How many times have you sat reviewing CVs for candidates with similar levels of experience and skillsets, and wondered which is the right one for the role and your company?
I know I’ve been in this situation myself in the past and am not ashamed to say that I did end up making the wrong choice based on a candidate’s CV and what felt like a great interview at the time.
So how can you make a smarter decision in recruitment? How can you add a bit more objectivity, and make sure that there is no unconscious bias influencing your decision making?
Like me before I actually used them, you’ve probably heard of psychometric or psychological assessments and made some judgements about them – those are the things that tell you which Star Wars character or Disney Princess you are, or that tell you what your strengths are, right? To a degree, yes, but they can be so much more.
Not all assessments are created equal
Most, if not all assessments have a grounding in actual psychological science, but the depth of science and the validity of the results will vary immensely. At Thomas, we’re very proud (and rightly so) of the science behind our assessments. Our assessments are based on our almost 40 years of experience, built upon proven psychological science and are validated by world-class academics and institutions.
A great example of this is our Behaviour assessment, also known as the Thomas PPA (Personal Profile Analysis). This was created in 1958 by Dr. Thomas Hendrickson, and is based on Marston’s DISC theory. The Behaviour assessment can give you excellent insight into a person’s behavioural traits and communication styles. Upon reading their own assessment results, many are amazed at how accurately it describes them after what seems like such a simple assessment. My own is exceptionally accurate – even my wife agreed!
How does an assessment help with recruitment?
When you’re faced with a pile of CVs that seem difficult to distinguish between, assessments can give you an extra edge and an additional level of insight into your candidates. Understanding their personality and behavioural traits can help you to select the candidate that best fits your team and company.
This can be further enhanced by creating a profile for an ideal candidate based on the desired aptitude, behavioural and personality traits and comparing candidates’ assessment results against this. The Thomas talent assessment platform makes this a very simple exercise to complete with only a handful of mouse clicks. Our team of psychologists have taken the complex theories and models of our assessments and mapped them to a framework of 9 characteristics. These are based on a very well-known and well-researched psychological theory – Schwartz’s Theory of Basic Values.
Selecting the three most important of these characteristics gives the Thomas platform all the information it needs to enable you to then compare your candidates’ assessment results using a very simple set of star ratings to see which most closely matches your ideal candidate for the role.
The Thomas platform also creates individually tailored interview guides for each candidate, which focus on the biggest gaps between their assessment results and the profile you created, making it even easier to find the right candidate for the role, the team and your company.
Once you’ve hired the right candidate for your organisation, the benefits that the Thomas platform can offer don’t stop there. Before they start, you can get to know more about them through the content that has been written specifically to support people managers and HR teams in their day to day role.
Learn more about their communication style – are they likely to be someone that wants to be front and centre in meetings, or prefer to listen, digest and then ask questions afterwards? How do they make decisions – are they consultative, or keen to forge ahead and make their own decisions? What are their key strengths – are they accomplished communicators, good at motivating others, cautious and conservative, independent thinks, self-starters or goal oriented?
Hiring staff is just one part of the equation – keeping your team members engaged and motivated is another challenge that can be very difficult to overcome. The Thomas platform gives you insight into what motivates your people – power, authority, monetary reward, recognition. It gives personalised advice on how best to manage them based on their behavioural traits, and how to make their onboarding process a success so that you can get them delivering value to your business and your customers quickly.
If you’re going to be recruiting, then why not make the process that much easier by using the Thomas talent assessment platform? Speak to a member of our team and start enjoying the benefits that assessments can offer you today – with no training or certification required to start using the platform, you could be up and running within a few hours of signing up.
Find out more about our assessments and our predictive hiring solution.
