What is a Competency Model?

Posted on April 15, 2010 by rjwhitelock

Competency Models form the foundation for all people systems.  They describe the behaviors typically exhibited by successful performers and formulate a clear reference from which to hire, manage and develop staff.

For example, competencies serve as a benchmark in assessing an individual’s mastery of the skills, knowledge and abilities needed for success in a role.  In developmental planning, they serve as a benchmark to determine areas of strength and developmental opportunities.  In the job description, they are referenced to describe how the individual is to deliver the desired accountabilities.

Competencies enable organizations to establish a consistent lexicon of language that aligns all talent management processes.  By having a common foundation of behaviors, people gain a clearer understanding of the path to success.

A competency model’s structure is determined by a number of factors, including an organization’s maturation level, current and future business conditions and the corporate culture.  Regardless of the design, however, competency systems must be targeted, easy to understand, and east to apply in practice.

The last thing your organization needs after the time and money spend on building a competency system is a slick binder that simply sits on the shelf and collects dust!

To learn more about ECI’s approach to Competencies click here.

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Developing Predictive Selection Criteria

Posted on November 13, 2009 by oddateci

At ECI, we have been devising selection criteria for many years to identify people who will be top performing sales people.  The trick to identifying predictive, reliable criteria is to make sure you have a good linear relationship between the results that top performers deliver and the results that bottom performers deliver.   Top performers deliver better results and bottom performers deliver poorer results, so we pay the good guys lots more than the guys who are less successful.  Sounds logical?  Well, for many companies, it isn’t so simple any more.

In an effort to devise a compensation or rating plan that keeps everyone happy and generates a proper reward for good work, companies often create quite complex formulae to use in tracking the sales rep’s performance to determine final pay outs in compensation.  The most complicated of these will allow for several different factors to figure into the final payout, such as the product mix or territory potential multipliers, along with some complicated additives to offset how the overall corporation performed.  In the better of these, at least there is an equalizing factor that can be reviewed and used that really is linear in demonstrating the comparison of top and bottom performers.

So why not just use the top performing group?  This is a question people ask us all the time.  The reason you can’t just look at the top is that you won’t be able to tell which of the common factors are true of the total population and which are predictive of success for only the top group. Without a better comparative, you are in effect guessing.

One would think that if you work for Company A and are the best sales rep , you will probably take home the biggest check.  But these days, if you work for Company A and are the best performer and live in Podunkia, South Dakota, you might earn 80% of the highest pay rate, because it costs a lot less to live there than it does in San Diego, California.   All of this is part of the complexity that plays into doing a statistical analysis of data in order to identify predictive selection criteria.

So simple is always better.  Sales rank works, providing it is not complicated by combining the results for multiple products, which it often does.  In these cases, we have to take a look at results for each product, then divide the groups by quartiles, then by product to identify commonalities of the highest group v. the lower groups.   What we are really concerned about is not the difference between performer #1 and performer #6, but rather identifying the factors that differentiate performers #1-150 from performers #1207-2509.

By getting the criteria straight first, the resulting models have a much better opportunity to be predictive.   At ECI it is about putting science behind behavioral factors.  Sometimes that endeavor is a bit more complicated than it should be these days.

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Get Ready for Changes in Interviewing!

Posted on November 6, 2009 by oddateci

The most read topic on The ECI Blog is about behavioral event interviewing and how to properly answer these questions.  Many people are becoming very familiar with the behavioral event interviewing process and are getting coaching prior to their interviews from their placement counselors.  This, of course, has the effect of masking an individual candidate’s true potentials.

For many years in Europe, employers have been inviting potential candidates to simulation workshops as a part of the selection process.  This is a very time-consuming and costly step, but considering that the employment dismissal regulations are so much more stringent in many countries than they are in the US,  the process provides real understanding of a candidate’s real capabilities.

ECI has experience in simulations, given that we offer workshops and assessment centers for current employees.  Taking that knowledge into account, and knowing that simulations are good assessment tools, we have recently incorporated scenarios within our updates and improvements to our Structured Interview Process.

What is a scenario?  This is a simulated exercise that candidates complete during the interview process to see how they will respond under pressure, how able they are to think on their feet, and to evaluate what type of experiences they have had.  Good scenarios enable the interviewer to assess some of the more subtle talents, such as judgment, decision-making, knowledge of the business environment and how to devise a good strategy for solving a typical problem.

