There are all kinds of things to take into consideration, and you can read up on prohibited practices if you are interested, but in the end the likelihood that you will get sued as an employer increases based on some predictable factors. To help you get an overview of whether or not your organization might be at higher risk, there is a new online calculator available.

Development Dimensions International (DDI) has developed a simple online ‘Instant Risk Profiler‘ to give you an idea of the factors that might impact your likelihood of experiencing a legal challenge to your selection system. The Profiler asks a series of questions, then assigns a score to each answer – gathering a cumulative total that appears on a ‘heat map’ graph ranging from low-risk green through yellow to high-risk red. It is designed to measure ‘situational risk’ in relationship to job analysis and validation rigor – all terms familiar to us I-Os.

As DDI states, “All selection systems involve legal risk, but some situations are riskier than others. The Profiler uses information about litigation and regulatory trends to forecast the legal risk for a particular organization and job type, and provides examples of the job analysis and validation activities needed to offset this risk.”

While the results are not a definitive legal opinion, you can use this calculator t0 get a quick overview – which might get you thinking about your selection processes and whether you have the right stuff in place.

–Charles

It was just over 10 years ago that I was working for the first online assessment company, a scrappy Aussie run start-up named ePredix.  Since then a dizzying series of mergers and acquisitions have seen the once tiny firm folded into the larger global entity of SHL and positioned to possibly lead the assessment world into the next era.  I believe this era will be the golden age for pre-employment assessment.  Why is this? because the dawn of big data is upon us and it is going to change everything.

For years we I/O Psychologists have tried to convince organizations that predictive science can make hiring a profit center but when asked to prove it, we are seldom given the opportunity to collect the data that we need and often falling back on the “trust me, I’m a Dr.” strategy to gain buy in.   The data required to fuel Business Analytics engines has matured to a nice state of ripeness and it is about to give pre-employment assessment a brand new set of very sharp teeth.

I would not be surprised if SHL finds a new home with a major firm who is looking at the big picture regarding data and predictive science for the business world.   It is possible that the next step for SHL could provide them with even more intellectual and monetary capital than deep-pockets rival firms such as Pan/Talx (an assessment company owned by Equifax who is investing heavily in adding HR analytics capabilities to reach across the enterprise).

The progress towards a world where predictive data is used to increase the accuracy of decision making across all areas of business is inevitable.  It remains to be seen if SHL will take a big step forward to become a vital cog in moving pre-employment assessment into the big time.

I personally can’t wait to see what happens.  While there are many possible options, many of them potentially less exciting than my pie in the sky rant, don’t be surprised if something monumental is born in the near future.

Be honest – you know this is true.

For HR Talent Managers the new year brings a chance to find a solution to the ever-challenging needs of the organization to put the right people in the right roles at the right time, in order to achieve business outcomes. And the only sure fire way to find the right people for a job is through talent measurement, aka assessment.

No need to go into details about the benefits of well-designed assessment processes, because you likely wouldn’t be here reading this if you didn’t agree. So, cutting to the chase – it’s not all that easy to find your perfect match in the world of assessment providers.

Choosing an assessment vendor can be hard because:

1. Assessment is a complex topic and understanding it can be confusing.
2. There are literally hundreds of assessment vendors and it is hard to tell which ones are good and how they differ from one another.
3. It’s not just about choosing tests – you need to build a process first.
4. Despite what your vendor may say – not every assessment strategy is effective in every situation.
5. Assessments do not live alone in a neat box, but instead need to play well with your organization’s other talent technology. Uncovering whether or not a vendor is capable of integrating with your systems can be time and cost consuming.

If  you find yourself lost in this confusing labyrinth of a ‘vendor selection process’ with no map, instructions or magical abilities, you should consider using our own Buyer’s Guide to Screening and Assessment Systems v3.0

As you can see by the 3.0 appended, this is the latest addition of a popular tool we first published 10 yrs ago. This newest edition provides even more expert, objective details about talent measurement vendors. We cut through the smoke and mirrors to help you make informed decisions, ultimately saving you time and money.

Check it out now, then you can get on to achieving other pressing business goals.

While the world of assessment still has one foot firmly in the horn rimmed paper and pencil world from which we came, we are slowly marching towards a new era where complex relationships in data will fuel amazing levels of insight and the ability to support decision making.  A big part of this march forward will involve the simulation of reality in a manner that is highly interactive, educational, and relevant.  What the specifics of this will look like are unclear as we have still to wait for the technology that will allow it to happen.  It’s pretty exciting stuff and it’s going to happen faster then you think.  Just turn the clock back 20 years and think about what luddites we were faxing things back and forth and storing our info on those big floppy discs that have 1000 times less capacity then my USB ink pen.

