Many aptitude assessment methods currently available on the market only determine absolute values for candidates' personality traits and, in most cases, can only reflect these against a demographic group, if at all. The test result is therefore only of limited value. The absolute result of a personality trait does not indicate whether this value is good or bad. Only when compared with candidates from the same occupational group can a statement be made about the quality of the trait.
One example of this is the problem of relativity. Consider the following example: In the high jump, the question arises as to how high the bar is set. However, the height alone is of little significance. The jump only becomes interesting when the height is put into relation to the other high jumpers. What may be very good in terms of school performance is not competitive at the Olympics.
Figures such as 80%, which are still commonly used in aptitude testing procedures, are irrelevant because they are not compared to a reference group. Only a comparison with a group or a group of top performers allows a statement to be made as to whether a value can be classified as good or bad.
The aptitude assessment system developed by HR Consult Group involves comparing candidates against one of currently 115 standard and best practice profiles of individuals who are successful in the market. This enables the assessors to not only compare the proposed candidates directly with each other, but also to compare them with a much larger group of candidates who are successful in the market. This explicitly visualizes development potential as well as personal strengths in relation to the specific occupational group.
If a candidate's result falls within the color-coded range, as shown in the example (see figure: Candidate's deviation from the comparison group), the candidate is within the comparison profile. If the result is lower, i.e., to the left of the comparison group's distribution, the candidate has a clearly different assessment of this characteristic than their comparison group. If their result is to the right of the color-coded range, they rate themselves higher than the comparison group on this point, which usually reflects a strength. The percentages listed on the far right indicate the exact values of the comparison group average, the candidate's value, and the resulting delta, i.e., the exact deviation from the comparison group average.
Such standard and best practice profiles do not exist per se, but must be generated from the test pool. It must therefore be ensured that sufficient tests are available to create such standard and best practice profiles. If, for example, a candidate is to be assessed against the position of a sales manager, sufficient test results from sales managers must be available to create a standard or best practice profile that can be used as a reference for comparison with the candidate's profile.
The standard or best practice profile is the average value including standard deviation of all test results per characteristic in relation to this specific group. However, in order to form these groups, more data must be collected from the candidate than is the case with most test procedures. Only knowledge of the candidate's background data, such as current position, current salary, with or without employee responsibility, etc., as well as personal information, enables the formation of appropriate groups. This assignment is unique, i.e., the candidate can only belong to one of these groups. This allows all relevant tests to be filtered from the entire database and a standard and best practice profile to be created.
A standard and best practice profile serves as a basis for comparison. This comparison allows conclusions to be drawn about the candidate's positioning in terms of individual personality traits, and potential areas for development and potential can be identified and exploited through personnel development.
TheBest Practice Profile(BPP) is a standard profile of the best performers. It is created by applying an additional filter. Based on predefined benchmarks, the best 10–20% are selected from these tests and grouped together.
The creation of a best practice profile can best be explained using the example of a car salesperson. To do this, certain criteria are used as a basis for selecting the participants who will be used for best practice profiles. The selection criteria are diverse and must be tailored and applied to each individual example. In this case, the top 10% of salespeople in terms of margin achieved and cars sold for a car manufacturer were selected as the relevant test group. The BPP created showed how the best salespeople for a car manufacturer are "wired" and which characteristics are particularly necessary and conducive to success in this job profile.
For verification purposes, the best salespeople from another car manufacturer were tested, and it turned out that the two best practice profiles showed extremely high levels of similarity.
What was particularly astonishing was that characteristics emerged across all participants where the absolute values were virtually identical, with virtually no variation in the candidates' responses. We will take a closer look at how this phenomenon should be interpreted in our next article.
The next article in this series will focus on key criteria. What exactly are key criteria? And how are key criteria defined?
About the author
After completing his studies in automotive engineering and industrial engineering, he began his professional 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 for Japan and South America as well as marketing strategy for North and South America.
In 1994, he decided to become self-employed and founded a personnel consulting firm 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.
His doctorate in the field of aptitude diagnostics ideally complements his areas of expertise, particularly in relation to human resources and management consulting. His dissertation deals with the identification and verification of typical personality traits of engineers and the definition of areas of development for a successful career.
These are scientifically derived and presented in the book "Eignungsdiagnostik im Praxiseinsatz" (Aptitude Diagnostics in Practical Use).
At the same time, he focuses on establishing networks and cooperation models as well as the continuous development of systems and processes in HR consulting.
Over the past 20 years in HR consulting, he has developed several brands that continue to operate successfully on the market today.