By seeing how candidates address the scenarios, how much urgency they put behind taking action or not taking, action as the case may be, and how much depth of the business environment they actually apply, the interviewer gains a real understanding of how the individual might react after the hire.  The very best scenarios are those which might have occurred in the particular employer’s environment.

Think about several situations at your company that have been mishandled or that have the potential to be mishandled by employees who lack the skills and abilities you require in a particular position.  The best scenarios are realistic and typical of the work that is part of the job you are filling.  Here are a couple of scenarios for your reference:

  1. Our organization has a very flat managerial structure.  You will find yourself working with people from different disciplines who often have differing objectives and work styles.  Tell me how you would handle working with the President of the company when she knows nothing of your work, yet is trying to demand that you follow her lead on the approach to a particular project.  What strategy would you recommend?  How would you challenge her ideas?
  2. Our clients drive our projects.  We cannot control clients’ calendars and so we must adjust our own priorities in order to keep several projects moving along successfully.  Tell me how you would respond when two clients call on the same day and ask for completion dates that overlap on major projects.  Assume that both of these clients are major accounts and each has a big-ticket project for you to complete.  What problems are you likely to encounter?  How will you address these problems?

Once you have assembled six to ten examples, ask a broad range of your current employees in the job to tell you how they would address each scenario.  Evaluate all the responses and determine which responses are best, which are poorest, and which are only average.  If you have one of your scenarios that everyone does well on or everyone does poorly on, eliminate it.   This scenario is either too hard or too easy and is one that really will not return much in the interview process, since it is unable to separate top performers from less effective performers.

By taking time to prepare your scenarios in this way, you will have a better idea of how to assess your candidates’ responses and will be able to recognize candidates who have better potential than others from your pool.   As you use the scenarios, be careful not to lead candidates by offering any feedback or response confirmation.  Some candidates are very good assessors of people and you could be influencing the responses by providing responses.

If you would like more information about using scenarios in your interview process, give ECI a call and we can assist you in upgrading your selection process.

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How Companies Are Making Better Hiring Decisions

Posted on November 3, 2009 by oddateci

For the last few years, companies were instituting hiring processes that included a number of best practices, but were avoiding the use of tools, such as personality assessments, to assist them in identifying the best candidates. Today,  we are seeing a significant increase in the use of particularly effective personality assessments to enable hiring managers to learn more about the candidate’s natural motivation and talents before they make the hiring decision.

The reasons were varied as to why personality assessments became less used.  I believe that one reason was that we saw too much litigation from unhappy and unsuccessful candidates.  As a result, employers began to shy away from using any tool that could significantly differentiate one person from another.

But the world is changing.  Today, companies understand how expensive it is to hire a new person, how much time it takes to train a new person, and then how much effort it takes to address the disillusionment that arises for the rest of the team when we dismiss that person because they simply did not fit very well in the job or the company’s culture.

So, if you are around long enough, the trends always return.  Today,  companies are again looking for valid and reliable tools to assist them in making better hiring decisions.  Today, however, managers are also much more aware of what makes a good test, the importance of ensuring that the test is job related, and they are doing the diligence ahead of time to be certain that the criteria used for selection purposes is in fact able to identify superior candidates.

Here are some best practices to use when you choose a tool to use within your selection process:

  1. Make sure that the instrument you choose is valid and reliable.  Ask the test provider for study documentation and test user references to prove to you that other reputable companies are using the tool for selection purposes and that the tool meets the Department of Labor’s standards for selection.
  2. Be sure that the instrument does not probe into private information about the candidate and that the content is job related.
  3. Look at the way the test results are scored.  Does someone have to interpret the results?  If so, you risk introducing rater bias into the process.
  4. Does the test provider give you a recommendation for each candidate?  Some companies like this feature, while others prefer not to have the recommendation. The important thing is not to put too much reliance on the recommendation itself.  As the hiring manager, you know your requirements best, so don’t rely on others to tell you whom to select.  Performance and match to the job are at the end of the day the most reliable predictors of success.
  5. Use the results to ask more questions so that you can really get to know the candidate more fully.  If you only conduct one or two discussions with the candidate, you will make mistakes and choose someone who doesn’t really match the position at some point in your selection process.
  6. Make sure you know what you are looking for in the candidate.  What skills, abilities, talents and capabilities do you really need to move your organization forward?  Think about this before the first candidate comes in, not after you become enamored with someone who has a whole lot of capability, but is not really a good match for the job.
  7. Check references.  Don’t use the excuse that you can’t get good information about a candidate’s background or prior performance. Hire a good reference checking service to help out with this part of the process.  Better to know the bad news before you make the hiring decision if it is there to be uncovered.

