Using Executive Assessment
in Recruitment

Here, we dive further into the recruitment methods which can help you to hire the very best leaders for your company. Executive assessments play a key role in the recruitment process. Often referred to as management assessment or leadership assessment, our executive assessment process helps clients select and develop better leaders, looking at areas such as potential, cultural or role fit, readiness and effectiveness.  

Executive assessment is a process developed by business psychologists. They are a highly tailored approach, often reserved for the final stage of your candidate selection. By using various psychological and competency-based assessments, you are in a much better position to judge which candidate is the right person for the role.

An executive assessment will likely involve a candidate completing a range of psychometric tests in advance, then being interviewed on the day (a mixture of competency-based capability and potential interviews, as well as an in-depth exploration of the psychometric test results). They will also be assessed across a range of competencies on a range of exercises (such as an analysis presentation, in-tray and managerial or negotiation simulations).

A mixture of recruitment methods that make up an executive assessment might take more time or cost more in the short term. However, they will provide the greatest predictive validity of a candidate’s likely success and future job performance. In the long term, you’ll realise huge benefits by taking this approach, particularly for your leadership and managerial positions.

What Are the Benefits of Executive Assessments?

Using an executive assessment approach helps bring greater rigour to your recruitment process. Such executive assessments allow you to know more about the candidate and their behaviour. Knowing this information enables you to make a more informed decision about their suitability for the role.

Through assessing observed behavioural evidence in combination with a variety of other exercises, a much greater predictive validity of a candidate’s future performance can be made. Executive assessment can be used to help succession planning and future development decisions.

The cost of getting your senior hire wrong are huge and goes beyond external recruitment agency and advertising fees. The hours spent by staff reviewing CVs, writing up job descriptions and conducting interviews, would have been for nothing, let alone the detrimental impact a bad hire can have on internal motivation and performance levels. It can also damage client relationships, or worse, the company’s reputation.

Using a HR Consultancy Firm for Executive Assessments

We strongly advise talking to a business psychology firm or HR consultancy. Working with experts to provide advice and guidance will help make your executive assessment process far more efficient. Your work with them can be tailored to your specific business and role that you’re recruiting for. They will be able to provide a detailed analysis and offer objective feedback to both you and the candidate. Save yourself time and reduce the risk of hiring the wrong candidate by bringing in expert assistance.

Davis Associates is a team of dedicated recruitment experts, adept in creating unique executive assessments for companies. Call us today on 0208 398 6644 or contact one of our HR specialists online and discover how we can help your business.