Competency in an area is the result of many factors working together, which include innate characteristics (natural ability, personality) and learned characteristics (knowledge, experience and skills) as is presented in the following chart. People who have the right competencies or who have a good potential for developing these competencies will be able to do the right things (behaviors) to produce the desired results (effective outcomes).

The following report provides detailed results and judgments about how these innate characteristics may facilitate or hinder the display or development of the desired competencies and, ultimately, job effectiveness. Also provided is a competency-oriented interview protocol to use to evaluate the skills, knowledge and other learned characteristics important to this job, as well as a general model for making a good decision from all sources of information.

The following results are based on your performance on standardized ability tests. They are presented as percentile comparisons to professional norms (people who, for the most part, have an education at or beyond the college undergraduate level) and to general population norms (people who, for the most part, have a high school education).

• The EAS7 (Verbal Reasoning) is a measure of his ability to quickly analyze verbal information and deduce logical conclusions from that information.

• The Thurstone Test of Mental Alertness is a measure of his language skills and his quantitative skills. It also provides an indication of his ability to shift quickly back and forth from one problem type to another.

• The Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (Abstract Reasoning) is a measure of his ability to reason through complex, abstract, nonverbal information and to grasp new ideas. This capacity includes the ability to solve problems in new situations where one has little experience upon which to draw.

General Population Norms:   0%   100% Verbal Reasoning       Mental Alertness       Abstract Reasoning        Professional Norms:         Verbal Reasoning       Mental Alertness       Abstract Reasoning

 

He should have no difficulty reasoning through most verbal and quantitative information to quickly solve problems.

He should have no difficulty solving problems that involve complex, abstract information. He should also be quick to grasp new ideas and solve problems that are outside his usual experience.

Decisive Judgment Making good decisions in a timely and confident manner. Driving For Results Challenging, pushing the organization and themselves to excel and achieve. Customer Focus Anticipating customers' needs and designing, promoting or supporting the delivery of products and services that exceed customers' expectations. Resilience Effectively dealing with work related problems, pressure, and stress in a professional and positive manner. Persuading To Buy Convincing others to buy a product or service. Managing Others Directing and leading others to accomplish organizational goals and objectives. Motivating Others Inspiring others to perform well by actively conveying enthusiasm and a passion for doing a good job. Negotiation Identifying the needs and motives of both parties involved and working toward mutually beneficial agreements. Presentation Skills* Having the skills to effectively communicate to an audience in a formal setting.

• For each personality characteristic, a distribution of possible scores (from less to more) is displayed in deciles (1-10% = 1st decile, 11-20% = 2nd decile, etc.) using ten graph blocks.

• This distribution is based on a professional norm group of approximately 40,000 respondents.

• The candidate's score on each personality characteristic is represented by the graphic character .

• Overlaid on the normative distribution, the colors and shading on the graph represent desirable and undesirable ranges on each characteristic for a particular competency.

• Ranges in which a characteristic may hinder are marked with least shading ( ).

• Ranges in which a characteristic may be a potential concern are marked in intermediate shading ( ).

• Ranges in which a characteristic may help are marked with most shading ( ).

• You will notice from the pattern of shadings that low scores are not necessarily bad and high scores are not necessarily good.

• Also notice that the Helps and Hinders ranges for a characteristic may differ by competency. For example, a higher level of assertiveness may be more desirable for one competency than another.

Making good decisions in a timely and confident manner.

Challenging, pushing the organization and themselves to excel and achieve.

Anticipating customers' needs and designing, promoting or supporting the delivery of products and services that exceed customers' expectations.

Effectively dealing with work related problems, pressure, and stress in a professional and positive manner.

Convincing others to buy a product or service.

Directing and leading others to accomplish organizational goals and objectives.

Inspiring others to perform well by actively conveying enthusiasm and a passion for doing a good job.

Identifying the needs and motives of both parties involved and working toward mutually beneficial agreements.

For additional, more detailed information on conducting good behavior-based interviews, please visit the ASSESS managers resource website at https://www.bigby.com/systems/assessv2/System/Reports/www.bigby.com/systems/assessv2/resources/manager.

Interview Date: __________

Before the Interview

Review the Competency Model definitions and representative behaviors.