If you would like to know more about personality testing and how such a tool can help you make better hiring decisions, call us to talk.  We can help you build a best practice selection process that includes the necessary steps and tools to find the best new hire possible.

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How to Hire Without Getting Sued

Posted on May 6, 2009 by oddateci

I used to do a lot of seminars and speaking engagements for various groups on topics relating to human capital.  One of the more requested topics was the title of this post.  There are a few good practices to be sure to consider in order to avoid suits from your candidates as you hire new people.  And hiring is beginning to increase!  This is the good news.

The bad news is that some new regulations have impacted the hiring environment and you need to be aware of these as you set about finding that long-awaited new hire.

The OFCCP has released recent guidelines around internet candidates.  If you use web job search services, such as Monster, Career Builder, Snag-A-Job or other such applications to advertise your open positions, be sure that you are clear about stating the steps in the process for applying for the job and the background and experiences you will require in order to be considered as a qualified applicant .   Otherwise, anyone who leaves a post or submits a partial request must be considered, whether they have the qualifications or not.

Also, ask all QUALIFIED applicants to respond to various requests throughout the process, such as attaching a resume, completing an application and returning it within the deadlines you communicate, providing complete references (phone numbers, names and job titles) of supervisors within any prior work experiences, or answering job related questions, in order to show their continued interest in the position.  If the candidate doesn’t respond, then drop them from the selection process.

One of the issues with using on-line services is that they are so accessible and you are likely to get many, many responses to any job postings you open up.  Without the extra steps, anyone who even leaves a partial interest has to be considered in the process, whether they have the qualifications or not.

Make sure that you establish the criteria for selection and stick with it.  If you post the job qualifications, then ultimately hire someone who lacks these qualifications, anyone who does have the qualifications and who applied has a cause of action to sue you for discrimination.   Not good.  If you find that the person you require is not within the pool of candidates who apply, better to close out the listing, refine the qualifications and repost the job opening than to just update the current listing.

Here is an example for you to ponder over.  Recently, a school district in New Jersey posted a job opening for a Kindergarten teacher.  In the ad, they stated that all candidates must be NJ certified, have security clearance, have a degree in Early Childhood Education and that they have 1 year in teaching children in grades Pre-K through grade 3.  Over 600 applicants applied for the job.

The School Board ultimately hired an internal candidate who had served as an aide for the Kindergarten class for 2 years.  She had a degree in Social Studies, not Early Childhood Ed, and had supported the teacher (not led the instruction of the class).  So in essence, the only requirement she met was that she had security clearance.  Hmmmm.  I would bet the farm that there were MANY individuals who did apply for the position who met the criteria better than the individual who was ultimately hired.  This would be a good claim to pursue, were you one of the candidates who was not interviewed or considered and who had the proper qualifications.

Treat all applicants the same and consider them on the merits of their qualifications, background and experiences.  If you don’t believe a person will fit your environment, because he/she has green hair, lots of visable tattoos and does not dress appropriately for a business interface with customers,  make sure that the person you do hire doesn’t also have a bunch of tattoos that you just didn’t see during the interview process, or that your secretary isn’t sitting at the front desk with his hair dyed Daffodil this week, since it is springtime.  Do you follow the line of reasoning?

When you start splitting hairs over how people dress and what they do in their personal life, you are bound to have some problems in the selection process over inconsistent selection criteria.  I am not even sure that we can require that people not to have Daffodil hair or visable tattoos these days.   But if you choose to set such requirements at your place of business,  ensure that you are expecting not just applicants to live within the guidelines and that you act to correct those individuals who work for you and fail to meet your guidelines.

Wait until the successful candidate has accepted the position and actually started work before you notify other candidates that the position has been filled.  I hate to tell you how many times I have been told that someone thought they had the job filled, then found out that the finalist has chosen to take another more suitable (in their minds!) position at the last moment.  This step of waiting will enable you to move to Plan B on your list, should Plan A not work out as planned.

There are many, many, many other things to think about as you hire, such as taking care when  handling confidential data, being sure to gather references and check backgrounds, paying the appropriate wage for the work of the position (rather than for what the candidate attempts to negotiate) and a raft of other considerations.  Happy Hiring!

