The Value of Understanding Structure

The assessment industry is booming and has done so for many years. The industry has progressed to the point where it is definitely best practice for companies to include a battery of psychometric assessments for recruitment, developmental processes and succession planning.

At BIOSS SA, our flagship product, the Career Path Appreciation (CPA), is often included as part of this battery, because it is peerless in its ability to identify leadership potential and comfort working at senior, strategic levels in an organisation.

That being said, more often than not, this focus on assessments is wasted, because organisations have not taken the time to truly understand what it takes to be effective at different levels in their company structure. This is often as a result of the increase in the pace that people work, the short timeframes between deadlines, the impact of technology, and the fluid nature of the context in which most people work

I believe that all it takes to overcome this challenge is for the key decision makers to adopt a disciplined and scientific methodology to understand:

• The nature of the work that each position will need to successfully navigate. This includes the diversity of stakeholders, the length of time that it will take for the job incumbent to be able to see the outcomes of the decisions made, the number of variables to juggle and the amount of judgment required to be effective in the role
• The context in which the work is expected to happen. For example, the context of work in a banking environment should be more regulated and thus, less fluid, than the work that occurs in a marketing company.

If the time is taken to design the job requirements in this way at the start, all the data that is gathered on candidates and talent pools (including job performance, experience, assessment results and interviews) will have more meaning, and organizations should be more confident in their ability to ensure that they have the right person, making the right decisions at the right time.

For more information on improving your psychometric assessment approach contact info@bioss.com.