Does the role that you are hiring for at the moment require higher scores on intellect or on extraversion? More intuition or more vigilance? More tough-mindedness, more independence or more self-control? These are all dimensions from various personality tests. The problem is that even the dimensions that sound familiar have quite specific meanings and interpretations.
Translating test scores into meaningful predictions of job success is a highly complex process - even for those of us for whom this is a full time job. The benefits of powerful psychometric assessments often get lost somewhere between the mysteries of the assessment technology and the real-world practicalities of identifying the best candidates.
There are many possible reasons for this. The measurement itself is likely to be good, particularly if favourably reviewed and purchased from reputable publishers. The problems arise in interpreting test scores and in making hiring decisions. Businesses think in terms of job competencies not personality dimensions and making the link between the two is something that is only now beginning to receive the attention it requires. This is the challenge taken up by PROFILE:MATCH.
PROFILE:MATCH delivers the objective power of psychometrics, but through the accessible everyday language of workplace competencies. The aim is to put the user in control of the science. This is an online expert system in which you use a menu to identify the competencies that you require in an employee, and PROFILE:MATCH deals with the psychometrics.
This is an intuitive and accessible way to manage candidate profiling. The power and precision still come from 'behind the scenes' psychometric technology, but these assessments are interpreted by the PROFILE: MATCH expert system and expressed in terms of the competencies required for a specified job.
The aim is to achieve for psychometric assessment what Microsoft Windows achieved for computers - a user-friendly interface that sits above a powerful but otherwise inaccessible technology.
It couldn't be easier to set up a PROFILE: MATCH assessment. On the PROFILE: MATCH Website, you simply tick the competencies required for a particular role and PROFILE:MATCH takes care of everything else. The system e-mails you instructions to forward to your candidates and when they have completed the online questionnaire, PROFILE:MATCH delivers individual reports and expert interpretation to your inbox.
The PROFILE:MATCH report narrative describes how well they met the specified criteria, and provide objective 'match' ratings for each competency.
For any individual, temperament has an impact on job success. There are jobs that they will perform consistently and well because their distinctive temperament is an advantage, and other roles where they will struggle because it is not.
By tapping into individual differences in temperament, PROFILE:MATCH helps you decide how well any applicant will meet the demands of the role you are recruiting for.
The Internet is making rapid, radical and exciting changes to employee assessment. We have been rocketed from a cautious and conservative past into a period of breathtaking progress and opportunity. The implications of this are immense. PROFILE: MATCH is the product of a world where both the shape and the development of assessment technology are Internet driven.
From product creation fuelled by rapid data collection to undreamed of levels of world-wide accessibility - the landscape of assessment has been transformed.
The agenda for the future, and the agenda for PROFILE:MATCH, goes beyond the requirement for high quality measurement to embrace user-friendly accessibility and down to earth utility.
PROFILE:MATCH assesses the underlying temperament accounting for the consistencies in behaviour on which job competency depends. It indicates to what extent an applicant's natural temperament is aligned with the requirements of the job, and to what extent they might need to moderate, control or develop their natural temperament to succeed in that role.
The technical bit
The power of PROFILE: MATCH lies in the generation of finely graduated competency ratings that have all the measurement characteristics of a psychometric test. This system has been in development for the past four years, during which increasingly sophisticated ways of mapping psychometric measures onto the competency frameworks of clients have been developed.
During the earlier development phase, PROFILE:MATCH reports were individually hand-drafted by experienced personality psychologists. Competency ratings were calculated by combining personality test scores according to explicit mathematical algorithms.
PROFILE:MATCH is an expert system based on the same algorithmic technology. Nearly 3,000 automated reports have been generated in the last year, providing the data needed to confirm the measurement characteristics of this approach.
At the heart of the system is the PROFILE:MATCH item bank. These psychometrically developed items are structured to cover the personal characteristics needed to generate finely incremented ratings for an extensive library of competencies.
The result is an expert system that uses high-level assessment to capture personality data, and professional interpretation expertise to repackage it in the intuitive and accessible language of work place competencies.
MISCO has teamed up with PROFILE:MATCH to deliver a power competency based profiling tool. Mr Geoff Trickey will address an information seminar on Thursday at the Radisson SAS Hotel in St Julians, at 8.30 a.m. Anyone interested in attending may contact Alison Micallef on 2205-4116 or e-mail amicallef@miscomalta.com. More information on PROFILE: MATCH can also be obtained from www.profilematchmalta.com