TM - March 2008 - (Page 30)

recruitment & retention assessment & evaluation compensation & benefits performance management learning & development succession planning opportunity for organizations. By assessing personality characteristics in job candidates, employers can predict their motivation and make better informed hiring decisions. Sounds good in theory, but does it really work? PreVisor’s 2007 Business Outcomes Report indicates pre-employment personality tests, when implemented and used effectively, predict key performance outcomes and improve organizational effectiveness. For example, when Starwood Hotels employee perspective, this means work is the environment where they strive toward and achieve many of life’s goals. Motivation can lead people to work hard and manage their interactions with others. On the other hand, a lack of motivation can lead to carelessness and callousness at work. A recent CareerBuilder survey found 32 percent of workers called in sick with fake excuses in the past 12 months, which is hardly a ringing endorsement of strong work ethic or job satisfaction. Solving for Performance Motivation is an energizing, mobilizing force related to striving toward goals and satisfying needs — everything from food to sex to selfesteem. From an employee perspective, this means work is the environment where they strive toward and achieve many of life’s goals. From the employer’s perspective, employee motivation impacts performance. Scientists describe performance as a function of a person’s ability and motivation: • Ability or “can-do” is based largely on general cognitive ability or intelligence. Cognitive ability contributes to acquisition of job skills and knowledge through experience. Tests of these areas predict job performance. • Motivation or “will-do” is driven mainly by personality. Personality describes a person’s disposition, interests and recurring behavior patterns. Both ability and motivation are necessary for successful performance. By testing for personality, we can measure an important determinant of talent and success, one that is often overlooked in hiring processes that emphasize only technical skills, learning ability or past achievements. redesigned its hiring solution to include personality testing for the right attitude, it saw a two and a half times increase in performance for one customer facing role. A nationwide auto-parts distributor showed retention improved more than 80 percent for high-scoring candidates. Among warehouse associates taking a customized job-fit test, 43 percent of those who scored high remained on the job after 90 days, whereas only 23 percent of those who scored low on the assessment were retained. Higher retention leads to reduced costs, higher productivity and better organizational performance. What is Motivation, Anyway? As a key predictor of success in many people-facing roles, personality is particularly important in management and senior leadership positions, where one individual can have a strong impact on the whole organization. PreVisor’s 2007 Business Outcomes Report showed senior leaders who scored high on director/senior manager assessment — which assesses both ability and motivation factors — were promoted at a 30 percent faster rate than those who scored poorly. The Maze of Employment Testing We hear about motivation all of the time — in school, at work, in sports, in the context of motivational speaking. However, it is curiously difficult to pin down exactly what motivation is and how it works. While it has many definitions among scientists, motivation boils down to wanting something to be different. Motivation is an energizing, mobilizing force related to striving toward goals and satisfying needs — everything from food to sex to self-esteem. From an Employment testing combines the power of science and technology to help organizations make better informed hiring decisions. Professionally developed tests are routinely used during the hiring process to measure candidates’ job skills, technical knowledge, learning ability and motivation. The value proposition underlying scientific hiring practices is: Individual performance drives organizational performance. “It is important to remember that job success almost always depends on several different kinds of performance,” said Dr. Charles Handler, founder and president 30 March 2008 talent management magazine www.TalentMgt.com http://www.TalentMgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of TM - March 2008

TM - March 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Human Performance - The Paradoxically Gifted Leading Edge - Reverse Engineering: Shifting Focus to HR's Cause Learning Connection - Sharing Talent On the Hunt for Talent Unlock Employee Motivation Through Personality Testing HR Crucial to Executive Compensation Process Downtown Management: Surfing May Not Be Slacking Think Tanks Aid Government in Talent Management Creating Consistency: Enterprise-Wide Succession Plans Battle Retention Deficits With On-Boarding Sunbelt Rentals: A Mid-Level View of HR From the Trenches Butterball: No Chicken When It Comes to Talent Management Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources Full Potential - Choosing Change

TM - March 2008

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