Got Skills?
Skilled employees are vital to ensuring total organizational performance. But a growing pre-employment testing trend I have seen is that organizations bet on one style or form of testing or assessment under the assumption that it solves every business challenge. More often than not, that trend seems to be defaulting to personality assessment. Why? It’s an easy argument that everyone has a personality and every job has people, so every job needs an assessment of personality. Now, I am a big fan of scalability to the point that it delivers value and accurate results. I’ve made the case numerous times in my HCI blogs, however, that one test does not solve all problems. Just because something is simple doesn’t mean it’s right or even good.
I/O psychologists often refer to Knowledge, Skills and Ability (KSAs) as major components of measuring work-related constructs for which individuals should be evaluated. It is critical to focus on measuring these things in the pre-employment of frontline associates in particular to ensure your talent pipeline is getting filled not only with the “will do” that is important for the job, but also the “can do” skills that are directly related to performing the job. Personality – by itself – shares little relationship with hard job skills. Hence the morphing of KSA into now KSA-P (personal characteristics) or KSA-O (other) or KSA-insert whatever your test is to make it fit here. Indeed, one can be a conscientious extravert and still know nothing about safety practices, IT programming, math or even word processing. Translation: Personality is helpful but does not equal job skills. And we need skills for a skilled labor force – in some cases the need for skilled workers could top 50 percent growth by 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A few thoughts come to mind:
- Personality and style are much more relevant for higher level roles (e.g., upper management) and team building; better for less-structured roles where it is less critical to test for skills because people have demonstrated proficiency over a longer career track that can be verified with references and background checks.
- Skills and other behavioral testing are much more relevant for frontline associates where KSAs are critical for successful job performance. When often dealing with those masses who have had limited or no career track to speak to, gaining insights into their capacity to perform is a must. Otherwise companies are likely to hire polite associates who cannot perform. Sadly this is the norm. When I spoke with a recent customer who told me they had 160 percentturnover of frontline associates they spoke as if this was the norm and it was ok. I challenge the norm.
- There are numerous other avenues for testing and assessing that are less traditional but are gaining momentum. Using data to help sort, and manage candidates is not “testing” but can direct the right folks to the right test. I believe this is the future. Leveraging some form of badging or credentialing (which often occurs via games, short tests, voluntary offerings) allows hiring authorities to rapidly identify those candidates who are basically “pre-qualified” – this is great because it takes a candidate pool from the many to the few that companies want to really engage in the process.
- Leveraging more robust and traditional skills testing can take the pool from the few pre-qualified to the one or two who are right for job, all by using measurement and methods that are more relevant for their level, career path and company need.
James H. Killian, Ph.D. is now Vice President | Assessment Sales with Findly Talent, LLC, headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Findly helps organizations leverage social and mobile recruiting with seamless candidate relationship management, professional services, testing and assessment.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/james-killian-ph-d/0/182/859
twitter: JamesKillianPHD
phone: 614.477.5610