The world is changing faster than ever before – as employers grapple with the digital transformation, skills shortages and competitive economic conditions. In response to these drivers, job responsibilities change rapidly and organizations need to hire creative employees to innovate and implement new ideas.
According to McKinsey, the pace of change in the workplace is so rapid that, by 2030, as much as 14 percent of the global workforce could need to change occupational categories.
To remain competitive, employers cannot simply hire a candidate who can meet the requirements of a job as they are written on day one. The candidate needs to have the skills and drive to grow, learn and adapt as the organization moves into the future.
Despite this need to attract candidates with growth mindsets, the interview and assessment processes used by most employers are stuck in the past. For the purposes of this section, we refer to assessments as any stage in the interview process where a selection decision is made. So, an assessment can be a traditional skills test, a requirement that must be met on an application or type of interview, like behavioral or video interview. For most employers, these assessment processes have too many steps and are narrowly focused on hard skills – allowing too many candidates to become disqualified early, before they are able to demonstrate who they really are.
Employers need to broaden their use of candidate assessments to allow for measuring factors that impact a candidate’s ability and willingness to learn and grow, as well as their passion for the role and alignment with the broader purpose of the organization. Organizations need to assess a candidate as a whole person as early in the process as possible to really understand what they may be able to offer.
In this series of articles, we explore the current state of assessments, the ways we at PeopleScout have worked to expand assessments to evaluate a candidate as a whole person, how these new assessments work in practice and the benefits and results of the whole person assessment method.
The Experts on How to Recruit Employees: Fiadhna McEvoy and Veronica Officer
Fiadhna McEvoy and Victoria Officer are two of the minds behind PeopleScout’s approach to assessments and the whole person model. They strive to create a talented team that can push boundaries and continuously grow and develop its assessment offering.
Fiadhna and Victoria are occupational psychologists – which means they have completed an accredited undergraduate degree or conversion course and an accredited master’s degree in occupational psychology. Fiadhna has also completed two years of practice supervised by the British Psychological Society to become a chartered occupational psychologist.
Their work is research-driven. The whole person model they outline in this section is based on decades on academic research into what makes an organization effective and how to improve the job satisfaction of employees. Their work is based on the proven forces that drive people at work.
Fiadhna and Victoria are fascinated by why people come to work and perform, how they can be happy and why they stick around. They blend the science of occupational psychology with the art of thinking differently to solve problems.
This article is the first in a three-part series. You can read the second article, Assessing for Passion Purpose and a Growth Mindset: The Current State of Assessments and a Better Way Forward, here and the third, Assessing for Passion Purpose and a Growth Mindset: The Whole Person Model in Practice, here.
