Articles

Using iWAM technology for pre-employment assessment

Ensure the best recruitment decisions
Screen candidates using a reliable and easy-to-use online assessment solution

If you are serious about hiring the best employees, it is necessary to find an objective way to discover who has the most potential to be successful in the position.

Hiring the best candidates will help your organisation to spend less, while getting better results. Experts estimate the cost of a bad hiring decision at anywhere from 20% to 200% of a year's salary. Research shows that hiring for attitude and motivation predicts up to 80% of job performance.

Success at work is the product of having the right knowledge, the right skills, and the right attitude. You can teach someone the right knowledge and skills, but you cannot teach attitude. The successful strategy is to hire for attitude, and train for competence.

With the use of our behavioural profiling solutions we are able to reliably match the right person with the right job, combining the latest developments in cognitive science with years of proven research to bring you an easy, fast and affordable way to objectively recruit and select staff.

This can further be enhanced by identifying the attributes of your star performers and developing of a Model of Excellence unique to your organisation. By matching candidates with this model, we are able to reliably predict behaviour and performance in the work place.

How do you know what to look for in an employee? If you are serious about hiring the best employees, then find an objective way to discover who has the most potential for the position. The challenge is that some people have great interviews or resumes, but they turn out to be duds when it comes to being productive. Others come in with low expectations and blow everyone out of the water with hard work and a great attitude. So what is the successful hiring strategy?

You know how important it is to have the right employees. If a colleague is not performing well, the consequences on the bottom line or the sales figures and the team unity might be dramatic. Therefore ensure that you have the right type of person before it is too late.

How can you really know for sure? How can you objectively and accurately measure a person’s attitude or motivations? Trying to collect this kind of complex information during an interview requires costly recruiters, and is very time-consuming.

That is why the solution is iWAM. iWAM is an objective assessment that accurately measures how people process and use information through meta-programs. This assessment combines recent developments in cognitive science with years of proven research to bring you an easy, affordable way to match the right organisations with the right employees.

Hiring the best recruits will help an organisation to spend less while getting better results. Experts estimate the cost of a bad hiring decision at anywhere from 20% to 200% of a year's salary. This happens because if the wrong hiring decision is made, the employee will be unproductive, and the company must pay to hire and train yet another worker. Data shows that hiring for attitude and motivation predicts up to 80% of job performance, so it’s no wonder that organisations around the world are turning to the iWAM assessment for making better hiring decisions.

We know that HR professionals are under tremendous pressure to ensure that the right person is recruited and selected, but they do not have the final say. The line manager in most instances makes the final decision. So, use the best predictor for work performance, namely iWAM. This will drastically improve the effectiveness of your recruitment process by helping you to get more qualified candidates, while at the same time reducing the number of unqualified candidates. iWAM will help you in your recruitment process as it can predict employee success. Therefore, the best advice we can give is to hire for attitude, as this is the most accurate predictor of work performance.

Why compare with the average individual? We all know that not every organisation needs the same type of employees. You need flexible solutions that fit your specific needs. This is what makes what we offer unique. We have the ability to objectively compare people to each other and to the top performers in your organisation, using the Model of Excellence concept. Our tools can predict employee success, because we find out what psychological traits the top performers have in common and create an ideal profile unique to your organisation.

Then we use pre-employment assessment to discover who has the most potential to become the next top performer in your organisation. Using iWAM as a pre-employment assessment is an easy way sort the "A" candidates from the rest of the pack before you invest your valuable time in interviewing. Before you even invite a candidate for an interview, you will know to what extent his work attitude and motivation fit the requirements of the job.

iWAM is not a psychometric assessment
iWAM is not another personality assessment
iWAM is a work-based behavioural profiling tool for HR and the line managers

Our product is designed to create a more emotionally intelligent workplace, which gives you a better ability to hire, manage, and coach employees.

The biggest reason companies choose iWAM is for the reliability of our assessment, which is unparalleled in the world of pre-employment assessment.

The iWAM assessment is used for pre-employment assessment. iWAM is designed to eliminate test falsification and bias. We ensure this by making each answer positive, which eliminates “right” and “wrong” choices, and makes it impossible to guess what the best choice would be.

Moreover, we have an extensive interview methodology which enables you to fully validate each of the candidates’ answers in case of doubt.

The iWAM assessment measures 48 meta program patterns - far more variables than competing assessments. Our feedback reports explain the results, and how they relate to and predict employee behaviour. Instead of saying a person is either "proactive" or "reactive," these reports detail exactly how proactive and reactive a person is.

Measuring items on a scale such as this gives you an incredible amount of information about the person and how he or she compares to others. Rather than just putting people into one of a few categories, the iWAM gives you more possible profiles than there are people on the Earth. Since everyone is unique, this makes perfect sense.

Once you see exactly which meta-programs are measured, you will begin to understand how much they could affect a person's behaviour at work. We have organised the meta-programs into 16 categories, each of which can be accurately and objectively measured by iWAM.

Where do you spend most of your money? On the development of your people in order to ensure they meet your requirements or do you make sure that you spend it at the right place? Ensuring that you recruit the right people from the start will reduce your headaches and cost drastically in the future!!

How do you ensure this? By taking the subjectivity out of your recruitment process – this is a major benefit to both the HR practitioner and the line manager!

Do you assess (look at or listen for) the same “things” when there is more than one person involved in the recruitment and selection process? How do you ensure you focus on the same “things”?

Standard groups

The profiling tools allow you to compare candidates with a standard population of your organisation, a specific team or with the top performers within your organisation. Doesn’t every manager wish new hires could be just like so-and-so?