Review the candidate's resume and be familiar with his/her background and experience.

Review the candidate's ASSESS results.

Review the interview questions and additional personality probes.

During the interview, remember to:

• Use open-ended questions
• Ask probing follow-up questions
• Focus on specific examples and behaviors
• Postpone judgment: don't rely on your first impression

  
   

Start the interview by discussing the details of the candidate's educational and work history.

Walk me through your educational background.

Listen and probe for accomplishments, grades, how he/she chose college/major, classes he/she liked or disliked, involvement in outside activities, work experience during school, etc., and probe for how they relate to the job.

Walk me through your work history.

Listen and probe for milestones, accomplishments, relationships with co-workers and supervisors, tasks he/she liked or disliked, work environments he/she liked or disliked, reasons for leaving each job, etc. and probe for how prior experience has prepared him/her for this job.

NOTES:

Decisive Judgment:  Making good decisions in a timely and confident manner.

• Describe some of the decisions you have made recently that had important effects on your business or the people involved. How did you make your decisions? How did you balance the pressures of timeliness and making the right decision? Did you change your decision after making it? Why or why not?

Additional special probes based on ASSESS results:

• Tell me about a time when you made an error in judgment. Why did the error occur? (Can he go beyond immediate data to intuit larger issues?)

• Tell me about a time when you hesitated too long in making a decision, and this had a negative impact. What was the time frame? (Listen for a reticence to decide or commit to a course of action.)

NOTES:  (details of the situation, actions by the candidate, and the resulting outcomes)

Driving For Results:  Challenging, pushing the organization and themselves to excel and achieve.

• Describe a time when your group set and met an aggressive goal. What types of obstacles did you face? How did you overcome them?

• Describe a time when your group failed to meet an aggressive goal. Why did this happen?

Additional special probes based on ASSESS results:

• Tell me about one of your projects that had an aggressive deadline for completion. How did you get it done? (Listen for an ability to accomplish things quickly.)

NOTES:  (details of the situation, actions by the candidate, and the resulting outcomes)

Customer Focus:  Anticipating customers' needs and designing, promoting or supporting the delivery of products and services that exceed customers' expectations.

• Tell me about the most successful customer initiatives of which you were a part. What did you do that contributed to their success?

• Tell me about the least successful customer initiatives of which you were a part. What was your role? Why were they unsuccessful?

Additional special probes based on ASSESS results:

• In developing customer initiatives, what things do you consider? Walk me through your thinking on a recent initiative. (Listen for the candidate's ability to think about long-term consequences of customer policies.)

• Tell me about any negative response that you, your group, or your company received from the customer regarding your product, service or a customer policy. What do you think caused this response? What is your general view of the mindset of the customer and their expectations? (Listen for a negative perspective that might prejudice customer initiatives.)

• Describe a time when you were responsible for a customer initiative that others thought should be implemented quickly. What did you do? What was the result? (Will the candidate accept a sense of urgency and expend the energy required to make an initiative happen quickly?)

NOTES:  (details of the situation, actions by the candidate, and the resulting outcomes)

Resilience:  Effectively dealing with work related problems, pressure, and stress in a professional and positive manner.

• Tell me about two situations in which you experienced pressure and stress at work. What were the circumstances? How did you react? How would someone else know you were under stress?

• Tell me about two work situations in which you were rejected, turned down, or had some other frustrating setback. What happened? How did you react? How long did it take for you to recover?

NOTES:  (details of the situation, actions by the candidate, and the resulting outcomes)

Persuading To Buy:  Convincing others to buy a product or service.

• (If not previously covered) Walk me through your sales experience. What types of things did you sell? What was the typical sales process? How did you prospect, develop the relationship, and make the close? What did you do well? What was your weakest area?

• What type of formal sales training have you had? What did you learn? What have you learned from other experienced sales people?

• Tell me about some of your most successful sales experiences. What did you do? Why were you successful?

• Tell me about the times when you were unsuccessful. What happened? What could you have done differently?

Additional special probes based on ASSESS results:

• What kind of things have you done in the past to network and build business opportunities? Which have been successful and which have not? How would you describe your networking style? (Listen for an ability to build rapport and for social smoothness in sales situations.)

