#cut-e australia

by Nicole Russom

For hiring managers or the HR team that are not familiar with using psychometric assessment as part of a selection or development process, it can be quite daunting.  How much weight can you place on the results from such assessments?  How do you know if the candidate has cheated?  How do you interpret the results?  How do you position the testing with candidates or employees?

So to alleviate some of this apprehension, here are some of the more commonly asked questions about how to effectively use psychometric assessment, particularly in the selection process:

How much weight should I place on the results of psychometric assessments?  

Psych assessment is one part of the process.  It is no more or less important than any other selection process candidates go through, such as an interview. We recommend to clients that the psych testing results be seen as additional data to add to the whole picture and where possible, investigated further at a second or final interview stage.  Assessment adds valuable insight into people’s underlying capability, motives, attitudes and values that you may not be able to get from a standard interview, however it is not a perfect process.

What’s the different between ability/cognitive/aptitude testing and personality/work style preferences testing?  

Ability assessments measure capability, such as how quickly the candidate can pick up on and learn new information.  Personality is about preferences and the candidate’s natural style.  Generally, people are likely to behave in a way consistent with their preferences.  They can behave differently if they learn to change their style, but it takes a lot of effort.

How long are the results from psychometric assessments valid for?  

The results of psychometric assessments are relevant for approximately 18 months. People tend to go through a significant change in their lives every 18 months to two years (eg. change of job, moving, marriage, divorce, illness, grief) which can have an impact on assessment results.

What should I tell the candidate about the testing?

Managing candidate expectations is important. Speak to them about the testing and the best conditions to do it under (eg. in a quiet environment where you won’t be disturbed, in the morning is best if possible, try to avoid late at night). Let them know how long it will take, find out if there is anything that may impact their performance on the assessments that you should know about, direct them to any practice questions they can do, and answer any questions they may have.

At what stage of the selection process should I use psychometric assessment?

Psychometric testing can be used at different stages of the selection process, depending on why you are using it. For example, for high volume recruitment (eg. graduate, call centre) assessment (such as cognitive abilities or Situational Judgement assessments) may be one of the initial stages (after application) in order to screen out candidates. For lateral hires, we recommend completing assessments between the first and second interviews, or between the interview and reference check if there is no second interview. This way, the assessment can help to answer any questions that may have arisen from the first interview, and you can use the results of the assessment to help guide the second interview and ensure you tap into any potential vulnerabilities.

How do I know if the candidate has cheated?  

Most personality/work style preferences assessments will look at how consistently a candidate has responded to similar items on the questionnaire. If they respond inconsistently to items that tap into the same behaviours, this may raise some questions about how accurately the results represent the candidate’s true preferences. However, low consistency is not always indicative of cheating or trying to create a positive impression, as it can also suggest lowered self-insight, that a candidate has rushed through the assessment without giving due consideration to their responses, or perhaps that a candidate was distracted at the time of taking the assessment. For ability assessments there is the possibility that candidates may get someone else to complete the assessment for them, however in our experience this is highly unlikely (only 12% of candidates will cheat on an assessment, and if they do, it’s more likely to be trying to create a positive impression on a personality assessment than cheating on an ability assessment), and if they do cheat, they are often found out at further stages of the selection process when things don’t quite add up.

by Prue Laurence

Words are one of the most powerful tools we all have at our disposal. Words convey our thoughts and feelings, they build and tear down relationships, and how we use our words sets us apart from others. Words and hence the collective language we use also help define cultural and group norms. Think about it. Do you have certain phrases or words that you use just with your friends or your team at work? Are there certain words that have different meanings to them when used with your partner? In my team we use the phrase “busy and important” in jest, to tease each other when we haven’t attended to less attractive but necessary tasks. For example, “I can’t clean the coffee cups today because I am too busy and important”.

Our words and their shared meaning bond us to some people and distance us from others. In social psychology this is called ingroups and outgroups.  An ingroup is a social group with which a person psychologically identifies as being a member, and by contrast an outgroup is a social group with which an individual does not identify.  For the most part, people will have preference for their ingroup over an outgroup, and will consider their ingroup homogenous and the outgroup as different from the ingroup.  Ingroups develop their own set of behavioural norms, i.e. what is and is not accepted as appropriate behaviour amongst the group. They also develop their own sense of language and a shared meaning of words.

The other day I was in a feedback session with a client who had recently completed some assessments. I sensed the client was a little apprehensive about the feedback and she demonstrated this through the words she used in the first few minutes of our session. I asked her a standard, rapport building question and one I have used hundreds, if not thousands of times with clients/candidates. “So (insert client name here), what is your role at (insert organisation name here)? Tell me about what you do.” This is what I believe to be a non-threatening, general, open-ended question designed to get the person to talk about themselves in a safe environment, i.e. “tell me about your job”, as opposed to “tell me about yourself” which can be a little daunting to some.  When the client responded with “I am alarmed that you don’t know what I do here”, I have to admit I was a little taken aback by this and her use of the word “alarmed”.

To alarm means to make (someone) feel frightened, disturbed, or in danger. Synonyms for alarmed include afraid, anxious, fearful, aghast, petrified, uneasy, troubled, terrified, and panicky. My immediate (internal) reaction to her use of the word alarmed was concern that my (seemingly) benign question asking her to tell me about her role, had made her feel in danger.

Nevertheless, the session continued reasonably smoothly as I was on high alert to use words and ask questions that would make the client feel more at ease. At the end of the session the client’s manager came in for a 3-way debrief. During the debrief, when describing a recent example of something that had happened in their team, the manager used the word “alarmed” as a key description of how she felt in response to the recent event. What she was describing, in my opinion, was not alarming i.e. it was an example of a communication breakdown in the team, and did not cause panic, terror or fear within the team. However, the significance of her story was not in describing the event itself but was in the use of the word “alarmed”. It was instantly clear to me that within that team, of which my client and her manager were a key part, the word “alarmed” was used freely and without strong regard for its actual meaning. It was a cultural norm to be “alarmed” at events that were more surprising than alarming.  To the outgroup member, i.e. me, the word had seemed odd as I do not share their ingroup bond, but to the members of the ingroup this word was the norm.

Do you consider yourself to be innovative?

When discussing innovation, I find that people tend to have fixed ideas about how innovative they are. They seem to feel that they either are innovative, or that they are not.  That it is either something you have, or you don’t.  However, this belief that the ability to be innovative is a fixed, unchangeable ability is inherently false.  The good news is that it can be measured, and it can be developed!

Ok, so what does that mean for you?

In the corporate world, it is becoming more and more critical for organisations to be innovative, to be able to ensure that they are constantly coming up with new ideas, new products, and new services, to ensure that they are at the leading edge, and that they can survive in a highly competitive market.

So let’s take a step back. What exactly do we mean when we talk about innovation?  Innovation involves a number of different components, including fluency (the ability to come up with many ideas), flexibility (the ability to come up with varied ideas), and originality (the ability to come up with unusual ideas), all of which are important when it comes to being innovative.  So if we are able to develop our ability to be innovative, this means that you can improve your innovation in all of these areas.  

So, how do I improve my ability to be innovative?  First of all, you need to give yourself the time and space to be innovative.  We get so busy at work that we are often caught up in the doing, which requires a more conceptual frame of mind (processing through cognition or thought).  Innovation however often requires a more perceptual frame of mind - essentially, when we are thinking about nothing or just ‘experiencing’.  Have you ever wondered why you have some of your best ideas in the shower, or when you’re out for a walk?  New ideas come to us through insight, not critical or analytical thinking, so we need to give ourselves the opportunity to get into the right frame of mind to be innovative, which workplaces don’t often encourage.

So what exactly can you do to enhance your ability to be innovative at work?

Go for a walk.  Go outside if you can, but walking inside can have the same impact on your innovation (plus the bonus of getting some more exercise in while you’re at it!)

Give yourself a change of scenery.  Work from home.  Work from a café.  A different environment can give you a different perspective and inspire new ideas.

Actively work on developing your ability to be innovative.  One way you can do this is to choose an everyday object (such as a pen) and try to think of as many uses for that object as possible.

Practice mindfulness.  This is a great way to get into a more perceptual headspace so that you can then be innovative.

In addition to being able to improve your ability to be innovative, we can also measure how innovative someone is (hence how we know that it can be improved!).  This means that organisations can now benchmark the current level of innovation of their employees, as well as assess the innovation of people that they are recruiting into the business.  As an organisation that was founded to disrupt our industry and create cutting edge assessments, it’s very fitting that we have recently developed an online assessment that measures innovation and its three components! We’re excited to see how this assessment (sparks) can be used to assist organisations to improve their innovation.

by Nicole Russom

Can you remember the last time you did badly on a test?  What was the reason?  Did you not study hard enough?  Or maybe the test was too hard?

This self-serving bias helps us to maintain and enhance our level of self esteem (eg. It wasn’t that we aren’t smart enough to do well on the test, it was the test’s fault!).

Everyone has biases (including you and I) that help us to explain things, and often protect ourselves. And if you think you don’t have that many biases think again. In fact, there’s a specific bias for that – the ’bias blind spot’ where you think that you are less biased than others (sorry, it’s true).

