Overview | Why Test? | What Tests?

Hiring and Employee Development Tools – Why Test?

Identifying the RIGHT people for a company is one of the hardest tasks facing any HR Recruiter or company hiring manager.  But having the RIGHT people on board is critical to a company's success.  As Jim Collins states on page 42 in Good to Great, "executives who ignited the transformation from good to great...first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the buss) and then figured out where to drive it."   If you are commited to building the RIGHT team for your company, assessments are a critical component in your hiring process and in your coaching and development tools.

No one can find out everything about a candidate in the interview. Even the most skilled interviewers cannot uncover the depth of a candidate’s attitudes towards certain acceptable work place and job specific behaviors. Testing helps an interviewer see below the surface of the resume, the past performance, and the face-to-face impression. How much does it cost you to hire a mistake?

You CAN’T always make the right promotion decisions. How many of us have promoted the best person in the job to a management position…and they failed??? Good assessment tools help you prevent those costly MISTAKES…costly to you, the organization, and the employee.

Managers aren’t always good at their people coaching and development skills. Good diagnostic tools help provide managers with valuable information to formulate development plans for an employee. It’s not enough to say "you’re doing good" or "you should try harder". Employees need concrete assessments of their performance and relevant information to create a development path. Good tools make it easy for any manager to provide that information and work with the employees to develop their potential.

If you were hiring a secretary, you’d the applicant a skills typing test, right? Wouldn’t you also want to know how organized the applicant was? If a candidate can type 120 WPM but needs a high level of management direction and hand holding, but you need someone who can keep it all together on their own, what good is that candidate? How do you find this out in the interview?

If you were hiring a computer programmer, you would give a test in the program application your company uses, right? Wouldn’t you also want to know if that candidate could work well under the pressure of deadlines or could handle many hours working on their own in a small workspace? Any applicant could tell you in the interview that he/she LOVES pressure and NEVER socializes at work. How do you know that’s REALLY the applicant’s personality and work style?  Or are they just telling you what they think you want to hear?

That’s why we use assessment and testing tools to help uncover what we DON’T see on the surface during the interview and what we may not have observed about ideal management behaviors BEFORE we hire or promote someone…and it’s a mistake!

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