Table of Contents
Methodology Brief
Abstract
The recruitment landscape has seen extensive technological investment over the past 20 years, with platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed providing applicant-sourcing efficiencies. However, this surge in candidate volume has not translated into better-fit hires. AbilityMap addresses the shortcomings of traditional recruitment technologies by offering a data-driven, science-based, objective system for matching candidates to jobs based on 31 human capabilities directly linked to performance. AbilityMap’s proprietary algorithm evaluates specific skills required for a role, reducing bias and subjectivity. This approach has been validated through international psychometric assessments, ensuring reliability and delivering accurate, job-specific insights that improve workforce effectiveness.
Introduction
Over the last twenty years, global investment has poured into recruitment technologies. Applicant-sourcing solutions like LinkedIn, Seek and Indeed have driven scalable sourcing efficiencies resulting in mass volume of resumes surging into hiring companies. However, mass volume has not led to a significant increase in the number of qualified and best-fit candidates. The impact of this situation was clarified by findings from a 10-year study whereby hiring managers were asked “if at time of hire you knew then what you know now, would you definitely rehire?”. 31% of interviewees answered ‘No’.
The root cause of this response was found to be the combination of subjective and biased job requirement analysis and candidate capability analysis in the hiring process (due to discrimination based on age, sex, religion, disability as well as incorrect data interpretation). Subjective hiring error is inherent in the consultative process of recruitment and is present in many current technologies, rendering them virtually useless.
For example, a hiring manager may approve a job candidate for a salesperson position based on the candidate’s sales history. However, the candidate’s resume would not include objective factors that provide further insight into the environment, such as how the previous sales figures could have been skewed by market share, geography, population size and density, or the candidate’s level of capability across different skills that were needed to be applied within the environment.
The Case for Capability Assessment
Current talent management systems available in the market analyse data and predict which candidates will be successful in an organisation based on the career of employees within that same organisation and their prior work history. However, these systems do not measure inherent capabilities and their formulas cannot be applied to persons outside of the organisation.
Further, existing psychometric testing provides hiring managers with generic personality and IQ profiles on candidates but say little to nothing about what this information means in terms of how suitable the candidate is at performing the skills needed for the specific role they have applied for. This leaves the hiring manager with the difficult task of:
- interpreting psychological profiles with little or no training and support or
- engaging costly organisational psychologists to provide interpretations of behaviours-to-capability-to-skill
The outcome is that – even with the use of expensive psychometrics on a per-test charge basis – the selection process remains confusing and subjective.
By automating the consultative process, AbilityMap’s technology removes this bias, allowing for an objective match of best-fit candidates to a job across any industry and any geography. This is achieved by embedding objective job-to-candidate evaluation methodologies within the hiring process. This serves as the foundation for subsequent interview and potential hiring decisions, significantly changing the status quo and delivering maximum hiring process efficiency and optimal candidate quality.
AbilityMap’s Approach
Our research of available competency models and frameworks found little to no relationship between job/environment modelling to candidate evaluation/job selection.
AbilityMap solves the above limitations of existing technologies by reporting results in terms of job-relevant skills and capabilities. This delivers two value points:
- A proprietary scoring algorithm that integrates the candidate’s results into a single measure of fitness for role, allowing easy “interview/no interview” decisions; and
- Detailed skill criterion reference comparison to facilitate objective, structured observation (e.g. interview) of candidates for jobs/environments.
Data is collected through online assessment of individuals (e.g. job candidates or employees) and surveying people who know the role requirements well, e.g. hiring managers. AbilityMap’s proprietary algorithms then:
- Define the specific skills required to perform a job well in a company’s unique environment (Ability Profile);
- Identify the individual’s inherent capability to perform a set of 31 skills (Ability Imprint);
- Compare and rank each individual’s capability to perform required skills to satisfy the performance skills requirements of a specific job (Ability Matching Engine); and
- Provide job-skill-specific interview questions to the hiring manager (Ability Behavioural Interview Questions).
AbilityMap enables accurate definition sets of performance skills across a variety of jobs in different environments and objectively identifies an individual’s inherent degree of capability to perform them. The technology is applicable to all roles including frontline, technical and senior executive appointments.
Current HR technology predicts ‘successful employees’ by reference to candidates’ resumes, publicly available (biased) sources, careers of employees within that organisation and in some instances, through the use of psychometric software that assigns behavioural attributes to persons (e.g. Myer-Briggs, Team Dimensions Profiles, Stratified Systems Theory). In these scenarios, reliable evidence is not available to accurately identify the actual human capabilities that are held by individuals performing effectively in the role(s) nor the degree to which they are held by applicants, thereby compromising the integrity of any ‘job-fit’ prediction scores.