Please do note that I do not advocate removing humans from the decision making process.  I still see the role of game like simulations in the hiring process as collecting data and providing insight based on it.  As long as it comes to decisions about people and their lives, we humans need to remain involved.

#1: Test usage has crossed a major plateau- Ten years ago the testing industry was in total plateau mode.  Uptake was at the same level as it had been for decades with a handful of firms, mostly test publishers and consulting firms offering administratively heavy tests in two modes.  Ten years ago one could either buy a test off the shelf and drop it in place, sometimes doing validation work to support its use or sometimes not; or one could hire a consulting firm to do an expensive local validation study using their own content.  These options and the universal truth that testing required a good deal of resources to administer and manage, cost a butt load of money, and provided a cold war-sih icky feel to those taking the tests; served to really keep testing down.  We are way past all this now!!  Test uptake and the available revenue from selling tests has skyrocketed based solely on our friend, technology.  This technology enabled shift is the #1 big picture trend in the past decade.  This shift has been facilitated by several other important trends (discussed below).

#2: Data shows us the truth- Ease of administration and increased uptake have allowed us to capture millions of data points.  This information has greatly accelerated our understanding of what job performance is and how to accurately measure it.  We really do know how to accurately measure the traits that drive important work outcomes such as customer service and how to predict which applicants are most likely to achieve these outcomes.  This knowledge serves as the basis for increasing speed and accuracy in testing.

#3: Methods of demonstrating validity are changing- Please note, I am not saying that the concept of validity itself is changing.  I am saying that we have increasingly powerful tools to help us configure job relevant assessment content for local situations (thanks to Trend #2-above).  Most vendors have begun to bake a good deal of flexibility into the process and tools used to configure assessment content, building on the data they have harvested and then allowing end users to lightly customize their specific measurement model.  In a way this is the holy grail for validity as we begin to see criterion, content, and transportation of validity strategies merge to show us what content is correct for a given situation.  Isn’t this kinda what Landy (1986) was talking about when he rejected stamp collecting in favor of identifying ways to show how the rubber meets the road when it comes to showing a relationship between predictor and criterion space?

#4: Remote, unproctored testing is here to stay- Like it or not, there is no way to beat the convenience of remote testing.  I have served on more panels then I can remember on this topic over the past decade and all have reached the same conclusion, we do not have any strong evidence that remote testing is a problem.  This does not mean we can ignore the fact that we need to be vigilent.  Again, technology is our friend as we enter the age of IRT driven adaptive testing and increasing security tools such as bio-metrics.  The interesting thing in the decade to come will be the acceptance for remote testing via smart phones.  The jury is still out on this one.

#5: Candidate experience is becoming a key driver- A decade ago it was still common to see 2 and 3 hundred item long tests that asked question with no perceptible link to the job performance domain.  This is no longer the case as we begin to explore ways to increase simulations and games that make the assessment experience transparent and can easily be woven into employee branding.  This will be one of the most significant trends over the next decade as we begin to put the radio buttons of decades old personality tests in the rear view mirror.  If nothing else, the next generation of job applicants will begin to demand this type of treatment, and I really believe that this population is going to begin the redefinition of terms like “job” and “career” forcing us to adapt our hiring and assessment processes.

#6: Assessment is becoming an integral part of the employee lifecycle- We continue to see progress (albeit slow) towards a more unified vision of what talent is and how it fits within the organization.  Assessment has long been used as a tool for succession planning and development.  But there has been no continuity with the information collected during the hiring process.  Most of this time this info is basically industrial waste, going down the drain and taking value with it.  The rise of a talent management mindset has started to help promote a more strategic focus that covers the entire employee lifecycle.

All of the trends above have combined to open the door for increasing levels of value from assessment based on new levels of efficiency and effectiveness.  I encourage our readers to take a moment to reflect on just how far we have come.  Don’t even get me started talking about what we can expect to see in the next decade.  Almost daily I am seeing testing firms leveraging cool new technologies to help meet the end goal of providing realistic, accurate and efficient ways to predict applicant performance.   Just prepare to have your mind blown wide open.  The strong forward march of technology is going to make all aspects of our lives extremely interesting (and maybe a bit scary?).

Finding 1: Hiring is coming back!  We have all been seeing evidence of this trend and PreVisor’s data shows that firm indicate that they have more open positions this year than last, and that they anticipate retaining employees will become increasingly harder. To me this means assessment will be more valuable then ever since there will be more applicants for every open position, the ideal situation for assessment’s value prop to shine.

