Using Executive Assessment to Recruit and Promote the Right Leaders

What business psychology tool can help your organisation highlight and advance leadership?

The benefits of a good leader can be felt throughout an organisation. Great leadership presents itself in a number of ways, including improved retention, high morale and long-term business success. Conversely, poor leadership can lead to employee burnout and decreased job satisfaction throughout your workforce. Clearly, leadership is something to be taken seriously. This is where executive assessment can step in and help you make the right decisions.

Below are a few critical ways in which executive assessment can be used to source, promote and encourage leaders and top-level managers.

Using psychometric testing, you only interview the most appropriate candidates

When you’re recruiting for an executive position, you don’t have time to waste on candidates who simply aren’t a great fit for the role or your company’s values. You want an individual with a specific set of attributes and leadership skills. Executive assessment can help you streamline recruitment with the use of psychometric testing.

Psychometric tests can delve into your candidate’s mind and explore attributes such as personality, attitudes, preferred behavioural styles, managerial judgement, cognitive abilities, their motivations and core values. These questionnaires can help guide investigative interviews and analyse a candidate’s potential fit for the given position and potential de-railing characteristics under pressure. This will help you gain a thorough understanding of the individual’s strengths, as well any underlying development needs. Ultimately this tailored approach will enable your hiring managers to have a better feel for which candidate exhibits the most leadership potential for your role, in your company.

Executive assessment interviews explore personality traits and behaviours

Psychometric tests are useful, but they need to be interpreted by an experienced business psychology expert and not used in isolation. They should be complemented with an in-depth exploratory and competency-based executive assessment interview. Executive assessment interviews, as well as an array of additional exercises, such as strategic analysis case studies, role-plays and presentations, help validate and complement any psychometric tests, as well as provide additional sources of behavioural evidence. Upon analysis of this information, we are able to draw up best-practice, objective recommendations and conclusions that will help predict future performance and leadership potential.

Both you and your candidate will be left with verbal feedback and a detailed, hand-written report

Once the psychometric tests, additional exercises and interviews are complete, your company will benefit from both verbal feedback and a detailed, hand-written report. No computer-generated reports here.  Our reports are specifically tailored to your role and provide detail on the candidate’s strengths, weaknesses, leadership potential and suitability for the given position. This report will be invaluable when it comes to succession planning and creating individual development plans. Such a plan has the potential to turn a high performer into a real leader by developing increased self-awareness and pointing out areas where growth is needed.

At Davis Associates we believe that transparent, objective and mature conversations are key and as such we will always offer candidates, irrespective of whether they are successfully hired by your organisation, the opportunity for an in-depth developmental feedback session.

Executive assessment will help in succession planning

Although executive assessment is useful when it comes to recruiting leaders, it is also critical when it comes to succession planning. The process can be used to assess certain employees and confirm whether or not they are ready for a promotion. All companies are aware of the dangers of promoting the wrong person, so this is not a decision to be taken lightly.

To best illustrate how executive assessment can be helpful with succession planning, we can look to a successful executive assessment case study.

Davis Associates were recently hired by a leading global pharmaceutical company to help assess and develop a number of senior managers, with the ultimate aim of uncovering individuals with the appropriate leadership and management qualities to become a future Managing Director.

As part of the investigation, we gathered insights and considered a range of key leadership competencies that would help drive performance in the role, while keeping in mind the desired organisational culture and top team dynamics. Following a thorough job analysis and the completion of their psychometric profiles, we conducted a variety of competency assessment exercises and exploratory interviews in order to further explore their leadership capabilities and potential.

The individual who was eventually chosen had an immediate and positive impact on the organisation. In their first year, they helped increase performance levels across the senior team. They drove significant financial growth and were able to significantly improve employee engagement levels.  The organisation also benefitted from highlighting potential future leaders who could then be fast-tracked into other senior positions.

Create more productive teams with executive assessment

One of the best effects of using executive assessment to recruit and promote leaders is the impact it has on the remainder of your organisation. It has been shown that leaders can affect “team cohesion, perceptions of learning and learning-related performance” as well as providing their team with the energy and enthusiasm to get their work done.  The right leader can motivate and inspire your workforce, while improving company productivity and driving financial growth.

 To find out how Davis Associates, a business psychology consultancy in Surrey, can help you with your executive assessments, contact us on +44 (0)20 8398 6644. We have worked with a wide range of international clients to help them get the best from their people. To see how we can do the same for you, get in touch for a free, no-obligation HR consultation.