“You’d be crazy not to use these personality assessment services today, they are scary accurate and can save you tens of thousands in hiring and management.”

– Chet Holmes

Hear Chet interview Dr. John Marshall, performance expert,
on the importance of psychological profiles: http://www.chetholmes.com/chetandjohn.htm

(Been here, read this, need to skip to testing)
 

My first experience with personality assessment. Those of you who are really familiar with my work, know that I have some pretty brutal interviewing methods to find out who can sell and who can’t. A brief hint: We call it the “attack” part of the interview. We put candidate salespeople into adversarial situations in the interview and you can tell right away who can sell and who can’t. It’s a powerful technique and it’s really made a difference in many a company’s hiring— and in the lives of many a client. Most companies have to wait six months to really tell who can sell and who can’t. By then you’ve lost precious opportunity and wasted a ton of money.

But even so, my “attack” method doesn’t tell you everything. I put a candidate through all that and he passed with flying colors. The client was a fan of “personality testing” and wanted the candidate to be “profiled.” The test results predicted that this person, while very outgoing, was going to be hampered dramatically by an almost anal need to get every little detail in place before he could sell. I said the test was wrong and so did the candidate, so we hired him.

Six months later, he was fired for the very reason the test predicted as his problem. This person needed every little detail just so or he avoided selling. In some jobs, that’s fine. But in this job, where he had to ad-lib and think fast on his feet, this turned into a major problem. I became a believer of “behavioral profiling” or “personality testing” that day.

Now four years later and 11 companies investigated, I’m finally prepared to offer this service to my clients. You will NOT BELIEVE how accurate these tests are. I just keep seeing it over and over again. They will tell you every problem you’re going to have with a candidate or employee and with scary accuracy. The best $48 you will ever spend.


Assess all of your current employees: Do you have the right “types” in the various roles in your company. A while back, another client of mine had a very solid executive who’s worked for him for many, many years. A good guy. Hard-working, great integrity and devoted as the day is long. This client needed some help in the sales area of his company so he moved this very capable executive into that role. The problem is that the person did NOT have a natural affinity for selling. Good executive, yes? Just NOT a SALES executive. This person struggled in that job for years and the entire company suffered as a result. There are four different types of tests you can put your staff through:

 Click here to see an overview of tests and select the right one for your needs

Assess all candidates. New-hires cost you $60,000 when you make a mistake: We’ve all made hiring mistakes. On average, studies show that a new hire who doesn’t work out will cost you $60,000, at least. This will be in supervisor time, training time, customers lost, salary paid, loss of productivity, and so on. With tests like these, that can accurately tell you a great deal about your new candidates BEFORE you hire them, you’d be crazy to hire anyone without having them tested. As already said: The best $48 you will ever spend.

Click here to see an overview of tests and select the right one for your needs

Why I chose this particular assessment methodology. I learned more about this than you really want to know, but here’s the brief explanation. Most other tests, in fact every other one that I found, use a method where they supply (for example) two statements and the prompt tells you: “Choose the one that most describes you.” You read them and your brain says: “You know what, neither of these really describes me.” But you have to chose to continue. So you end up choosing something that’s not really you, but it’s the more accurate (not really) of the two descriptions. You are FORCED to pick something that really doesn’t describe you.

Then when the profile comes back, it’s not really accurate in some places, directly the result of you being forced to choose. With the testing method we chose, everything is on a scale from one to ten: it’s least like you to most like you. So you can accurately chose the traits that are most like you or least like you and on a scale. Hence, I have found the results extremely accurate, much more so than any other testing method.

A profound breakthrough for myself—and maybe you too: When I got back the results of my testing, it described a behavior about me that not only didn’t I agree with, I found it insulting. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that it was true. The test had pinpointed a weakness in my management style that I had never seen before. When I was honest with myself I KNEW the test was accurate and it gave me one of the better breakthroughs of my career. So you might want to test yourself. Again, the best $48 you’ll ever spend.

Click here to test yourself!