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Favorite Interview Questions for Sales People

Posted on April 21, 2009 by oddateci

Some time ago, we began to develop behavioral event interview guides for our clients to help them to assess the potentials and capabilities of candidates during the selection process.   This approach can be used to assess candidates for any type of job, but when the questions are designed, you need to be sure they are relevant to the content of the particular role.

You can learn a lot about someone from using this approach to interviewing.  The notion behind behavioral event interviewing is to ask about a specific situation in which the candidate demonstrated a particular capability in order to determine the individual’s effectiveness in that situation.   Situation, Action and Result, often referred to by one particular vendor as the STAR model…the T is for Task.

The trick to utilizing this approach is to pick questions that are key to the job and to understand that people who are good at a particular skill will answer the question differently than others might.  Let’s look at sales people, for example.  One of the primary skills required is that the individual has to be able to ask for the sale.  To assess this capability, here is a question to use:

  • Tell me about a time when you failed to close a sale.  What did you do in this situation?  What was the outcome?  What would you do differently?

Effective sales people will have a unique tale to tell you about a nightmare buyer who was thought to be the decision maker, but was not, or was someone who was simply shopping the competition.  They will include a myriad of details about the interaction and tell you how they reacted when they faced a similar situation in the future.

Less effective sales people will tell you that they were unable to connect with the particular buyer and that the buyer shut them out before they had the chance to ask for the business.  They will also tell you that next time, they worked hard to identify the actual decision maker.

See the difference?  One is more realistic (the effective sales person) and the other is more process driven, following the sales protocol.  High performers in sales need to make an impact quickly and when they are faced with a challenge, they do creative things to get around the issues.

Here’s another question:

  • Tell me about a time when you didn’t get the sale, when you were sure you would.  Why did this occur?  What would you do differently?

In this case, the high performer will give you an example and tell you why they believe they were beaten out.  It is rarely about price!  He/she will also give you a great analysis of why they failed and will look at the situation as an unique incident from which they learned something important to them.  The lower performers will tell you  “you can’t win them all” and that if you throw enough proposals at buyers, eventually something will stick.  Not a very good way of focusing your use of time, if you are in sales.

You are probably asking, so how do I know what a good answer is and what a bad answer is so that when I interview I can tell the difference?  There are so many variables in interviewing that the answer really is through experience.  If you are new to interviewing, ask someone who is experienced in sales, for example, to sit with you while you interview the candidate.  After the interview has been completed, ask your partner to discuss the candidate’s responses and to tell you what they think of him or her.  Compare the results of your impressions with your partner’s results. Did you agree or disagree? Why?  Can you see what the experienced sales person felt differently about the responses when you disagreed?

After you have interviewed several candidates and have some experience, you will learn how to assess the quality of the answers.  Some questions have been proven to be more valid in assessing sales skills.  That’s why you might want to consider calling ECI to assist your company in developing and focusing questions on the skills and abilities that count in your marketplace!  You can select better people and enhance results for your organization.

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The Economy Is Recovering…but things are different

Posted on April 17, 2009 by oddateci

The economy looks as if it is beginning to pick up.  We are noting a difference in the marketplace these days, with customers beginning to investigate purchasing new initiatives, asking great questions on how to adjust deployment of sales staff to maximize outcomes in this turbulent marketplace, and seeing more interest in working with us to work on challenges and opportunities together.   It isn’t a matter of cost, most of the time they have some budget laid aside for investment in solutions.  It is a matter, however, of making sure that the investment they make will yield a good return on investment.

I heard from a friend who had been laid off that she recently found a job, which made me very happy to hear.  Others are having some luck in finding opportunities to at least interview for, so I believe all these are signs that we are moving forward.

Almost every business owner I have spoken with recently is looking for new ways to do business.  The old ways aren’t working very well, so we need to explore and investigate new methods for offering value to our customers, since it looks as if this is the key thing that many companies are looking for. They will spend their resources, providing they know they are purchasing value and useful strategies or products that will provide a return on investment.

So in my mind, we need to be sure that whatever approach we use in the marketplace ought to be directed toward understanding what issues the customer is facing and how we can enable the customer to get there faster and with a good return on investment.   If we can do that with them, then they will buy our proposals.

