This paper examines Chad Haywood's recommendations for using standardized employee assessments in small and medium-sized business hiring decisions. It surveys the major categories of assessment tools — including behavioral, motivational, interest, ability, and skills tests — and explains how the impact level of a hiring decision should guide assessment intensity. The paper then critically evaluates Haywood's framework, challenging the assumption that lower-level positions carry less risk and questioning whether standardized instruments can reliably measure intangible qualities like motivation or character. It concludes that while assessments have value, especially for technical competencies, they should be supplemented by thorough background checks, credential verification, and probationary employment periods.
According to Chad Haywood's June 24, 2009 Fast Company article "How to Choose the Right Assessments for Your Next Hiring Project," small and medium-sized businesses are often tempted to cut costs when hiring new employees. Rather than using costly but systematized methods of assessing a potential employee's suitability and abilities, these companies may go with their gut when making a selection. This is dangerous, says Haywood, as small companies — where every member is a critical component of the workplace team — are especially sensitive to poor hiring decisions.
Haywood suggests that insufficiently systematized and data-based methods of selecting employees are at the root of many small enterprises' problems: "In the case of hiring decisions, this means not only evaluating candidates' level of knowledge and experience, through the typical resume and interview, but also using the right assessments to objectively assess their ability to perform critical job tasks, their personal habits and work style, and their motivation to invest time and effort into job success" (Haywood 2009).
Many different types of objective, standardized assessments are available for HR departments, but the company must first identify which qualities and character traits are critical to success within its specific organization. The Buros Institute of Mental Measurements, publishers of the Mental Measurements Yearbook and Tests in Print series, "have reviewed and gathered information on nearly 4,000 commercially available assessment instruments, produced by over 900 publishers" (Haywood 2009).
An organization must define what unique attributes are critical to success before embarking on a search for new recruits. Are those attributes behavioral or personality-based? If so, "behavioral style, or personality questionnaires, which help explore individuals' typical approach to people and problems at work, and determine fit and compatibility with the job, team, and organization" should be used by HR (Haywood 2009). If a high level of motivation is determined to be the key to employee success, then motivational questionnaires can be used to determine whether an individual's personality is likely to respond to the carrots and sticks provided by the workplace — for example, whether the person is internally motivated (by the quest for approval or knowledge) or externally motivated (by material rewards). Similar to workplace motivational questionnaires, interest assessments attempt to highlight which tasks genuinely engage a person's attention.
In contrast, "ability tests measure enduring aptitudes that are stable over time," such as trainability in certain skills (computer aptitude, for example), and may be more critical for technical positions (Haywood 2009). Skills and knowledge tests, which evaluate capabilities that can be learned and enhanced through practice, are used to determine whether a candidate has the technical competency required to perform future duties. The HR professional must decide whether technical expertise and trainability — or more intangible qualities like motivation and character — are necessary for success. A sales position will demand different qualities than an engineering role, and thus require different assessment methods.
Haywood asserts that the potential impact of a poor personnel selection on the organization as a whole should also determine the number of assessments used, the types chosen, and the level of detail and verifiability required. "For example, selecting your next executive, who will have a great deal of responsibility over the company and its people, is a High Impact hiring decision. In other words, the risks and consequences of a bad hiring decision are severe, which necessitates a greater investment into a quality assessment program. However, hiring someone to clean your warehouse is a relatively Low Impact hiring decision, as the consequences of selecting a poor employee are relatively limited" (Haywood 2009).
"Challenging assumptions about lower-level position risk"
"Why tests alone cannot reliably evaluate character"
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