Recruiting & Assessments Overview

In today’s Recruiting & Assessments business environment it is more important than ever to hire the right people. For the Call Center business, not only hiring the right individuals is important but also ensuring they have good Customer Service Skills.
"The right people don't need to be tightly managed or fired up; they will be self-motivated by inner drive to produce the best results and be part of something great." ~ Jim Collins, Good to Great Assessments, or tests, are validated instruments that measure different qualities of an applicant or employee. They may measure specific skills, or may measure behaviors, attitudes and interests, or may measure overall personality. The best tests for business recruitment and development on the market are those that have been validated with a working population, and those that can create internally validated benchmarks or patterns of performance. Assessments can be administered "paper and pencil" and self-scored, or can be delivered electronically via the Internet and scored by an algorithm that is impartial and validated. We use the Profiles International suite of assessment tools. They are Internet delivered and scored, and provide an array of instruments that can be used for both pre-hire selection and post-hire coaching, employee training programs, and ongoing employee development as part of a coaching and performance evaluation program.

Hiring and Employee Development Tools What Tests?

Parallax Technologies uses 4 key assessment tools to help clients build a reliable and productive employee population. All of the following are delivered and administered over the Internet for ease of use and timely reporting. Please email me amullaly@parallaxtechnologies.com for a free sample report of any of the following assessments.

The Step One SurveyII®

Is a pre-employment screening tool for assessing the attitudes of job candidates regarding Reliability, Integrity, Work Ethic and Substance Abuse. This is the solution for employers who hire too many people who are dishonest, use drugs, are late or are "no-shows" and whose work effort is substandard. 20 minutes. Pre-hire only.

The Profile XT

A "Total Person" assessment that has a myriad of uses. It measures the job-related qualities that make a person productive - Thinking and Reasoning Style, Behavioral Traits, and Occupational Interests. There is also a version - PXT Sales - which provides all the analysis for evaluating a sales candidate versus general verbiage.
The Profile XT is used for placement, promotion, self-improvement, coaching, succession planning, and job description development. It is convenient and easy to use on the Internet - no administrator or proctoring is required. 45 min - 1 hour. Prehire and current employees

The Profile Sales Indicator

A tool for selecting, managing, and training salespeople. It measures five key qualities of successful salespeople - Competitiveness, Self Reliance, Persistence, Energy and Sales Drive - and predicts performance in seven critical sales behaviors. Using the Profiles Sales Indicator to build and develop a sales organization can result in record-breaking productivity, retention of top performers, and exceptional profitability. 20 minutes Prehire and current employees

The Customer Service Perspective

A tool for selecting, managing, and training Customer Service employees. This instrument is now customized for four different industries - Financial Services, Retail, HealthCare and Hospitality. It measures basic numerical and language ability, the seven key qualities of successful CSRs - Trust, Tact, Empathy, Conformity, Focus, and Flexibility. A unique feature of this assessment if the Company Service Perspective, a company customized report on the degree of alignment between the individual's perspective on providing service to the customer and that expressed by the company. 30 minutes Prehire and current employees

Workforce Compatibility
A tool for helping a manager and employee identify why they are not getting along or working well together and concrete suggestions for how each can adapt to the other's style. It measures seven key areas of behavior and, for the Manager Report, presents them in a graph comparison with the coaching recommendations- Self - Assurance, Self-Reliance, Conformity, Optimism, Decisiveness, Objectivity and Approach to Learning. The employee report is verbiage only. 45 minutes Current employees.

The Profile Performance Indicator
Measures five key personality factors and their impact on seven critically important aspects of success in business- Productivity, Quality of Work, Initiative, Team Work, Problem Solving, Response to Stress and Conflict, Work Motivation. The report helps you understand how an individual is effectively understood, motivated, and managed. 20 minutes Prehire and current employees

The Profile Team Analysis
Makes team building both challenging and rewarding. Effective teams achieve results far beyond what individuals could accomplish on their own. But team building is far more than putting a group of people together and hoping for the best. This system reports the attributes of each team member, shows the team's strengths and alerts the team leader to potential problems. 20 minutes Current employees.

The Checkpoint 360
A powerful professional development tool that positively impacts an individual's growth and career, and an organization's success. For managers, supervisors, and others in leadership positions, it can facilitate peak performance that generates improved productivity. One of the easiest 360 instruments to use. CheckPoint quantifies a participant in 8 core competencies- Communication, Leadership, Adaptability, Relationships, Task Management, Production, Development of Others, and Personal Development, verifies the results from a variety of perspectives, and identifies ways to enhance skills. Ideal for annual review and promotion considerations. Current employees.

Hiring and Employee Development Tools Why Test?

Identifying the RIGHT people for a company is one of the hardest tasks facing any HR Recruiter or company hiring manager. But having the RIGHT people on board is critical to a company's success. As Jim Collins states on page 42 in Good to Great, "executives who ignited the transformation from good to great... first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it." If you are committed to building the RIGHT team for your company, assessments are a critical component in your hiring process and in your coaching and development tools.

No one can find out everything about a candidate in the interview. Even the most skilled interviewers cannot uncover the depth of a candidate's attitudes towards certain acceptable work place and job specific behaviors. Testing helps an interviewer see below the surface of the resume, the past performance, and the face-to-face impression. How much does it cost you to hire a mistake?

You CAN'T always make the right promotion decisions. How many of us have promoted the best person in the job to a management position…and they failed??? Good assessment tools help you prevent those costly MISTAKES…costly to you, the organization, and the employee.

Managers aren't always good at their people coaching and development skills. Good diagnostic tools help provide managers with valuable information to formulate development plans for an employee. It's not enough to say "you're doing well" or "you should try harder". Employees need concrete assessments of their performance and relevant information to create a development path. Good tools make it easy for any manager to provide that information and work with the employees to develop their potential.

If you were hiring a computer programmer, you would give a test in the program application your company uses, right? Wouldn't you also want to know if that candidate could work well under the pressure of deadlines or could handle many hours working on their own in a small workspace? Any applicant could tell you in the interview that he/she LOVES pressure and NEVER socializes at work. How do you know that's REALLY the applicant's personality and work style? Or are they just telling you what they think you want to hear?

That's why we use assessment and testing tools to help uncover what we DON'T see on the surface during the interview and what we may not have observed about ideal management behaviors BEFORE we hire or promote someone…and it's a mistake!