What would be your reaction if a candidate included an objective assessment report outlining their strengths in addition to their resume and cover let

Alison's Contribution:

You face an interesting business challenge. You may be the first one's out there looking at the issue, perhaps you are just ahead of the wave. I don't know.

What I do know is that technical skills knowledge is measured and supplied like this already. Candidates give prospective employees their id and the scores are made available. This can happen before interview, but I believe usually happens after the cv has already been considered (even if the scores are on the cv).

I suggest investigating the best in the market for them and to see if your industry can come up with an objective, impartial rating system so that there is a standard deviation for the inter rating scoring.... and Yes, I've assumed that you have qualitative answers and output.

For those that got lost, what I'm driving at is that the definitions of qualitative terms mean the same thing to everyone in the tests and the judgements given as a result of their answers. For instance, "Excellence" has many connotations and is coloured by your interpretation at the time.

Humans are defined not so much by their similarities, rather through their differences which make them unique. It is relatively easy to see how similar we are by a standard set of measurements.

The challenge I see in in trying to objectively measure the differences which "make the difference" and account for superior performance (and then somehow relate that back to something which the majority of managers and colleagues can understand).

The area I have found most interesting is in understanding the behaviours of an individual, the perception of the that individual by those around them (360 degree) and then how groups of people interact. Verax have these types of tools. I don't know if this is similar to what you provide.

This last area I would be most interested to see on an application - eg the equivalent of a Myers/Briggs or Belbin assessment which is easy to grasp and might be an indication how they behaved at the time they took the test. As a potential employer I would be more interested in knowing how they behaved now, how they behaved under stress or other extraordinary events.

Hope this helps you along your journey.

All the best,

Alison
Links:
http://www.verax.co.uk/Quest.html
posted 8 days ago