Executive and Management Assessments in the Hiring Process
As all leaders know, the process of hiring a new executive or key manager is difficult and complex. Organizations understand they need to have greater focus on retention and succession planning as part of the hiring process, not just making a job offer.
In our free whitepaper, we explore adding executive and management assessments to your hiring process. These assessments indicate an executive’s preferences with regard to leadership skills, decision-making, interpersonal style and delegation. This additional information brings more value to the entire selection process including insights into candidate cultural fit, onboarding and development needs.
The Selection Process: Questions asked in an interview often reveal little more than a candidate’s ‘likeability’ or what they might hypothetically do in a given situation. Executive assessments add to the effectiveness of this process by building out the ‘behavioral/competency’ interview questions that highlight specific candidate tendencies and how these may impact their actions in a particular situation.
Cultural Fit: When hiring an executive, there are two kinds of ‘fit’ – the candidate’s technical ‘fit’ for the job and their ‘fit’ for the organization’s culture. Executive assessments identify key characteristics in candidates that may cause them to succeed or fail within a given organization.
On-boarding Development: Studies have shown that a new hire’s experience within the first three months significantly impacts the person’s belief in how long they will remain with their new organization. If you have a deep understanding of a newly on-boarded executive, you are in a better position to create an on-boarding experience that will be aligned with the executive’s natural style.
A Candidate’s Future Potential: In most hiring situations, the goal is not to fill just the immediate position, but to hire someone who has the potential to advance in our organization. An organization’s plan to grow the business depends heavily on hiring individuals who are high potentials with the ability to advance to the next level in the short-term.
Return on Investment (ROI): The investment an organization makes to conduct a pre-hire executive and management assessment can be between $1,000 and $3,000, some much more. The cost of a bad hire is 14.6 times the base salary and that it can take over one year to remove a person from your organization or pay the equivalent in negotiated severance costs.
An increasing number of executive search firms are recognizing the additional value executive assessments provide to the overall success of the total hiring process. They provide a critical view of a candidate’s behavior, potential and development opportunities. As we move into an even more competitive environment where top talent is difficult to find and retain, more and more companies and search firms are recognizing the important value executive assessments add to the hiring process and the long-term success of the individual hired.