Selection and assessment services.

Recruit the right person, first time.

Self-insight are experts in applying rigorous, evidence-based psychology to improve business performance. In these uncertain and difficult times, organizations need to make sure that they hire the right person first time. We offer an objective approach to selection, assessing how well candidates fit to the requirements of the role and to the culture of the organization. We focus on strengths but also on potential derailers.

To find out more please call 01628 674398 or email info@self-insight.com.

The benefits of getting selection right

No company can afford to waste money, and one of the largest hidden costs of any organisations is the price of failing to recruit the right person, first time.

In many organisations, recruitment processes are far from successful. For example, researchers have found:

• 22% of new hires leave within the first 6 months^[1].
• 46% of new hires are perceived to have been a mistake within 18 months^[2].
• Only 19% achieve unequivocal success^[2].

Why don’t new hires work out? One study^[2] found:

• 23% have problems with interpersonal relationships.
• 17% lack the motivation to do well.
• 15% do not ‘fit’ with the job or organization.
• Only 11% of new hires fail because they lack the necessary technical skills.

Self-insight selection services

Self-insight offers a range of services to help improve the ‘hit rate’ for new employees and commits to continuously improving your performance. Our work is carried out by chartered psychologists, who take a rigorous, scientific approach. We focus on results, applying evidence-based best practice. Given the extent of legislation intended to prevent various forms of discrimination (e.g. gender, race, age) we also ensure the selection process is legally defensible. Furthermore we help control costs by reducing time-scales and avoiding the expense of re-hiring.

We provide services at several stages of the recruitment life-cycle:

1. Defining what "great" looks like in your organization? The first step is to establish what really makes a difference to success in the role. The broad areas to focus are;

• Technical skills
• Interpersonal skills
• Problem solving ability
• Personal characteristics such as customer service orientation, adaptability, resilience etc.

Clarifying what success looks like can be done by:

• Interviews - speaking to people who do the job now, including their managers.
• Workshops - working with managers to draw out key success factors e.g. using the critical incident technique.
• Job analysis - identifying the key tasks, skills required and the attributes of best, average and poor performers.
• Competency framework - specifying the key characteristics that differentiate the highest achievers from those around them. The framework can be also integrated with performance management and leadership training.

2. Screening and sifting. When you have a large number of applicants, we can set up an online sifting test to reduce the number of people to be considered in detail. Depending on the type and level of job, we offer the following types of test:

• Cognitive ability tests.
• Situational judgment tests (bespoke job relevant tests).
• Dependability test. This has been designed to identify candidates who will have good attendance records, be effective and positive team members, and who can be relied on to produce good quality work as well as be more customer focused. It is aimed at front line customer service and operational roles.
• Scorable application forms. In addition to collecting basic personal details, the form asks about education, experience, behaviours etc. assigning scores to each item. The total score can then be used as a means to rank candidates based on objective data. The form is developed by measuring the relationship between various factors and performance in your organization.

3. Assessments. 72% of companies still hire people on the basis of unstructured interviews^[1]. It has been known for nearly sixty years that these are very poor at predicting job performance^[3]. We offer a range of assessments, for different circumstances, which have proven correlations between test score and performance.