Our objective was to accurately answer the questions – “What does ‘good’ look like and What does ‘poor’ look like in this business?” Our solution was to seek to use – or in our case develop due to weak alternatives, a well-structured and measurably discrete skills framework that could be applied to define the skills required in any environment and importantly, to reliably identify any person’s inherent capability to perform them.
For this purpose and because our focus was understanding the true ‘human’ component of work, we needed a clear definition of the components related to job performance. Therefore, we established an AbilityMap taxonomy to categorise competency, skill, capability and attribute.
Job Performance Concepts
We recognised that these terms were applied inconsistently across industry and therefore believed AbilityMap required a position on them to facilitate the development of our system and communication of it to the market. The result was:
- Competency: An observable behaviour that successful performers demonstrate on the job, resulting from their application of specific skills, knowledge, capabilities, motivations and traits.
- Skill: An ability to perform a specific task or activity with proficiency and expertise, typically acquired through training, practice and experience. Skills are generally recognised as either ‘hard’ or ‘soft’. AbilityMap’s solution designs and measures ‘soft’ skills with regard to jobs, professional skills or environments and refers to them as ‘human skills’.
- Capability: The aggregation of behaviours that create the ability or potential to perform a specific task or achieve a desired outcome. It refers to the combination of skills, knowledge, processes, tools, behaviours and organisational structures that enable an entity (individual, system or organisation) to execute a particular course of action effectively. AbilityMap’s solution addresses the human skill aspect of this definition with regard to individuals and refers to them as ‘human capabilities’.
- Attribute: An attribute is a quality, characteristic or feature that is associated with or belongs to a particular person, object, or entity. AbilityMap’s solution considers human quality and characteristics through psychometric measurement of individuals.
AbilityMap’s solution applies psychometric measurement of behavioural attributes to identify a person’s inherent capability to perform the human skills required for effectiveness in a specific job and/or environment.
Skills vs. Capabilities
Human skills apply to any job or environment within an organisation and inform the degree of competency required for effectiveness. Therefore, by inference, understanding an individual’s inherent human capability to perform them – strong or weak, is important to determine both the effectiveness at which they will operate and, the likelihood that they will enjoy doing so.
Human capabilities are specific to a person rather than to a job or environment. They describe a critical component of how a person will perform skills required to be competent in a job or environment. A person’s human capability is informed by their (i) level of inherent capability to perform a skill and (ii) training and development they have undertaken and maintained to perform them.
Defining the human skills required for effectiveness within a job or environment clearly sets out for managers and team members the human skills that need to be performed by people in each area of the organisation to be successful. This enables managers to understand what is expected of them as leaders and gives them clarity about the skills that are critical for their team – and individuals within it – to perform effectively.
Identifying the inherent human capability level held by an individual applying for a specific role within an organisation enables quantitative, objective comparison of a candidate to the performance skills criteria for a role and the different environments in which it is performed.
AbilityMap Use Cases
When AbilityMap was founded, the impact of the science and methodology on talent acquisition was recognised as the largest point of value contribution. However, AbilityMap’s technology has been developed and configured to add insights to the full talent life cycle including Human Resource functions of onboarding, Training and Development, Performance Management, Workforce Planning, and Career & Succession Planning.
In each of the above functions, knowing the human skills needed for effectiveness within different jobs and various environments and, existing team members’ inherent capability to perform them is critical. As a result, this has been recognised and addressed within AbilityMap.
AbilityMap Reporting
A series of reports were developed to provide individuals who complete an Imprint, interviewers and/or direct managers of candidates with objective reports for consideration. These reports offer descriptive (Imprint Feedback Report for individuals); normative (Imprint Capability Balance Sheet); or normative and comparative (Profile Capability Balance Sheet and Fit Report) insights into an individual’s inherent capability to ‘do’ specific activities. These reports, combined with the available structured capability-based interview/discussion questions, provide individuals, interviewers and/or direct managers with the necessary objective data to support decisions relating to recruitment, career development, promotion, team building and associated areas.
View the AbilityMap Methodology
The AbilityMap methodology is proprietary but available to clients and partners under NDA. If you’d like to learn more about AbilityMap, give us a call on 1800 422 454 or watch the demo.
