Personal assessments are already mainstream. Recruitment decisions are so important that using external help pays itself back many times if it means that wrong recruitment decisions can be avoided. But if personal assessments are made only to support recruitment, their use doesn’t come close to everything that an assessment could offer. A great assessment and report is a win-win situation for the candidate, manager and the entire organisation.
For the candidate, the feedback from the assessment is both important and exciting. Who wouldn’t be interested to know what the person who conducted the assessment and all the tests thinks of you? Even though most people have realistic views of themselves and they identify themselves from the assessment, external validation still reinforces your self-knowledge. Ambitious people who are willing to develop themselves make the most out of the feedback. With the feedback, it’s easy to allocate the resources with which you can move forward, and sometimes to acknowledge the little things that can stand in the way of progress as either an expert or a leader. Moving forwards, the assessment can also support personal coaching.
The real work only begins when the manager has made their recruitment decision. Orientation, enabling the development of the new recruit, getting the team to work together and so forth. Assessments provide a shortcut and help for all of this. If the manager is up to speed, they will, in connection with the assessment reporting, ask how they can best support their future team member in the orientation. In what kinds of situations does the team member need the most support? What motivates them, what kinds of future prospects would keep them committed? This way, the manager gets a head start in getting to know the team member and their characteristic way of working, and they don’t have to wonder why the team member acts in the way they do.
The organisation can utilise the information from the assessment – naturally, with the candidate’s permission – in successor planning, talent programmes, cultural development and many other things. By looking at the bigger picture, HR can see what kinds of people work for them, whether some motivational themes are repeated throughout the organisation or some units, and how this should be taken into account in competence management. Would it be possible, for instance, to perceive what kinds of people enjoy being part of the organisation the most and use this to support new recruitment?
If and when you invest in a personal assessment, don’t waste any of its potential.
Writers Päivi Montgomery and Lotta Lunnela are MPS’s experienced psychologists and consultants.
