I have spent sometime in our business looking at Commercial awareness and identifying competancies for our commercial managers.
We are looking for a phsycometric test to use with our commercial managers to assess their potential in following competancies:
Business decisions and accountability
Analytical thinking
Strategic Customer Relations
Results Orientation
Awareness of self and others
Big Picture thinking
I appreciate that one tool will not do everything, but any suggestions would be gratefully recieved. Thanks.
Fiona Barber
3 Responses
Psycho-Tests – Haha
We were approached by a company selling a “Winslow Report”. they let us log on to their site and test two people. It was the most thorough report i’ve ever seen. they include questions which validate whether the candidate is answering honestly. I studied psychometric tests at uni and my lecturers were really against thema nd i have my doubts about how useful they are, but i have to say this winslow report was very good. try searching google for them. i think they were based in america.
Testing for commercial awareness
Hi Fiona,
I use psychometrics as part of self development and awareness coaching programmes and find them to be effective in this role.
There maybe other ways of tackling this situation.
When faced with a similar assignment some years ago I asked the business sponsor what they expected the successful candidates to do once they had been assessed/developed and possibly promoted or transferred.
The description they gave me was very different to the competency set in one very specific way.
The competency for say business decisions and accountability would talk about appropriate decisions, delegation and ownership.
On answering the question the sponsor and colleagues identified specific examples that they would expect the role holder to be managing in the future.
Based on this information I cross referenced the competencies being considered with the input from the senior team for all competencies and designed a development centre around the specific examples.
The senior team also provided 25% of the assessors over a three day centre to help out and provide a sense check about the activities being used.
The attendees claimed it was the most clear and understandable development centre they had attended and the stakeholders were confident that they had seen enough candidatures that would come up to the standards expected.
I have since repeated this process successfully with other groups. In one group including the ideas of those being assessed also in terms of what they felt the role would require.
This may be a case of weakly written competencies but having gone through the process it is always worth asking the question and seeing what comes back. One very well written and detailed competency set turned out to be obsolete due to recent changes when one senior team were asked about the candidate’s future capabilities!
Recommendation
Hi Fiona –
I really like People Clues – an on-line psychometric, take a look at their website at http://www.peopleclues.co.uk/index.html – they also offer a free 30 day trial so you could try before you buy.
They have several levels of management and their norm groups are those who are not only a good ‘fit’ in their roles but are also happy in them (i.e.square peg, square hole!). Also they can produce development reports linked to it, which are very useful.
best wishes
Andie
Andie Hemming