80% of success is showing up”Â
Woody Allen
Gosh, it’s hard to predict (good) talent these days. Just look at these recent studies:
- According to RHR International, 40% to 60% of high level corporate executives brought in from outside a company will fail within 2 years based on their 2006 analysis of clients. Those who do fail most often derail quickly sometime between 7 to 9 months in the job.
- Last year there were 28,058 executive turnovers including board members and executives from CEO down to VP a 68% increase over 2006 according to Liberum Research analysis of North American public companies—of those 44% of the positions were filled from outside the company.
- Failure rate for hourly jobs approach 50% or more and about 20% of hiring decisions made for professional and salaried positions end in failure (Kronos, Inc.)
- According to Robert Hogan (Vam Kurt, Hogan & Kaiser) the failure rate of managers in corporate America is 50% (this is pretty similar to divorce rates in California)
Based on several recent surveys (e.g., Abderdeen Group and Rocket-Hire), the utilization of assessment tools for pre-employment selection and promotion is approximately 60% to 70% across all industries with some projections of increased use in the next 12 months of about 14%. Of those using pre-employment assessments across job levels, the most popular approaches continue to be evaluation of work history, candidate interviews, skill and aptitude tests, and personality inventories.
Which approach to measuring key aspects of potential talent’s knowledge, experience and competence actually do a good job of predicting future success and performance? How should you go about making them legally defensible ((Nowack, K. M. (1988). Approaches to validating assessment centers. Performance and Instruction, 27, 14-16)).
Current research on personality ((Judge, T., Bono, J., Ilies, R., and Gerhardt, M. (2002). Personality and leadership: A qualitative and quantitative review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 765-780)), emotional intelligence ((Van Rooy, D. & Viswesvaran, C. (2004). Emotional intelligence: A meta-analytic investigation of predictive validity and nomological net. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65, 71-95)) and traditional techniques ((Schmidt, F. and Hunter, J. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 262-274)) provide some answers to these questions:
RANKING OF POPULAR ASSESSMENT APPROACHES TO SELECTION (VALIDITY COEFFICIENTS)
Work Sample Tests (.33 to .54)
Cognitive Ability/Intelligence Tests (.27 to .51)
Assessment Centers (.41 to .50)
Peer/Supervisory Ratings (.41 to .49)
Work History (.24 to .35)
Emotional Intelligence (.20 to .24)
Interviews (.15 to .38)
Personality Inventories (.15 to .31)
Reference Checks (.14 to .26)
Training Ratings (.13 to .15)
Self-Ratings (.10 to .15)
Education/Grade Point Average (.00 to .10)
Interests/Values (.00 to .10)
Age (.-.01 to .00)
Anyone that has some background in statistics will immediately recognize that all of these assessment approaches account for only a small amount of variance in predicting future success but these corrleations are traditionally what is found in other areas of research such as health and medicine (e.g., the correlation between taking asprin and reduced risk of death by heart attach is .02; coronary bypass surgery for stable heart disease and survival at 5 years is .08; and psychotherapy and subsequent well-being is .32).
Although many are completely independent of each other (e.g., cognitive ability and personality) combining more than two does not seem to dramatically increase predictive validity of job performance and success.
In some cases, these assessment approaches might be stronger at predicting who is likely to fail better than who is likely to succeed….Handicap away! Be well….
tags]pre-employment selection, assessment, interviewing, behavioral interviewing, emotional intelligence, personality inventories, work history, validation, interests, assessment centers, intelligence tests, cognitive ability measures, reference checks, peer ratings, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack[/tags]
Ken Nowack
Kenneth Nowack, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist (PSY13758) and President & Chief Research Officer/Co-Founder of Envisia Learning, is a member of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. Ken also serves as the Associate Editor of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. His recent book Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don’t Get It is available for free for a limited time by signing up for free blog updates (Learn more at our website)
