Six Executive Assessment Pitfalls to Avoid
by Drew Brock, Ph.D.
You've probably heard of the "{insert your favorite number here} habits of highly effective {insert your favorite topic here}." Deploying a successful Executive Assessment process for your organization involves focusing on some good habits and avoiding some bad ones. Here are a few pitfalls to watch out for as you go about developing Executive Assessment in your organization.
Pitfall #1: Paying more attention to selecting your Secretary than your CEO…
Ability testing, profiling and work samples are routinely administered in successful organizations to identify those candidates who will be high performers. Paradoxically it seems, some of the same executives who design these selection programs for lower level jobs, set them aside when it comes to finding a capable peer in their organization. When that high-impact executive job comes open, money pours out to headhunters and all the focus gets placed on the recruitment (front end) and placement (back end) parts of the Recruitment – Selection – Placement sandwich. Complex jobs with high stakes and critical competencies get settled over a few business lunches with some softball questions tossed at the candidate. Don’t forget the “Selection” filling in your sandwich; invest in it proportionate to the importance of the role in your organization.
Pitfall #2: Letting amateurs run your Executive Assessment…
You put your internal Executive Assessment process in place but are bitterly disappointed in the results. Trust your process to experts! That BMW sitting in your garage? Mind if I take a crack at tuning it up? No indeed. Important things require expert care and successful selections are the offspring of a healthy strategic assessment system. The complexities of doing high-quality Executive Assessment are far too challenging for most organizations to handle internally. Demand expertise from the company you choose. Often, consulting firms outbid each other by selling you on their expertise and then delivering the service with less qualified consultants. Insist on a Ph.D.-level assessment expert. Demand that you have assessors with at least a decade of experience in the assessment world. And get samples in writing before you select someone to do your Executive Assessment. Assessors should know the nuances of the tools they use, possess a keen understanding of human dynamics and, above all, must be communicators of the highest order – both orally and in the written form.
Pitfall #3: Putting all your (selection) eggs in one (assessment) basket…
Trendy management retreats frequently offer some form of personality assessment and then try to sell you on using that same tool to contextualize an entire person’s contribution to your organization. The rare headhunter you find who actually performs selection seldom goes beyond a single cognitive test and perhaps a personality fit or interest profile. The sad fact is that most practical attempts at selection sell short the complexity of human nature. There is not one measure that can describe the totality of human personality, nor are there a finite set of measures that can do that; however, the more approaches you take to understanding the person, the more closely you come to achieving an assessment process that gets you what you need. Look for multivariate approaches that examine cognitive skills, behavioral styles, motivations, career derailers, decision making styles and skill, strategic capabilities AND job-specific skills. Note the AND! Come at the candidate from all angles. The simplest way to tell if an Executive Assessment is doing its job? Go through the process yourself, after getting feedback about the results of the battery and the analysis from the assessor, something like this should come out of your mouth: “That totally nailed me.”
The above three Pitfalls suggested placing proper emphasis on executive positions and taking care in the selection of assessors and assessment instruments. High-performing organizations fill their ranks with high-performing executives; the Executive Assessment process that selects those 'All-Stars' in the organization only comes from a decision maker who knows the good habits to develop and the bad ones to avoid. Rounding out the list of "The Six Habits of Highly INeffective Executive Assesments" are the following:
Pitfall #4: You want it bad, you get it bad…
By now you might be thinking, "Seasoned experts, multiple tools...these assessments will cost me a fortune." Not so when you consider the payoffs - and the consequence of cutting corners. Perhaps the greatest value of investing in a quality Executive Assessment process is that it will help you avoid hiring those individuals who can be toxic to your workplace. This variant on "you get what you pay for" should serve as a reminder that investing in selection for key stakeholders needs to be proportionate to how valuable those stakeholders are in your organization. Consider it a rule of thumb to spend about one to two percent of the base salary for the target role on a high-quality assessment. If you pay less, it's probably because corners are being cut (poor quality or limited focus measures, sub-par assessors, automated reports, etc.). If you're worried about cost overruns, remember that you likely will only utilize Executive Assessment a handful of times in any given year and even then on only a handful of candidates. And firms that do Executive Assessment for a living almost always discount for volume. If you find a process you like, request a free assessment and evalute the product. Review the scope of what you need and keep in mind that you are making an investment in the intellectual capital of your organization. Quality investments pay quality dividends.
Pitfall #5: Going with your gut is probably aiming a little low…
While intuition has its place, too often it replaces facts in the selection process. Just as the focus on predictive selection seems to decline as the criticality of the job increases (see Pitfall #1), there are some out there that will try to help you select a candidate without knowing exactly what you need. They seem to be saying, "I can't tell you what I'm looking for, but I'll sure know it when I see it." Strategically oriented organizations assemble competency maps that form a profile that describes their key stakeholders - often Director level and above positions. These maps provide detail on the talents each stakeholder should possess intellectually, the desired leadership styles they employ, expectations for work habits, and a description of interpersonal qualities that will ensure appropriate fit in the organization. When the assessment is conducted, experts in Executive Assessment will be able to report, quantitatively and qualitatively, how each candidate for a target role fits in comparison to this competency map. Assessment outcomes are enriched and you are then able to begin building an internal competency database for use in succession planning, leadership development and other activities that benefit your organization as a collective. Know where you're headed before you step out the door.
Pitfall #6: Assuming that you have validity…
Your selection investment should be proportionate to how much the job is valued in the organizatoin at every step in the process. Accordingly, you don't want to merely trust that your process is effective - you need to know that your Executive Assessment correlates with actual performance on the job. It is a classic error in management to forego validation studies. The faulty thinking goes like this: "I just paid a lot of money for a process that will get me high-performing candidates. Why in the world would I want to invest in a study to prove it does what it's supposed to?" And it is there that the specter of fear descends upon the executive decision maker. The logical trap for most is that they don't want to pay for one investment to prove that the other investment was a waste. Here, then, is the last and key way to evaluate the Executive Assessment process you choose. Executive Assessment experts worth investing in will actually encourage you to validate their process in your organization. They should be able to show you validity results and be willing to quantify their assessment findings for use in correlating executive competency with actual job performance.
Now that you know what to avoid, learn more about how Select International can help you build a high-impact Executive Assessment process.