Building a Model of Excellence

Based on top and good performers in the organisation, we compile a profile of the attitude and/or competencies needed by the “perfect” candidate. We would assess a group of your top and low performers within a specific job in order to set up the Model of Excellence. You will discover exactly what traits separate the top performers in your organisation. This will improve the recruitment and selection process, management techniques and, most importantly, how the team performs.

You will not spend time on individuals that do not meet your Model of Excellence, irrespective of that impressive CV. You will base your decisions on behaviour – behaviour that is equal to or better than what your current high performers shows. You can predict how a new employee will behave – no more subjective evaluation. No more “fights” with the line manager regarding who is right and who is wrong. You measure against a Model of Excellence that the line manager has agreed to upfront. You will now really become partners and not enemies.

A Model of Excellence is usually built mainly for positions with a relatively high turnover.

Job advert design

Tired of having to process hundreds of applications that do not meet your needs? Change your job ads in order to attract only the relevant candidates!

Training in interviewing skills

This training is based on how to use meta-programs and the different profiling tools during interviews. Make your interviews much more focused, meaningful, and successful.

iWAM assessment reports
Various kinds of reports are available for the individual being assessed, the line manager, or the HR person once the iWAM assessment has been completed. You only pay for the actual assessment, not the reports.

iWAM Management report

The iWAM management report covers 4 different sections:

• The 16 thinking patterns indicating the individual’s results in detail.

• Indicating relevant combinations of patterns.

• Indication how the candidate would perform at various job types.

• Explains how the person should be managed to get maximum performance and the best results.

iWAM Communication report

This report presents information similar to that found in section 4 of the Management report. The distinction here is that patterns are sorted in order of relative preference for the individual.

iWAM Attitude sorter

The Attitude Sorter ranks the 48 iWAM parameters from the highest to lowest thinking patterns. Personal strengths and development areas are highlighted in this report, making it an ideal tool for coaching purposes.

iWAM Attitude sorter wheel (diagram)

This report shows the patterns in a graphical format from the highest to the lowest thinking pattern.

iWAM Information analysis report

This report indicates the consistency of the answers.

iWAM Feedback sheet

This report provides a high level summary of the results of the assessment, and is ideally used in interview situations.

iWAM Candidate ranking

If a reference model has been created for a specific position, candidates will be automatically compared with that model, and ranked in matching order.

iWAM Profile matching

if a reference model has been created for a specific position, a new candidate will be compared against that model of performance excellence.

iWAM Team comparison

In this report, results of a group/team are indicated.

iWAM Paired comparison

In this report, two individuals can be compared.

iWAM Pen and paper assessments

In some instances you might not have computers available for assessment purposes. iWAM makes it possible to use a pen and paper assessment version. Thereafter the assessment data can be processed in the same way as the on-line assessments.

iWAM provides you with

Low cost.	iWAM is available at a fraction of the cost of other evaluation models. This is made possible by the on-line nature of the assessment. You pay for one report. All other reports are available at no additional cost.
Efficiency.	Typically, when some candidates walk into the door you get the feeling that the interview might be a waste of time both for you and the candidate. iWAM’s availability via the Internet saves you time by candidates having been assessed before inviting them. You only interview those meeting the criteria. A very cost-effective way of assessment and interviews.
Reliability.	All iWAM questions relate to the work environment. iWAM has been designed to eliminate assessment falsification. As accurate research is our priority, several universities have worked with us on the validation of the tool.
Clarity.	The easy-to-use management report explains the data in a way the HR practitioners will understand. Each section clearly explains how the 48 measured parameters apply to the candidate, and how this will affect the candidate’s performance and motivation on the job.
Speed.	With iWAM, you get access to a protected on-line HR environment to which you can invite candidates for assessments, from which you can print reports and follow up on them by e-mail.
Flexibility.	iWAM results can also be used as a management and team building tool, and as a leverage point for coaching.
Objectivity.	The statistical results and objectivity of the tool allow for easy comparison between candidates in order to make the best choice for success.
Ease of use.	The assessment can be done in your HR office, via the Internet or even on paper.
Validation of answers.	It is extremely difficult to falsify the iWAM. For each item, the candidate must establish the order of 5 sentences, which are often grouped in different ways. Should you doubt a finding; the interviewing techniques will help you to re-evaluate the answers.

Opportunities in the recruiting process

We identified 6 major problems regarding how recruiting operates today. These present serious risks to both the candidate and the company. The right-hand column of the table explains how our iWAM employment assessment solutions help to solve these problems.

	Market weakness	iWAM solution
1.	Job description and candidate profile How do you know what type of person you are looking for?	Model of excellence For many positions, each organisation has examples of people doing that job well. We help you to find out how they function to get these results. We use their profiles to design a model of the ideal candidate.
2.	Job Ad How do you make sure your advertisement is appealing enough to attract the right candidate?	Job Ad design Once you know what motivates the best performers in a function, you can write the add using language that will motivate people that are similar to your top performers.
3.	Which resume to select? Out of all the resumes that you receive, how do you select who you should interview? (What do you do with the ones you reject?)	Pre-employment assessment and Profile matching Candidates fill out the iWAM questionnaire. Their answers are compared to the model of excellence. This is an objective, scalable process that can quickly narrow the field to only the best candidates.
4.	Cycle time How can you deal with dozens or even hundreds of candidates in a reasonable amount of time?	Internet processing All our solutions are available online, dramatically increasing the efficiency of the recruiting process. Imagine what you can do with all the time you save!
5.	Recognise the best match How do you recognise the best match for the job?	Candidate ranking iWAM ranks all candidates according to the degree to which they match a model of excellence. Moreover, the iWAM management report describes the candidates in detail.
6.	Motivate to join How do you motivate the chosen candidate to join your team?	Training and coaching iWAM’s feedback reports tell you the exact words that will motivate a particular candidate. You will also learn how to close the gap between the model of excellence and the new employee, using coaching and training.