Maybe this will be the new wave of the future.  You will need to market yourself for the innovative solutions and services you can provide that help customers put added dollars to the bottom line.  Showing the return on investment will help you to distinguish yourself from others.  People are looking at the numbers, so if you can calculate out how much the investment will return to or save them, you might be heard more frequently.

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Why did I get passed over for the promotion?

Posted on April 13, 2009 by oddateci

With all the restructuring, lay offs, asking people to do more with less, and working harder every day for less, it really can be debilitating when an opportunity comes along and you don’t get promoted.

It makes you wonder.  What is wrong with me?  Aren’t I doing a good job?  Can I do something different to get promoted?  The true answer to this question really depends on the person and the circumstances.  But more often than not, it is an issue of people not seeing you in the new role or having questions about how effective you might be in the new role.

Let’s take a look at some real situations, names removed, of course, to protect the candidates.

1.  Dan was hired to manage various projects at a small company.  He was a loyal worker who took his responsibilities seriously.  He took pride in doing a good job and worked well beyond the expected hours in order to make sure nothing was overlooked and that he did all the work as planned.  In meetings and when working with others, however, he was not a team player.  He procrastinated and some team members had the experience of having to pick up the slack, since he didn’t have his part finished according to the due dates the team had agreed on.  When it came time to discuss performance, Dan looked for a promotion to a manager level.  He wasn’t given the promotion.  The reason, which he had difficulty accepting, was that if he couldn’t manage his own work in a timely way, how will he be able to oversee the work of others?  His response was that doing the work and managing the work were two different skills.  His manager said this was true, but how did he expect to manage team members who had previously had to do his work because he didn’t get it finished on time and failed to ask for help?

2.  Michael had responsibility for dealing with customers in a sales situation.  He was an excellent source of knowledge and advice to his customers.  He knew how to negotiate a favorable deal and he always followed up to ensure that everything arrived as planned for the customer’s order.  Customers loved him.  But in handling his coworkers, he was directive, he was demanding, did not listen, and often inappropriately teased coworkers in front of others.  A manager’s position came up and he felt that he was next in line for the job.  He was passed over for someone whom he had trained.  He seriously considered quitting.  Aren’t I good enough?  Haven’t I produced a lot of business for the company?

3.  Joe was consistently late for work and often left early for various personal reasons.  He took long lunches and coworkers wondered why he got away with this when he was the first one to complain when they needed a few extra minutes.  He thought he was definitely management material.  While his work was good, his personal attitude was a real source of discussion for many people in the organization.  When he wasn’t promoted, he had difficulty understanding that he was undermining his credibility by holding himself to different standards than others.

All three of these individuals were passed over for the same reason, the reason being that they held themselves to different standards than they held others to.  Dan wasn’t really a team player and didn’t really care if someone else had to pick up his work.  Michael didn’t treat his coworkers the way he treated his customers.  And Joe felt that he didn’t have to abide by the company policies.  These issues are all attitude issues and are one of the most common reasons employers state as the reason they will pass someone over for a promotion.

If you want to get promoted, even though it is hard to hear, you need to be professional in everything you do. Whether it is working on the team, interacting with others or making sure that you abide by company policies, people who get promoted are usually the ones who get the basics right first. Don’t let things that you can control get in the way of getting promoted.

Filed under: Business Management, Getting promoted, Improving Performance | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Who’s Hiring?

Posted on April 1, 2009 by oddateci

The short answer, lots of companies.  The more complete answer, however, is companies where there is expected turn over and companies who provide services to people.  The companies who are hiring are often the larger organizations who always have openings because of people moving up, people moving on and people retiring.  To apply and get noticed by these organizations, you need to look at what jobs are offered and how well you match the posted job requirements. These are often the US major employers.

The second group, the service providers, are companies or organizations that provide services to the population, the elderly, home health care, governmental agencies, and those organizations where people go to get help for a particular need.  There are a good many opportunities in these sectors for jobs.  Nursing and health providers, lab positions, claims managers and insurance positions, support staff in hospitals and institutions, clinics and medical facilities have openings as well.

If you want to get noticed by these potential employers, how will you do this?  Here are some ideas to help you along.

1.  Make sure to read the job qualifications and only apply if you can meet these qualifications.  Many on-line search engines use coded queries to pick out those applicants who list the specific experiences presented in the job posting.  If you have the experience, then show it in your application in the terminology used to describe the position in the job posting.  Don’t trust that someone will read your written responses and be able to figure out that you really do have the experience, particularly if you didn’t list it the way it was stated in the job posting.   You are probably dealing with software doing the job of the initial screening and it will do this through a word-matching and number of years matching process.

