Understand Job Fit
Learn what it is and how to get started using Job Fit Assessments
Job Fit Assessments identify and measure core metrics essential to success in any role.
When done correctly, a job fit assessment provides a competitive advantage by allowing an organization to hire more effective employees. While job fit isn’t a guarantee of selecting the best candidate from a group, it provides a process to refine the selection of qualified candidates and reduce hiring bias.
Since at least the 1950s, psychologists have sought to determine whether there is a single method for measuring how well a person ‘fits’ a position. Today, we know the key components to assess, but it’s not as simple as blindly testing a candidate.
In this article, we will review the history of job fit assessments and the lessons we have learned over the decades. We will review key psychometric areas that are used in job fit assessments. Additionally, we will provide an opportunity to see how your open position maps to a specific model, enabling you to assess job fit through an assessment process.
The History of Determining Job Fit
Walter Clarke – Early Employee Benchmark Pioneer
In the 1940s, an industrial psychologist named Walter Clarke stumbled upon an interesting observation:
Workers in a retail setting all had the same education and experience. They were even similar demographically. However, some were very successful, and others struggled. Clarke couldn’t shake a singular question: “If experience and education couldn’t determine job fit, then what would be a better measurement?“
Clarke sought to answer this question and found himself in the field of psychometrics. Using the DISC model, Clarke found that personality and behavior were better predictors of success in a retail setting than education or experience.
Over the years, psychologists have learned that behavior, cognitive abilities, physical attributes, experience, education, and personality all play a role in determining how well someone fits a job. When the right qualities are identified and modeled, they can significantly contribute to determining a person’s job fit.
Areas of Measurement in Job Fit Assessments
What makes someone successful on your team or in your organization? This question can be difficult to answer, but over the decades, job fit assessments have narrowed down the characteristics.
We now know there are at least three primary areas any job should measure:
- Cognitive Abilities (verbal and numerical ability and reasoning)
- Behavior / Personality
- Interests
For specific jobs, physical attributes must also be measured. Someone might have a great cognative ability for understanding football playmaking, but can they run a 50-yard dash in 4 seconds?
It’s essential to consider the key traits required for your position. If you are unsure, using a tool like PXT Select can help you get started by guiding you through the selection process in a structured manner.
Here is an outline of traits that you should consider measuring when using a Job Fit Assessment:
Behavior / Personality
The famed management consultant, Peter Drucker, said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Measuring candidates’ personality and behavioral types is a great way to understand their motivations, stressors, and needs. It’s also a way to understand how a person will fit your organization’s culture.
For example, is your work culture filled with high-energy, boisterous, and competitive people? How would someone fit into that culture if they were reserved and kept to themselves? This characteristic might not be a barrier to success in the job, but their tenure might be short-lived if the environment is too demanding for them.
Cognitive Abilities
Every position requires a certain level of cognitive ability. The goal isn’t to find someone who has the most cognitive abilities, but to find someone who matches the demands of the job.
Often, we hear that sales roles should be filled by friendly and driven individuals without considering the cognitive side of selling. Great salespeople can tell a story through numbers or understand how to price something that fits a budget and meets a sales quota.
Interests / Motivations
A person’s interests are strongly correlated with their engagement in work tasks. For example, a person who enjoys working with people would find it difficult to perform administrative work all day.
Experience
State Farm commercials make light of situations in which a person’s title may not match the experience required for a similarly titled position.
Just because someone has experience as a sea captain doesn’t mean they will be a good captain of a national football team. Experience based testing could require performing a certain job task (like running a play during a football proactice).
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence assessments like EIQ can shed light on how candidates may respond in emotional or social situations. These insights are important as we come to recognize the impact emotional regulation has on job performance.
How to Use Job Fit Data in an Interview
Data is only valuable if it is used!
Fortunately, tools like PXT Select are able to take job fit data and provide interview questions to help you understand a candidate in areas where they didn’t meet the expectations of the job’s performance model.
Below is an example of a candidate, Oliver, whose assessment results indicated they were outside the required range for the Assertiveness personality trait. You can see how these types of questions allow you to get a sense of whether a candidate is able to stretch their behaviors to meet the needs of a particular role or task.
There are always trade-offs in any hiring decision. Behavioral interviewing will help you understand how a candidate will perform in your role based on data that isn’t available in their resume or references.
How To Get Started
To understand how this process works, we invite you to share a job or role description with us and allow us to create a model of your position for free. We will help identify the characteristics we believe are essential for your role and provide a system that can bring structure to your candidate selection process.
Fill out the form below to get started:
