for large Swiss companies. He holds a MAS in Human Resources Management and Organizational Development.

Ben Johnson, trainer and consultant, has developed numerous case studies, simulations and exercises for a variety of roles from IT specialist to senior consultant, from salesperson to top manager. As an assessor-coach, Ben uses video recording to provide precise and constructive feedback to help individuals develop their unique strengths. His remarkable talents as an actor for role-playing can stretch and surprise even the most hard-nosed professional.

Linda Wee-Henz has implemented competency frameworks for a number of companies in Switzerland, Denmark and Poland, as well as leadership development programs. She has designed 360° feedback surveys and conducts psychometric assessments to identify work force potential, challenges and gaps; development and assessment centers.

Our favorite books:

The Leadership Pipeline: how to build the leadership-powered company, Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter, James Noel, 2001, Kossey Bass

Assessment methods in recruitment, selection and performance, Robert Edenborough, 2005, Kogan Page