When evaluating talent for the purposes of recruitment or employee development, you need to answer two key questions: what to assess and how to do it. This is the opening to an interesting article on new alternative methods of recruitment published on the Harvard Business Review website. The article was written by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a recognized expert in psychometric testing, professor of organizational psychology at University College London and the newly appointed CEO of Hogan Assessment Systems.
What do you need to assess?
To answer this question, it is necessary to find universal characteristics associated not only with a certain profession, but also with the requirements for an effective worker regardless of his or her role in the organization. You should focus on three dimensions of employability and career success based on a person's psychological traits.
1. People who are most able to do a job. This assessment is related to IQ, natural curiosity and decision making skills.
2. People who are most willing to work hard. This assessment is related to motivation and ambition.
3. People who are the most rewarding to work with. This assessment is related to emotional intelligence and social skills.
How are assessments made?
There have been many innovations in this area in recent years, mainly thanks to the development of digital technologies. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is convinced that the following three trends are worth mentioning.
1. Behavioral analysis
Talent assessment in this form involves electronic monitoring and measuring employees' daily activities. Individual, team and organizational diagnostics are created. It is an ideal tool for identifying internal talent.
2. Web scraping
This term refers to extracting data from websites which usually takes place mechanically via algorithms. It is used to retrieve data about people based on their activities on the Internet and especially on social networks. The procedure involves certain ethical and legal issues, but generally companies can download everything that is freely available online.
3. Gamification
In recruitment, gamification mainly applies in creating personality and IQ tests in the form of games or at least in less formal ways than before. Companies offer free funny tests and can acquire important data about potential employees.
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