For most jobs, suitability/behavioural factors are about 50% of the reason people succeed or fail at a job. Therefore, effectively measuring suitability should be an essential part of any job fit or hiring assessment. The importance of assessing behaviour during recruitment is evidenced by the fact that most organisations hire people for their eligibility and then try to develop their suitability. And in many cases, they fire them for their lack of suitability. Since behaviour is fundamentally more difficult to change than eligibility, it is better to hire people who already have the right suitability for the job.
Suitability/behavioural factors are more difficult to assess because, unlike eligibility factors, there is no objective and verifiable information that is readily available. In addition, suitability factors are much more interrelated, and subtle balances between factors have significant implications for behaviour. To make it even more challenging, applicants have a significant incentive to withhold or distort information that might hinder their job opportunity. This is highlighted by a recent study that determined that 80% of resumes contained lies.
In many cases, people are not even fully aware of their behaviours. In addition, the behavioural requirements for each job type are very different. The behaviours required for a technical expert, manager, office administer, customer representative or salesperson are all very different. Not only is it unlikely that a recruiter will have a complete grasp of the combination of behavioural factors related to job success for each job, it is much more unlikely that the recruiter can accurately assess each applicant related to each factor.
Considering the above, it is no wonder that interviews have a low ability to predict behaviour.
Behavioural assessments have a much better chance of gaining insight into behaviour/suitability because they have a pre-designed strategy that structures questions and carefully considers interpretations of the questions. However, to be effective, behavioural assessments must:
- measure a large number of factors;
- effectively manage lie prevention and detection;
- produce results related to specific jobs;
- offer an overall job specific score that guides interpretation
Harrison Assessments International’s research indicates that there are at least thirty behavioural factors that impact success for any one job and only a small portion (about 25 to 30%) of behavioural factors that are measured actually relate to success for a specific job. Harrison Assessments measures a total of 175 traits which are all job related out of which 25% to 30% at most of these traits will relate to job success/performance for a given job. Further to this, traits are categorized into Essential (must haves) , Desirable (Nice to have) and Derailers (negative traits to avoid).
The Harrison Job Suitability Assessment takes all of these factors and much more into consideration when helping you find the right candidate for the position