Assessments for Evaluating Potential Senior Managers and Executives

An organization’s leaders are crucial to its health and performance. After all, these individuals are responsible for creating the organization’s mission and vision and executing strategic plans that determine the direction of a company. They also have an impact on the moral and performance of those people in the organization who they are responsible for leading.

With so much responsibility placed on the shoulders of those in top management positions, even the highest caliber HR departments often struggle with selecting the right candidates to fill leadership positions. To gain a better understanding of management candidates, more and more HR departments are beginning to add assessments into their interview and onboarding processes.

This scenario was the case for a client in the manufacturing industry that was looking integrate assessments into their hiring and onboarding process, and ultimately into their leadership development program for senior management and executives. The Right Management team worked with the client’s Human Resources department to create an assessment based their unique needs and goals.

The Assessment Program Development & Implementation

Development
At Right Management, we believe that assessment should be approached from a Whole – Person perspective, which means looking at a candidate’s skills and knowledge, self-perception, traits and cognition, and motives. This approach provides greater self-insight for participants and adds rigor to the assessment process. When we were creating the assessment program to help our client evaluate potential leaders, providing this type of perspective was extremely important.

Based on the client’s needs and expected outcomes, we determined that it would be most effective to create an assessment program based around “day-in-the-life” simulations.

Implementation
A simulated “day-in-the-life” style assessment gives candidates an opportunity to experience their new role or leadership level before being placed in it. The fundamental approach to this type of assessment, is the objective observation of behavior as candidates experience simulations or “exercises” which closely resemble common situations and challenges that they would encounter in the position.

The exercises and simulations in this type of assessment include:

• Email inbox exercises to see how leaders organize and prioritize in time-constrained situations
• Live, assessor-led role-plays with simulated peers, direct reports, and customers
• Business presentations where participants present a business plan to showcase strategic thinking skills
• Interviews to better understand the participant’s accomplishments, goals, and aspirations.
• Leaderless group discussions where the participants demonstrate communication, teamwork, and meeting facilitation skills

Interpretation
We interpret assessment results by making objective judgments based on data and trends across the data. Our expert assessors and coaches (some with over 20 years of experience) draw predictive inferences based on the client’s overall business strategy and competency language.

If the assessment is done as a part of the hiring process, we present the results (which include a rating scale and competency reports) to HR leads so they can be used in the candidate selection process. If the assessment is done as a part of a new hire’s onboarding process, our assessors review the results with the employee and their supervisor and help create a plan to make the onboarding process as smooth as possible for all parties involved.

A Path to Assessment Success

By working in conjunction with our client, we were able to create an assessment program that has been instrumental in streamlining and improving the efficiency of the hiring and onboarding process for top-level managers and executives. The assessment program has helped select and develop candidates that have been very successful in their leadership roles.

In many cases, A candidate’s assessment results are used to help inform future leadership development strategies and coaching programs that we partner with our client to develop.

If you have questions about our Talent Assessment services or would like to learn what we can do for your company, contact us today!