• 3.1 Psychometric tests. For a short-list of candidates we can provide one or more psychometric tests, taken either online or on paper. Cognitive ability tests are generally the single best single measure for predicting job performance^[4]. This makes sense as smarter people tend to get up to speed in the role more quickly and adapt better to changing circumstances. We can provide a range of tests covering different types of ability (e.g. verbal, numerical, or abstract reasoning, business reasoning or critical thinking) over a wide range of ability levels and in a range of languages. However in most roles, factors other than than analytical intelligence are also important. We also offer personality, thinking style, motivation and values tests, which are invaluable for predicting how someone will interact with others and what motivates them. These factors are particularly important for managerial, sales and customer service roles. A suite of psychometric tests has been proven to predict performance considerably more accurately than an unstructured interview. For example, the most predictive personality factors are conscientiousness and emotional stability (i.e. the ability to handle stress)^[4]. We also offer more specific tests, such as for customer service or sales. We do not view tests as a replacement for the interview. We are not tied to one publisher and can offer a range of tests from different companies to match your needs e.g.
  • Personality: SHL’s OPQ32; Hogan's HPI; Firo B or OPP's 16PF for personality. We also use the Hogan HDS test to probe the "dark side" traits that may de-rail a career.
  • For values and motivation: SHL's MQ, Hogan's MVPI or the Reiss Motivation Profile.
  • For cognitive ability: and the SHL's Verify range, the Able series and the Wonderlic CAT for ability.
  • For customer service orientation: SHL's Customer Contact Styles Questionnaire (CCSQ)
  • In addition, as mentioned above, we offer situational judgment tests, which test how candidates would react in practical work-related situations. While standard psychometric tests are generic, we can develop bespoke online tests tailored to your organization and the specific tasks carried out. Situational judgment tests present work-related scenarios in a multiple choice format. They can cover a range of skills from interpersonal to problem solving. They have the advantage that candidates perceive them as more realistic and job relevant than generic tests. They are calibrated to predict performance in your particular organization.
  • SHL provide a range of specific skills tests e.g. Microsoft Office, Java programming.
• 3.2 Structured Interviews. We can conduct or give advice on structured interviewing techniques, especially competency based interviews.
• 3.3 Assessment centres. In an assessment centre candidates are gathered for a day (or more), and are give a set of psychometric tests and job-specific exercises. These measure factors such as the ability to work in a team, social confidence, persuasion and influencing skills, leadership, resilience and the ability to perform under pressure. Typical exercises are a presentation, role plays or business scenarios. The event gives the candidate a greater opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities than a straightforward interview. The assessment centre is carefully designed in conjunction with you and hiring managers, to meet the needs of your organization.
• 3.4 In-depth executive assessment. We also offer an in-depth assessment process for more senior staff, who prefer a less public format than an assessment centre. This entails, as above, psychometric tests tapping ability, personality and values. They are followed by an intensive interview lasting two-three hours. Part of the session is feedback on the psychometric tests. The interview builds on these results but goes beyond, using the consultant’s experience to probe the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses and to identify potential. The output is a report profiling each candidate against key leadership dimensions (e.g. judgment, execution, adaptability, drive etc.). The interview can also form the basis of ongoing coaching for successful candidates.

4. On boarding. Even if a candidate is the ideal match for a role, the placement may still fall through if induction is poor and more times than not you will lose a potentially great employee to a competitor. New hires may face difficulties integrating into your organization, slowing the rate at which they reach full productivity. We can either work with you (to establish a framework for induction) or the candidate themselves (through coaching) to ensure the new hire gets up to speed quickly.

5. Validation studies. We can measure how predictive assessments are in your organization. Where you have sufficient numbers, we can give staff one or more tests and compare the results with supervisor ratings or harder measures such as sales figures. This provides a picture of the relationship between test scores and performance. We can then fine tune the selection process to use the tools that are most predictive of performance. We also ensure the process is not biased to one particular demographic group. This provides you with confidence in the validity of the assessment process, and provides evidence of objectivity if a recruitment decision is ever subject to legal challenge.

6. Measuring return on investment. If you don’t measure success, how can you replicate and enhance it throughout your organisation in order to make more effective financial and strategic decisions? We can work with you to establish the return on investment of objective assessment. The difference in productivity between the top and bottom 10% of employees can be substantial. Accumulated over an organization, selecting higher performers can have a dramatic impact on an organization’s performance.

The Importance of Assessment Accuracy

To illustrate what assessment accuracy means, imagine a company that uses a less than ideal assessment method (such as unstructured interviews) and hires all the candidates, regardless of how well they did in the assessment. They rate each candidate based on the assessment and set a cut-off score to determine who should or should not have been hired. Six months later they measure how well each candidates actually performed in the role (e.g. by using a manager's assessment). They set a second threshold to categorize them as good or poor performers (i.e. whether or not they would have hired them in hindsight). The chart below shows the results that would be obtained. Each green dot represents a candidate in terms of their assessment and performance scores.

A more accurate assessment process increases your ability to predict candidates’ performance in the job. The better the method, the more the pattern of results changes from the random pattern above to a narrower pattern as shown below. Structured interviews, psychometric tests (especially cognitive ability tests) and work sample tests have all been demonstrated to significantly improve predictive power over methods such as unstructured interviews or simply looking at experience.

In practice, improved accuracy means fewer high performers are missed and fewer poor performers are hired. The overall benefits to an organisation of improved assessment accuracy are very significant:

• improved productivity
• improved quality of work
• lower staff turnover
• greater levels of employee engagement
• saving the costs of mis-hires

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© Self-insight 2011