How to Get the Right Individual in the Right Seat

By Ashley Ward & Regan Lang

Do you have the right person in the right seat? Now more than ever it is necessary to place the right individual in the right job to move your business in a positive direction.

To ensure the right individual is chosen for the job, it is important to form an accurate job description to attract the right candidates. Although a job description tells us a lot about tasks and skills required, they tell us very little about the kind of person needed to succeed in a particular position. Let me enlighten you on something called the Job Assessment – our “secret sauce!”

By using the Job Assessment, you can X-ray the job’s behavioral and cognitive requirements, and match real people to job descriptions. Within the Job Assessment tool, you create a benchmark to measure people-data. These targets provide you with the tools to uncover the information you would otherwise not measure with a resume compared to a job description alone. Think of all the data that is not captured in a resume! This information is the secret to better understanding the traits of a specific individual needed for them to succeed in the role. Once this easy process is completed, you can form an accurate job posting which then allows you to draw qualified candidates using multiple data points.

Here is how it works:

Predictive Index gives you unlimited access to the simple Job Assessment tool. Completing this process helps you X-ray each job and identify the underlying behaviors that will lead to success in a specific role. For example, a candidate who is hard-wired for a sales role would not be set up for success in a safety role. They have opposite motivating drives and behaviors. A salesperson is a high-driving risk-taker, while a safety person is a process-oriented risk-mitigator.

First, we define the stakeholders who know the job best. The Job Assessment can be taken by a single user or taken by multiple stakeholders. We typically recommend 3-5 stakeholders complete the Job Assessment for the given role. Think an incumbent, a rockstar knocking it out of the park in the role. A person who you think “If I had five more of him, life would be great.” Then we want his boss, his bosses’ boss, and someone from HR to typically take the Job Assessment, which on average is a straightforward ten-minute online questionnaire. Once all of the input is given, a brief meeting is held with the stakeholders to reconcile any differences and create a working consensus of the behavioral and cognitive requirements for the role. The Predictive Index will generate a Job Target (a benchmark) that will serve as your guide to making a great hire.

The Job Assessment also helps remove the biases that sneak into our decisions—whether we recognize them or not. By creating objective measures of both the job and the candidate, they inoculate themselves against those biases. Plus, behavioral drives and cognitive ability have been proven to be strong predictors of job performance. Having this information is a powerful tool for both your recruitment and your development efforts.

It does not stop there. The Job Assessment tool can help you to define your existing roles as well. Do you have all the right seats on the bus needed for complete execution? Are your current employees properly wired for their roles? The Job Assessment will objectively assess all of the roles in your organization—even the filled ones. Job Targets should be used as a fundamental part of your talent strategy and succession planning, and are a critical tool for coaching and employee development.

Consider the amount of time and effort you have put into forming job descriptions you thought were accurate and seeking out candidates who ended up not fitting the role. There are a lot of metrics for measuring how many turnover costs, but on average has been indicated to be 1.5X the annual salary of the position. That is a lot of money at stake and there are not many organizations that actively measure the cost of turnover. Don’t let turnover sneak up on you. The Predictive Index Job Assessment tool works to make this process more efficient and stop turnover in its tracks. It does this by improving your overall ability to attract, hire and retain quality employees. This leads to saving time, frustration, and valuable resources.

To learn more about The Predictive Index Job Assessment, reach out to a Talent Consultant now!