• Tell me about a typical week for you. How many prospects do you contact, how many meetings do you have, etc.? How do you set your schedule? (Does the candidate have the personal stamina and work commitment to be successful?)

NOTES:  (details of the situation, actions by the candidate, and the resulting outcomes)

Managing Others:  Directing and leading others to accomplish organizational goals and objectives.

• (If not previously covered) Give me a history of your management experience. For each step along the way, tell me what your group did, how many people you managed and how you assigned work and organized the group to get the job done.

• Tell me how goals were set for the group and each of the individuals in the group for these situations? How did you manage people to achieve these goals?

• How do you discipline and reward people who work for you? Give me specific examples of both.

Additional special probes based on ASSESS results:

• Tell me about your poorest performing subordinates. Why do you think they struggle? What have you done to improve their performance? (Listen for a tendency to expect others to fail.)

• Describe your typical style of interacting with subordinates. Give specific examples. How much time do you spend talking with them? What do you talk about? (Listen for a lack of emphasis on developing and maintaining smooth social relationships with subordinates.)

• Tell me about a time when your group had a tight deadline to meet and was successful. What did you do to ensure the deadline was met? What about a time when your group missed the deadline? What did you do to try to achieve the missed deadline? (Does the candidate have the energy level to set a good example and energize the activities of others?)

NOTES:  (details of the situation, actions by the candidate, and the resulting outcomes)

Motivating Others:  Inspiring others to perform well by actively conveying enthusiasm and a passion for doing a good job.

• Give me two examples of situations in which you have had to motivate people to perform. What were the circumstances? How would you describe your motivational style?

• Tell me about a time when you have had to motivate people in different ways or use different methods of motivation based on the person or situation.

Additional special probes based on ASSESS results:

• Tell me about some of your co-workers or subordinates. Which ones are doing a good job and which ones are not? Why? What have you done or could you do to change the poor performers? (Listen for a tendency to be overly negative and faultfinding with little expectation of improvement.)

• Describe a time when you needed to inspire others to work harder, accomplish more, in a short timeframe. How did you do this? (Can the candidate exert the extra effort when it is needed?)

NOTES:  (details of the situation, actions by the candidate, and the resulting outcomes)

Negotiation:  Identifying the needs and motives of both parties involved and working toward mutually beneficial agreements.

• Give me several examples of the types of negotiation you have done. Were you a direct participant in the negotiations or a third party facilitator? What were the issues? What steps or process did you follow to reach an agreement? Which party won? Why?

• Give me several examples of failed negotiations to which you were a party. Why did they fail? What did you do? What could you have done better?

Additional special probes based on ASSESS results:

• Tell me about a time when you felt that the other party was trying to take advantage of you in a negotiation. What basis did you have to feel this way? How did your feelings impact the negotiation? (Listen for a tendency to assume that the other party will try to take advantage.)

• Describe a time where it was particularly difficult for you to see the situation from another person's point of view. How did this effect the negotiation? Were you able to come to see things from their perspective? (Listen for an ability to view things from the other person's perspective and find common ground.)

NOTES:  (details of the situation, actions by the candidate, and the resulting outcomes)

Presentation Skills*:  Having the skills to effectively communicate to an audience in a formal setting.

• Describe the level of your experience making presentations to small and large audiences. What types of presentations have you typically made? For what purpose?

• How would you evaluate your ability to make good presentations to small groups and to large groups? What do you do well, and what do you do poorly?

• What type of training have you taken to prepare yourself to make good presentations?

• (If this competency is extremely important to the position, we recommend the candidate be asked to make a formal presentation to the selection committee to provide a sample of his/her skills.)

NOTES:  (details of the situation, actions by the candidate, and the resulting outcomes)

Your goal is to bring the interview smoothly to a close.

Ensure that the candidate feels that he/she has been able to give you a complete and accurate picture of him/herself.

Explain the next steps in the process and timeframe as appropriate.

Thank the candidate for his/her time and close the interview.

Good selection decisions require careful consideration of all the available information (education, training, experience, skills, abilities, personality, etc.) from as many different credible sources as possible (interviews, reference checks, background checks, ASSESS results, etc.) against a clear specification of what is needed or desired in the job.

Use the following chart to evaluate the candidate on each of the competencies of the Model. Carefully consider each competency before making your overall judgement.