Are we seeing the end of assessment for person-job matching?

In today’s competitive talent environment, there is a need for organisations to ensure that assessments used for recruitment or development are as effective and efficient as possible – that is, to accurately predict  job fit and  future performance. The classic approach to this is to ensure that a thorough job analysis identifies the critical success factors that contribute to excellent performance in the role, and then to use an assessment tool that will gauge these traits in individuals .

Typically, an example of examining person-job fit would look as follows:

In the example above, taken from the LPA (Linked Psychometric Assessment), the green bars represent the required range for effectiveness in a job, and the blue squares show how well or poorly an individual matches the ideal.

We are increasingly seeing that the process to define and assess against clear criteria for the current role (as in the classic approach described above), has been reduced to a tick box exercise. A role profile is created and only generic competencies are used to assess against role fit, with little indication of which unique competencies / aspects are the most critical for success in the proposed role.

Some organisations identify only four or five critical factors that are deemed to be associated with overall effective performance, and do not necessarily differentiate according to the requirements of specific roles in the organisation. In addition, due to the use of generic competency models, we see specialists being assessed against a leadership competency model, and Managers not being assessed against critical competencies for the specific roles that they are being considered for.

While this approach may be deemed to be efficient, it may also pose a risk of overgeneralisation of the information provided, introduce more subjectivity into the process, and could detract significantly from the true purpose and effectiveness of the assessment process.

For more information on person-job matching email info@bioss.com