2.  Follow the directions.  If the posting says “no calls, please”, then don’t call, unless you know someone who works at the company who can put in a good word for you.  You want the potential employer to know that you understand how to follow directions.

3.  Meet the deadlines.  If the posting says “submit your complete information by Friday, April 5, then have your information completed and submitted by close of business on Friday, April 5th.

4.  If you need special certifications for particular jobs, such as licenses or training, be sure that you have completed this training, testing, or classroom activities, and that you have the proof of your successful passing of any tests required.  If you are interested in particular jobs, such as nursing or lab technician positions, then go to school and get your certifications while you are looking for a new job.  This way, you may be able to get your school to help you find a job in this area, as many companies recruit from local training institutions.

5.  If you graduated from a college, go back to your alma mater and ask them for assistance with job hunting.  Many colleges have excellent staff who can help you find a new position and often have requests for people of a specific background, just waiting for someone to express interest.

The long and the short of it is that there are still  jobs out there.  The caveat is that the job you think you want may not be the one you will find.  A lot of the old standard jobs aren’t available any longer.  But there are some new jobs for you to consider.   Be open minded and look at the posted experience requirements.  If you can comply, go ahead and apply.  Be persistent every day.  You just might find a job you will really enjoy and one you never expected you might get hired for!

Filed under: Business Management, Hiring Employees | Tagged: , , , , | 3 Comments »

What Makes a Good Personality Test?

Posted on March 27, 2009 by oddateci

There are many different sorts of personality tests, word list choices (which is most like me or least like me), statement list choices, rate this statement as to how much it reflects who you are, picture tests asking you to interpret what you are seeing, lickert scale response tests, ipsative tests and a host of others.  How do you know which one is the best to use for hiring or developmental purposes?

I think the first question to ask yourself is “what am I trying to accomplish?”  Is it an issue of finding out if the person might work well in a team made of other diverse individuals?  Is it an issue of finding out if the individual matches the criteria for success you have identified in your environment?  Is it an issue of understanding what you will need to do to develop the individual after you hire him/her and will you invest the funds?  Or is it an issue of getting the test to make your selection for you?

The first three questions are fine uses of personality tests.  The last one is not appropriate.  Any assessment you use should be for the purpose of gathering valid and reliable information to help you or the individual better understand the true capabilities, motivators, potentials or personal styles that the person possesses.  And to ensure that the results you get are valid and reliable, make sure that your assessment meets this criteria:

  1. Does it measure what it purports to measure?  Another way to ask this question is “Is the assessment valid?”  We can get into a long discussion around validity.  Face validity, content validity, context validity…all important.  Is it the right instrument to use in your particular situation?  Does it measure job-specific requirements, motivators and behavioral traits?
  2. Does it measure what it purports to measure consistently?  Another way to ask this question is “Is the assessment reliable?”  Does it consistently produce the same scores for a person through test-retest review in a population?
  3. Is it a tool that is more appropriate for use in team building?  Styles inventories (Myers Briggs, DISC, color grouping inventories) are excellent tools for team building, but assigning a particular quadrant of preferred style is not an ideal way to select staff.  Myers Briggs’ validation literature states that the tool is not appropriate for selection purposes.
  4. Is the tool fakable?  Is it easy for the person to skew the results through answering a particular way or by choosing answers likely for a particular type of person?  One of the problems encountered with lickert scale type tests (ones where the respondent is asked to rate a statement on a scale of 1 to 5) tend to have this issue.  This is the reason that additional items are often used to determine the levels of fakability.  Ipsative tests (forced rank type items, where the individual is presented with a number of statements and asked them to order them) overcome the issue of fakability.  Depending upon how the scoring routine works, the frequently made argument that ipsative tests cause scores to be high in one area, while automatically causing another area to be low, can be overcome.
  5. Does the instrument show good predictive capability?  Can to results predict, consistently and accurately, whether the individual will be a success greater than 75% of the time?  We offer an ipsative assessment that has shown to predict success at better than 97% of the time in some situations.

Personality tests are very useful tools, providing you integrate the use of the instrument within a process and let the tool offer objective information to support your selection process, assist you with developmental planning, or to increase team effectiveness by enabling people to understand how others might be the same or different from themselves.

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