Many aptitude diagnostic procedures currently available on the market only determine absolute values of personality traits of candidates and can, however, in most cases, if at all, only mirror these against a demographic group. The test result is therefore only of limited value. The absolute result of a personality trait does not say whether this value is good or bad. Only in comparison with candidates of the same occupational group can a statement be made about the quality of the trait.
An example of this is the problem of the relation. Here is an example: In high jumping, the question is how high the cleared bar is. However, the height alone is of little significance. Because the jump only becomes interesting when the height is put in relation to the other high jumpers. What can be very good for school performance is not competitive at the Olympics.
Figures such as 80%, which are still common in some aptitude testing procedures, are irrelevant because they are not set in relation to a comparison group. Only the comparison with a group or best group allows a statement to be made as to whether a value is to be classified as good or bad.
The system developed by the HR Consult Group in aptitude diagnostics includes the mirroring of the candidate against one of currently 115 norm and best practice profiles of persons operating successfully on the market. This enables the assessors not only to compare the proposed candidates directly, but also to mirror them against a much larger group of candidates who are successful in the market. This explicitly visualises development potentials, but also personal strengths in concrete reference to the occupational group.
If a result value of the candidate, as shown in the example (see figure: Deviation of the candidate from the comparison group), lands within the coloured bandwidth, the candidate is within the comparison profile. If the result is lower, i.e. to the left of the spread of the comparison group, he has a clearly different assessment of this characteristic than his comparison group. If the candidate's result is to the right of the coloured range, he or she is stronger than the comparison group in this respect, which is usually a sign of strength. The percentages on the far right indicate the exact values of the average of the comparison group, the candidate's value and the delta calculated from this, i.e. the exact deviation from the average of the comparison group.
Such norm and best practice profiles do not exist per se, but must be generated from the test inventory. It must therefore be ensured that enough tests are available to be able to create such norm and best practice profiles. If, for example, a candidate is to be mirrored against the position of a sales manager, there must be enough test results from sales managers to be able to create a norm or best-practice profile from them, which serves as a reference for comparison with the candidate profile.
The norm or best-practice profile is the average and standard deviation of all test results per characteristic in relation to this specific group. In order to be able to form these groups, however, more data of the candidate must be collected than is the case with most test procedures. Only the knowledge of the candidate's framework data such as current position, current salary, with or without employee responsibility etc. as well as personal information enable the formation of corresponding groups. This assignment is unambiguous, i.e. the candidate can only belong to one of these groups. Thus, all corresponding tests can be filtered from the entire pool and a norm and best practice profile can be created.
A norm and best practice profile serves as a comparison. Based on the comparison, conclusions can be drawn about the positioning of the candidate in the individual personality traits and possible areas of development and potential can be uncovered and exploited by means of personnel development.
The Best Practice Profile (BPP) is a norm profile of the best. It is created by applying an additional filter. From these tests, the best 10 - 20 % are picked out according to previously defined benchmarks and combined into a separate group.
The example of a car salesman is the best way to explain the creation of a best-practice profile. This is done on the basis of certain criteria, which are used to select the participants who are used for best-practice profiles. The criteria for selection are manifold and must be adapted and applied to the individual example. In this case, the top 10% of salespeople in terms of margin achieved and cars sold by a car manufacturer were selected as the relevant test group. The BPP created showed how the best salespeople of a car manufacturer are "knitted" and which characteristics are particularly necessary and conducive to success in this job profile.
To verify this, the best salespeople of another car manufacturer were tested and it turned out that the two best-practice profiles had extremely high similarities.
It was particularly astonishing that characteristics emerged across all participants for which the absolute values were almost identical, there was virtually no more spread in the candidates' answers. We would like to go into more detail on how this phenomenon is to be evaluated in the next article.
The next article in this series will deal with key criteria. What are key criteria actually? And how are key criteria determined?
About the author
After graduating as an automotive engineer and industrial engineer, he began his career in the automotive industry in the areas of sales, development and marketing and also spent a year in Japan with one of the largest automotive suppliers.
He then moved to a world-renowned premium car manufacturer, where he was responsible for product marketing in Japan and South America and marketing strategy in North and South America.
In 1994 he decided to become self-employed and founded a personnel consultancy in Munich, where he has been driving development and expansion for over 20 years. As managing director, his industry focus is naturally on the automotive world as well as mechanical and plant engineering.
With his doctorate in the field of aptitude diagnostics, he ideally rounds off his fields of competence, especially with regard to personnel and management consultancy. The dissertation deals with the identification and proof of typical personality traits of engineers as well as the definition of development areas for a successful professional career.
These are scientifically derived and presented in the book "Eignungsdiagnostik im Praxiseinsatz".
At the same time, his focus is on building networks and cooperation models as well as the continuous further development of systems and processes in HR consulting.
Within the last 20 years in personnel consulting, he has developed several brands that are still successful on the market today.
