Management Selection

Management Selection

The use of assessment for top-level management candidates can help you select the best candidate to lead and manage an organization. Whether it’s the CEO or a front-line manager, the right people are essential for success.

Overview

The assessment process is designed to give the employer a much broader and in-depth understanding of what each applicant or candidate brings to the job. In most cases, the potential employer has limited knowledge about the candidate aside from what the candidate discloses on a resume. Reference letters, personal contacts, and verifiable work history are usually the extent of informational sources available to the hiring organization. Given the ever-increasing costs for bringing new employees into the organization, assessment methods are both practical and cost efficient.

Due to the fact each applicant brings his or her own unique mix of skills, abilities, traits, and needs; it is important to look at each candidate as an individual. Results from assessment will provide you with knowledge about the candidate across a number of different domains, all of which are potentially important for predicting some facet of success. In some instances, assessment results will tell you things about the candidate that he or she couldn’t tell you because they lack the necessary self-awareness. As a client once said, “the assessments provided by [Dr. Jordan] allow us to turn the hands of time forward so that we know what to expect from the candidate today as though he had been here for the last six months.” Although management assessment is by no means an exact science, the odds are clearly in your favor of making more informed selection decisions through the use of assessment methodologies.

Methodology

Management assessment is a systematic process utilizing the following domains of work-related information:

Cognitive Ability

Particularly with upper-level management jobs, a requisite level of intellectual ability is essential for success on the job. Research results consistently report useful correlations between cognitive ability and job performance. Although cognitive ability is not the whole story, it certainly lays the groundwork for a candidate’s success.

Personality

The importance of personality as it relates to successful management cannot be understated. As a result, my assessments use at least two standardized measures of personality in order to construct a basic understanding of the candidate. Personality assessment is very important from the standpoint that you need to know how the individual is going to function in response to job demands, colleagues, subordinates and the corporate culture. Areas to be assessed typically include:

  • Introversion/extroversion
  • Conformity
  • Sociability
  • Social self-confidence
  • Assertiveness
  • Social skills
  • Empathy and tolerance
  • Decision making style
  • Self-discipline
  • Conscientiousness
  • Achievement motivation
  • Intellectual style
  • Flexibility
  • Sensitivity
  • Need for control

Job specific skills may include all or some of the following:

  • Leadership ability or potential
  • Management style
  • Supervisory knowledge
  • Persuasive ability
  • Conflict resolution style
  • Sales ability
  • Personal interests

Work history and Self-Report

Review and exploration of the candidate’s work history allows the candidate to discuss past accomplishments and relevant experience. During the interview, the psychologist also has the opportunity to assess such things as management style, attitudes toward work and supervisors, communication skills, career aspirations, and personal style.

Interview Impressions

A structured interview focusing on work-related experiences and behaviors is essential. Part of the interview process incorporates a behaviorally-based interviewing strategy, while also gathering information about the candidate’s work experience, self-insight, successes, failures, and personal development. Personal impressions of the candidate are also vital for establishing a check-and-balance of the psychometric data.

Integration

The integration of a candidate’s work history, interview presentation, personality data and general test results requires a professional who is both properly trained and experienced in psychological assessment. Assessment reports are written without the extensive use of “canned text.” The information contained in each report is a valuable resource for decision-making, integration into the organization, and promotion potential. Think twice about using a computer-generated interpretation for important selection decisions.

Deliverables

  • Written assessment reports
  • Immediate review of candidate information when time is critical
  • Phone consultations at no additional charge
  • Developmental feedback sessions – Depending on company policy, candidates who are selected by the company are strongly encouraged to return for a feedback session. Feedback sessions are confidential meetings between the candidate and myself and are designed to be both informative and developmental in nature. Assessment reports are not provided to candidates.
  • Coaching services to address specific concerns

 

Dr. Jordan is a board-certified psychologist who specializes in Police and Public Safety Psychology.  He practices throughout Colorado and the metro Denver area providing testing and assessment work for police departments, sheriff’s offices, fire departments and a wide range of private entities.  Dr. Jordan’s primary area of expertise is  pre-employment testing for public safety applicants and Fitness for Duty assessments both for public safety and other organizations.