Finding 2: A majority of respondents use some form of testing or assessment and feel it is a valuable part of the hiring process but few are evaluating the value they add.  This is directly in-line with our research indicating a huge disconnect in the fundamental foundation driving the use of testing.  Without proper ROI evaluation, testing will continue to fall well short of its potential.  Companies are also failing to measure applicant reactions despite indicating that they are important.

Finding 3: Remote testing is here to stay.  Despite concerns about security and differences in effectiveness, remote testing is simply too efficient and will not be going away anytime soon. While the use of mobile devices for testing is predictably low, we cannot deny that remote access is king.

Finding 4: A wide variety of tools are in use, and help cover the entire funnel.  There are tons of options for screening and assessment and most of them seem to have a place and time where they are most effective.  Firms considering using testing should take the time to create a strategy that collects useful predictive data down the entire funnel.  Unfortunately few companies take this mindset, instead choosing to slap a testing band-aid on gaping wounds.

Finding 5: While employee development and succession planning are seen as important, few companies have strategies to leverage these tools for increasing performance.  Again this is a huge disconnect and we wonder if companies realize the value assessment can have in helping to create an effective strategy for measuring employee performance.  PreVisor has coined a new phrase “People Intelligence” to describe the idea of measuring and evaluating individual characteristics pre and post hire, and using this information strategically, to optimize the alignment between persons and jobs.

Let’s hope that organizations can learn to be more “people intelligent” and begin to see the big picture.

I strongly suggest that anyone interested in the issues discussed here, download a copy of PreVisor’s excellent report.

While data ownership is definitely a common bone of contention when creating assessment contracts, no one should be denied access to their data.  If your vendor is not willing to share this information with you, it raises a serious red flag.

Most of the vendor whom I have seen using a no share policy use a “proprietary” methodology and suggest that outside data analysts just don’t have the know how to make sense of the data correctly.  This is one reason to avoid vendors with super secret methods.  Vendors should be able to provide test data that can be used in external, 3rd party validation studies. This is important because statistics are easily manipulated and the procedures used are often not explained with enough clarity to allow for duplication.  Vendors have agendas to show their clients results and often this can lead to conclusions that cannot be fully trusted.

Be sure to ask potential vendors about their data sharing and ownership policies and strongly consider steering clear of those vendors who are not willing to share.  Barney the Dinosaur speaks the truth when he says “Sharing is Caring”  It’s hard to believe that a vendor who won’t share, really cares about you as a client.

So, why did this merger occur? Its actually pretty simple. Both organizations, while being quite strong in many areas, are less strong in others. True to the idea behind most mergers, the combined entity allows for a whole is greater than the sum of its parts scenario. For example, PreVisor offers the best technology platform in the business and leads the market in driving innovation but they lack a truly global reach. Furthermore, PreVisor’s approach to creating modular scales that can be “stacked” into situationally customized tests means they are always hungry for quality content. On the other hand, SHL while less competitive here in the US, is a powerhouse when it comes to assessment in other countries around the globe. Furthermore, SHL, while having a very sound stable of great content, has traditionally not been a strong technology player or a force in innovation. You do the math and see that these strengths and weaknesses are highly complimentary and will allow the bigger entity to be a serious player in global technology based assessments of the highest quality.

So what does this mean for the assessment space? We can’t know for sure but I expect that it will continue to drive the major trends we have been seeing unfold over the past few years. Namely increased aggregation within the HCM space, increases in the uptake of assessments, the continued commoditization of assessment content, an increase in assessment innovation, and an increase in the global use of assessment, including an increase in the presence of unified assessment programs amongst multinational corporations.

You may wonder what the drawbacks of this deal may be. Besides the obvious need for some time to get all the details sorted out with merging all aspects of the companies while removing duplication, I think the movement here is towards the ability to offer easily tweaked content in a very transactional manner. While this is not a bad thing at all, I wonder how such a big company will ensure the highest levels of customer service and how they will align to create high touch custom work. I’m sure these things will be sorted out but going for the gold globally is bound to make keeping the high touch element something to work on.

Overall, I feel good about this merger. I know both companies well and have a lot of respect for each of them. They are both innovators in their own way and now they have a chance to combine forces to really accelerate the cache and value of pre-employment testing

By the way, if you’re seeking seasonal work here in Rocket-Hire’s home state of Louisiana, there are many positions still available to help clean up the gulf in the aftermath of the BP oil spill.

Presumably, the Chosen One (Jonathan Pelleg of Austin, TX) will get interviewed at the very least, with the possibility of getting the job only emerging after some sort of selection procedure and conversations with management…right?

But as a sourcing strategy, it’s certainly clever and likely being duplicated already. It certainly is by job seekers, it seems.