This is the second article in a series about individual assessments.
In my first article in this series, I discussed the elements you typically find in any assessment: job requirements; testing; and information about the person.
So, the second element – the person – is superimposed onto the first element – job requirements – to determine whether a candidate is a good “fit.” The testing information (the lens), then fits over that job-person combination and gives it greater clarity.
The starting place for any assessment is an understanding of the job requirements for the position you will be assessing. Although jobs are usually described in terms of duties and responsibilities, they can also be described and analyzed in terms of the competencies needed to accomplish those duties and responsibilities. You can also evaluate a person in terms of competencies they have demonstrated in past job situations.
One of our beliefs as assessors is that the best predictor of future performance is past performance. Asking a job candidate for a series of situations from their past in which they were successful will give the assessor an idea of the competencies a candidate possesses today, competencies they should be able to demonstrate in the future.
The bottom line is, can they do the job?
I don’t want to minimize the skills needed to collect these examples from candidates, as well as ask follow-up questions, so what the candidate was doing, thinking and saying is explicit. This takes training and practice. The notes from the interview need to be analyzed for the specific behaviors demonstrated. The assessor needs to be able to support his or her rating of a candidate from interview notes. It may sound easy, but it is tedious and thorough because the assessor wants the evaluation of a candidate to stand-up to any challenge legal or otherwise, now or in the future.
A big difference between assessments for lower- versus senior-level positions is the time involved. Lower-level assessments are less expensive to conduct because there is less consultant’s time involved. The more labor-intensive an assessment is, the more expensive it is. So, with lower level assessments, we do the same activities (job analyses, testing and reporting) but we try to automate them or do them more efficiently.
What is included in a lower-level individual assessment?
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