As a company that creates our own tests and assessments, these types of biases have a huge impact on our everyday work.  When potential clients are first learning about our tools, they often want to try out the assessments themselves.  Of course, we are more than happy for people to trial our assessments and to provide them with the validity and reliability data that support our assessments and demonstrate just how effectively the assessments are able to predict job performance.  It’s also great for people to understand the look and feel of the assessments, and what the candidate experience can be like.

But consider what happens when you try out an ability assessment and find out that you’ve received a below average result?  Are you more likely to think “Yeah, that sounds about right.” Or is it more likely to be “Really? That doesn’t seem right to me, this test is too difficult for us to use.” ?

Unfortunately it’s the latter.  When people see their results they tend to judge our assessments on their own performance, regardless of all the evidence that points to the validity of the assessments.

So why does this happen?

People with a below average IQ tend to overestimate their IQ, whereas people with an above average IQ tend to underestimate their IQ.  This is referred to as the “Downing effect.”  The impact of this in the situation above means that if someone gets a below average score, they are likely to think that the score is wrong (and not indicative of their true ability), and hence think that the test is not accurate (despite all the validity evidence to the contrary).  And if they get an above average score, they may think that the test has overestimated their ability and is not accurate (or perhaps that it is too easy).  So you can see why getting the results from ability assessments is not a good way to try out the assessment as a way to determine whether it is a good assessment to use in your organisation.

Interestingly, gender differences have also been found when it comes to estimating our own IQ, in that men are more likely to overestimate their IQ, and women are more likely to underestimate their IQ.  Given that research consistently finds that women are less likely to put themselves forward for promotions than men, or that men will put themselves forward when they meet a few of the required criteria whereas women will only put themselves forward if they meet most or all of the criteria, you start to see a worrying trend appearing.

by Prue Laurence

A couple of years ago one of my younger colleagues, whojoined the team for a brief secondment from one of our international offices, and I were having a discussion about networks and networking. We were chatting about how powerful a network is and what it takes to build one. My colleague, let’s call him Robby, was fresh faced and eager. He was new not only to Australia and specifically Melbourne but also to the world of consulting. He was full of enthusiasm and impatience, desperately wanting to make a mark for himself but grappling with the idea that building a network takes time, time to build rapport, trust and a mutual understanding of our roles in the network.  The conversations with Robby about building his network continued for his entire secondment and while keen to expand his circle of influence in his secondment in our office, he could never reconcile the sheer time investment that this was going to take.

These conversations came back to me when I met with a potential client recently who was rude and did not allow me the opportunity to build rapport (read the interesting blog here). I have been thinking about my own network. It’s pretty sizable and it has taken me almost 20 years to build. I have also been thinking about how a network is never completed, you can never know enough people or be connected to enough contacts in life, particularly in the corporate world. I like to believe that the vast majority of people in my network respect me as I do them and it is vitally important it is to be professionally respected, even if you don’t connect on a personal level.

I have built my network, and continue to build my network through concerted efforts. Through seeking to get to know people in all areas of my life and allowing them to get to know me. And this takes time. Time to build rapport and trust, time to have good experiences and even bad experiences together.   This is what frustrated me about my recent client experience wherein I was not able to build that rapport nor establish that trust and subsequently no relationship was built and the networks were not expanded.  I was not concerned that we were not to do business together, but I was disappointed that the meeting had been for nothing and the client’s rudeness was unwarranted.  It is commonly known that it takes about 7 seconds to make an impression on others, be that good or bad, and once that impression is made we subconsciously pick up information from others to support that impression.  It is not impossible to turn an initial bad impression around, however it does take a concerted effort to do so.

Networks are powerful entities in their own right, made particularly more so with social media tools that enable you to connect with people all around the world. These days you don’t need to shake someone’s hand to expand your network, though this definitely helps and for me is still the preferred way to establish trust and rapport. The way others perceive and judge you is still done from afar however the ramifications of a poor judgement (and a good judgement!) are now more damaging. A bad reputation or a poor professional experience can spread quickly through a network and the social media world makes this a lot more permanent.  If we liken our networks to sites like Tripadvisor or Urbanspoon, think about how quickly a bad impression of a restaurant or a hotel can damage future patronage of that establishment.  Or if you have poor service at a café you may tell 5 of your friends who tell 5 of theirs and so on. We never know how big and powerful the network is of others.

When you are growing up you are told not to “burn any bridges” or that you have to “earn your stripes” and when you are young and impatient these tired sayings seem outdated and irrelevant. But they are true and I found myself saying these phrases to my young and eager colleague Robby. Networks are not built in a day or a year even, but in a lifetime of hard work and commitment to increasing your sphere of influence. You need to give to get.

by Ruth Wilden

As we progress through high school, university and postgraduate studies, young graduates like myself find ourselves eventually thrown into the real world of work and internships. This exposes us to  situations that are very new and at times even frightening. The most frightening thing I've found is the transition and integration between my ‘work-self’ and my ‘real-self’, forcing stark comparisons between my "polite and I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing" self to my "say-what-you-are-really-thinking, self-assured" self.

