Training Magazine - July 2008 - (Page 38)

5TALENT MANAGEMENT ISSUE5 Personalities & Performance relied on to contribute consistently to group projects. Sound familiar? Most workplaces are a hodgepodge of personalities. Luckily, trainers tasked with meshing these disparate people can use psychology-based personality assessments to clue them into which employees go best with which job roles, and how they all can best work together. The solution? Be leery of marketing materials that may overpromise what the assessment tool can do. You might want to take a second look, for instance, at the validity claims of the assessment’s marketers—that is, how well scores on the assessment correlate to on-the-job performance. “They give these personality tests to a bunch of individuals in a company, and say, “No one is going to see the results but us, and we’re just going to give you feedback to help you with your own development.’ And then they collect performance ratings on those individuals, and correlate them,” Menkes says.“But if you then take that same test and put it in the circumstance of somebody who’s being hired or evaluated for a promotion, then the self-report no longer becomes valid because they have an incentive to lie.” Perhaps for that reason, Edward Jones takes a methodical approach to its use of psychological assessment in the hiring process. The tool has been back-tested on hiring data since 2001, piloted in 2004, and implemented in 2007. It was given to a group of employees already employed as financial advisors, and back-tested to their job performance. “The back-test data showed us it’s .72 correlated to success,” says Timm. “That is a pretty good correlation.” Refining Recruitment For Edward Jones, personality assessment is a way to cut through the glossy surface of job interviews. A 30-minute online psychometric tool developed by Toronto-based Self Management Group, and fine-tuned to suit Edward Jones, “gives a fairly good, in-depth peek at how people would approach the role of financial advisor and the specific attributes it takes to be successful,” says Dan Timm, principal, financial advisor training and development, branch administration, recruiting and hiring. The assessment, which asks job candidates to answer multiplechoice questions about how they would approach hypothetical scenarios, is harder to trick than a recruiter. “It asks similar questions repeatedly,” Timm says, “so you can’t really fake your way through the system.” Specifically, the tool gauges characteristics such as enterprising potential (how well applicants are able to manage themselves); achievement potential (how bottom line focused they are likely to be); and independence potential (how effectively they work on their own rather than on teams). But as promising as psychological assessments are, be careful what you expect from them, cautions Justin Menkes, author of “Executive Intelligence: What All Great Leaders Have.” “They are self-report measures, meaning they are dependent on the respondent to tell you the truth,” he says. Developing Development The next step for Edward Jones is to use psychological assessment more to aid training. The company now is developing a brief results summary that can be used to help employees with career development. “Here’s how you work,” Timm says this summary would tell employees, “and here are the training and coaching techniques we’re going to try use to work with you in a more appropriate way.” Indeed, the company considers personality assessment a part of its long-term growth strategy. Understanding its workforce better will allow the company to better capitalize on the talent already under its roof, says Human Evaluating the personality or psychological tendencies of employees takes Resources Principal Ken Dude. “We’re truly a growth some planning and effort. Here are some tips to get you started: company,” he says, “and it’s organic growth. It’s not • Personality assessment can cut through the artificial gloss of job interviews, through mergers and acquisitions. So our use in HR of if you do it right. To make it harder for job candidates to trick the test, use [psychological] assessment is centered on development.” an assessment that asks similar questions a few different ways. Edward Jones seeks to use a development assessment • Beware of marketing materials that overpromise what the assessment tool to support leadership development, essential given its can do. Take a second look, for instance, at the validity claims of the assessever-increasing payroll numbers. The company’s ment’s marketers—that is, how well scores on the assessment correlate to approximately 11,200 financial advisors are projected to on-the-job performance. grow to 17,500 in five years. “As we grow the population, • Back-test the assessment to job performance of those who already have we need to grow the leadership,” Dude says. “We use taken it to measure how accurate a predictor it is of on-the-job success. assessment as part of the information we use to identify • Keep in mind the results of personality assessment aren’t conclusive. Don’t and develop future leaders of the firm.” write off the leadership potential of an employee who doesn’t rate high in Unlike its use as a recruitment tool, the assessment used certain psychological tendencies. When motivated, people find ways to comfor leadership development isn’t for the purpose of selectpensate for weaknesses. ing future leaders; rather it tells managers where • You can use assessment for more than recruitment and measuring leaderemployees need to focus to build their strengths. ship potential. It also can be used to teach employees about their own The assessment is particularly good at helping Edward personality, and those of their peers, thereby boosting teambuilding. Jones assess the potential of financial advisors working • Weave the personality assessment into a teambuilding program to most outside its St. Louis, MO, headquarters, in its 10,000 improve your workforce’s ability to effectively collaborate. branch offices. The personality assessment combined Personality Assessment Primer 38 | JULY / AUGUST 2008 t r a i n i n g w w w. t r a i n i n g m a g . c o m http://www.trainingmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Training Magazine - July 2008

Training Magazine - July 2008 Contents Online TOC Editor’s Note Training Today Soapbox How-To World View Managing the Magic Keys to the Kingdom Good Job! Personalities & Performance Hidden Potential The Executive Entrance Live & Online No More Revolving Door Questions for Covey TMI Brochure

Training Magazine - July 2008

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