by Donna Hamlin

Created on: February 24, 2009

Selecting the Best Executive Candidate:

Does Use of Assessments Make a Difference?

Executive hiring has significant consequences for any organization. If you make the right choice, performance improves, senior team leadership strengthens, fresh thinking enriches problem-solving, and team dynamics evolve and mature. If you make the wrong choice, tensions build, performance suffers, conflicting values and methods bog down performance, and turnover creates expensive disruption and morale issues.

I asked executives:

Whether investing in formal assessments diagnostic tools to measure a combination of skills and competencies, behavioral patterns, psychological attributes, cultural and position fit - is a valuable aid to making great hiring choices,
What their experience and thoughts are relative to the use of assessments, overall.

This white paper highlights insights from executives with whom I explored the trend of an emerging use of assessments as part of the screening and interview process.

The Trend Today

Based on in-depth interviews, two trends seem noteworthy:

First, today fewer companies include assessment as part of their hiring process than do not. Companies that do, tend to be larger organizations, e.g., Fidelity, Pepsi, HEB, Sun Microsystems, Sierra Pacific and Intuit. They also tend to be progressive and deeply thoughtful about their approaches to talent acquisition and retention.

Second, managers in companies which include assessments commit rigorously to this as a key element of their hiring practice. They do not make assessment an "occasional practice" or a case-by-case decision. Assessments are considered as a valuable investment which helps executives make discerning selections about who to add to their leadership team.

Why Invest in Assessment?

Executives cite six key reasons why they value their investment in executive assessment.

1. Interviews are Not Enough

Several executives note the impracticality of hiring an executive on so little information. "Getting married after a couple of dates doesn't make sense. It's a big commitment when you know so little about a person who can have a major impact on our business," notes Steve Wood, chief administrative officer of Sierra Pacific.

"Hiring and promotion choices are an executive's toughest challenge. Over time, the decision an executive makes flavors the business and has more to do with its success or mediocrity than any other factor" considers Charles Butt, chief executive officer of HEB. "In my opinion, interviewing

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