“90% of people think they are in the top 10%”
I read that somewhere years ago. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the article, but the quote has remained one of my favorites. It was likely a reference to the various psychological studies around self-bias, showing that people generally overestimate their own abilities.
This is particularly noticeable with soft skills. For example, when interviewing candidates for a job, have you ever heard anyone say “No, I’m not at all reliable and my integrity is pretty weak”?
Probably not… even the most unreliable out there will likely answer “Yes, of course I am reliable” if asked. And they probably believe it.
That’s why career.place has integrated assessments to evaluate soft skills. If no one is going to answer “No” to being dependable, have high integrity, or being team-oriented, why bother asking? Just test for it.
This approach was recently validated in an almost comical way.
The results are wrong - I am honest, I just lied on the test!
“I am very upset… [the assessment] gave me the wrong results”
This was a complaint that we received from a candidate who was disqualified for a job due to the results of their soft skills assessments.
Career.Place provides candidates with the high-level results of their assessments to help them understand their own strengths and alignment. However, to protect employers, we do not provide candidates with the soft skill requirements for any given job.
Based on their results, this person guessed why they had not passed and stated:
“This test is not accurate at all. I am the opposite of a risk taker. I only answered that way because I thought that is what you were looking for. I never take risks…”
As is our policy, we immediately investigated the complaint. It turns out that the candidate was wrong in their assumption of why they failed – it was not risk taking that caused them to be a bad fit for the job.
The candidate lied on the assessment to get the results they believed the employer wanted rather than truly reflecting themselves and failed...for lack of integrity!!!
Don’t ask, measure
When used correctly, good assessments can give far more insight than an individual telling you how great they are. Though sometimes the complaints are pretty telling too.
Want to know more about assessments?
Join us for our SHRM accredited webinar on Wednesday, July 17th, on how to effectively select assessments - we will be joined by our assessments partner Corvirtus as we walk through steps needed to identify the right assessment partner.