Assessing for Better Search by Peter Capodice, President Capodice & Associate
by Peter
Capodice, President Capodice & Associate
The use of assessments can and do have a significant
effect on the quality of executive search. They
objectively define:
Behavioral
competencies of the position
Culture of the organization or subgroup within the
organization leading to a more productive fit.
A developmental template to train against.
How the individual should be managed and motivated.
Interest and goals for team building and succession
planning
How
to do it
By assessing the senior leadership team prior to the
initiation of the search executive recruiters gain
the ability to completely understand interests and
goals, behavioral styles, underlying needs,
behavioral under stress and occupations preferences
quickly and with a high degree of validity.
It would be highly unlikely that search consultants
would be able to gather this information accurately
on their own with the degree of precision these tools
provide. Assembling this information sorts out “what
is believed to be needed” to “what is actually
needed” and will bring about change without creating
a mismatch. In summary this will identify the true
culture of the organization.
Once the organizational baseline is in place and
competencies for the position developed, it is time
to turn to the candidate. The short listed candidates
each complete the same assessment or assessment
groups. The data gathered from the candidate is
matched to the data gathered from the organization.
Objective knowledge of the organization, its
strengths and weaknesses, as well as the candidates
and their strengths and weaknesses, become apparent.
This information helps to probe the candidate deeper,
giving an opportunity to understand how they do or do
not address their personal voids.
The ability to accurately predict the success of the
relationship and how to train against the gaps leads
to enhanced productivity of the individual. This is
powerful in precisely understanding the
client/candidate and the long-term success of the
relationship. Since it is rare to have an exact
match, the client will understand the areas of
development and how to fill the gaps before the
candidate’s first day of work.
What
and How to Measure
Popular assessments such as the Myers Briggs and
DisC assessment
measure personality characteristics, behavioral
styles and attitudes. This is a small percentage of
what must be measured in order to have enough
information to make an accurate decision.
Unfortunately many organizations and search firms
stop at this and fail. Here’s why: Although these
assessments are good at uncovering natural strengths,
they do not measure motivation, motivational needs
profiles, relational needs and personal values. These
are the key components that determine the company
culture and individual fit.
Quite often an individual has the skills,
competencies and success history but is still a
mismatch. They often fail or leave prematurely. This
is a key critical component in the decision making
process. To get this information those looking for
the ‘right talent’ should incorporate a tool such as
the 16PF or the Edwards Personal Preference in
addition to the Myers Briggs or DisC assessment. The
last piece of information to aid in the decision
making process is an understanding of interests and
goals. This information can be gathered by utilizing
a tool such as the strong interest inventory. To
simplify the use of multiple tools. It’s possible to
make use of a multidimensional tool such as the
Birkman Method which will give the same result.
The important point to make is that in order for
assessments to improve the quality of search, you
must know the organization/individual strengths, how
they are motivated what their passions are and how
they go about achieving goals. There’s little doubt
that once this information is incorporated into the
search process, the quality of search is greatly
enhanced for both the client and candidate.