Over the course of our lives up to the point of being thrust suddenly into the "real world" of work and internships, graduates have come some way to forming ideas about themselves such as who they think they are, what they think they like, and where they think their opinions lie.  We generally know what people think of us in our extended social groups, we know how we like to dress, and generally we have enjoyed a lack of much responsibility beyond handing assignments in on time and turning up to part-time jobs on time.  You learn to ‘get good’ at these things and they’re easy.

Then you pop into the ‘real world’ where you are supposed to know lots about that thing that you got a degree in.  You are supposed to have an opinion on topics you’ve only rote learned for an exam (and then immediately braindumped during an exam), and you need to fit into the workplace culture and ways of doing things fast.

In a world that relies so much on face value and first impressions, the pressure of balancing your work and real selves can cause anxiety and stress which makes one resort back to your polite, self-doubting self. As a young, female intern who is also shorter than your average person and who has been raised to be polite-to-a-fault, there are struggles that come with finding this balance.

One particular situation springs to mind when I think about how my politeness has got me into trouble.

A piece of work had been looked over a number of times just before the end of a contract. On the final day, I was advised that the piece of work wasn’t up to scratch because it had taken a wrong angle and that it needed to be redone and checked in a few weeks. My real self would have stood up for myself and reasoned that the ‘angle’ I was supposed to have taken hadn't been in the brief given to me.  My real self would have asked why I hadn’t been set up for success during the previous meetings. My work self, on the other hand, didn’t say anything. So I was stuck with having to do more work.  More annoyingly, the annoying voice in my head was saying ‘Why didn’t you just say something?’

Now I have decided to apply what I know  to what I don’t know. It’s a lot like matching shoes to an outfit, something you do as your ‘real self’. Most of the time, you want to go for your lovely new heels (especially for short people) that make you feel fantastic (and tall), but you know that when you consider that you need to catch a tram, then transfer to a train and then walk to work, these heels are not quite a good idea. However, it’s a risk and can be exciting! Despite this, you put on your average flat ballet flats knowing that you’ll be comfortable and that they are good for your feet but at the same time knowing that they are never really noticed. It’s also important to remember at times, especially as an intern, that it's about balance. It’s not a great idea to speak up all the time.  So wear your flats sometimes.  At other times, put on your heels so that you’re noticed. This is using balance, as well as both ‘mindfulness’ and ‘desensitisation’. The aim is to be mindful and conscious of when you’re being too polite and not speaking up. Desensitisation involves just putting yourself out there into the situations in which you feel less confident. This means that hopefully over time you should become less anxious about the new and frightening situations and actually become good at them.

by Nicole Russom

Assessment centres are time consuming, and hence, expensive. While they are a highly valuable part of the selection process (when designed and run consistent with best practice) where you get to see firsthand the behaviours of candidates, anyone that has been involved in assessment centres knows that there is a lot of work behind the scenes that goes into making them run smoothly and effectively.  From carefully planning the logistics of the day (rooms, candidate schedules, assessor schedules) to printing and collating all of the required materials (candidate handouts, assessor guides, scoring sheets, interview guides, role play guidelines), through to collecting all of the scores from the different assessors at the end of the assessment centre and working through the wash up/integration session to make decisions, phew!  It makes for a lot of work!

With all of the advancements in technology that we have in HR today, it’s not surprising that assessment centres are now taking the next step and going online.  This means no more paper, no more printing, and a more streamlined and efficient process when it comes to collating scores.  In our webinar earlier this week on enAC (enabling Assessment Centres), our online assessment centre tool, 43% of our webinar attendees indicated that they printed more than 60 pages per assessment centre, demonstrating that going online offers significant, cost, time, and environmental savings.  Furthermore, with 55% of attendees listing innovation as the most important value for their organisation, utilising the latest innovative technology also sends a strong message to candidates about the values of your organisation and how these values are lived every day.

So how does enAC work?  The software allows you to input the framework of your assessment centre (competencies, activities, timing, room availability, assessor details and so on), and even has an automatic scheduler that you can use to schedule each assessment centre, making the logistical planning of an assessment centre much easier. On the day of the assessment centre, enAC is used by assessors, facilitators and administrators to log in and access their schedule for the day as well as soft copies of any relevant documents (eg. assessor guides/briefing documents, candidate CVs and psychometric reports) either on a tablet or laptop.  Consistent with best practice assessment centres, assessors can then observe and take notes on candidates during activities or interviews, and following the activity score candidates based on key competencies and behavioural indicators.  At the end of the assessment centre, the scores can be viewed in the system and discussed during the integration session, or exported to an Excel file.