Talent Calibration
- Who is likely to succeed in this role?
Overemphasizing skills and experience is the most common cause of hiring mistakes. There are several reasons: 1) the wrong skills are evaluated to begin with; and 2) skill set and experience is only one aspect of determining if a candidate will succeed in the role.
First, it is essential that we evaluate the right skills to begin with. Next, wet must corroborate that those skills are readily adaptable to a new environment. Finally, we must verify the Challenges, Goals, and Activities that define the role will motivate the individual to perform at a high level.
Talent Calibration ensures that we define the true requirements and that candidates have the Competency, Adaptability, and Motivation to successfully hit our Performance Targets.
How Calibration Works
Talent Calibration has two key components: Valid Requirements and Attribute Calibration.
The attributes (hard skills, soft skills, and experience) needed to hit Performance Targets.
Attributes required have been successfully used before. Adaptability Score
Attributes required have been successfully used in a comparable context and culture before. Motivation Score
Candidate is motivated by Success Benchmark and inspired to use the attributes required to achieve performance objectives.
Valid Requirements
Defining “valid” requirements is the first phase of Talent Calibration and is performed before there are any candidates in the equation. The key deliverable at this stage is the Requirements Definition.
Requirements Definition
The Requirements Definition is the standard we calibrate candidate attributes against. We develop the Requirements Definition in tandem with the Performance Targets before starting the search. It supplements the Performance Targets by extrapolating employee Activities into the professional competencies needed to execute them.
The Requirements Definition resembles a traditional job description only in the sense that it is a list of requirements used to qualify and assess candidates. However, there is a distinct difference in the origin of each requirement and the process by which it becomes an official requirement.
A traditional job description is a subjective document. Rarely does any deliberate thought go into mapping each requirement to the specific business Results needed and what that means at a higher level than simply, “getting the work done”.
In contrast, the Requirements Definition is an objective list since each requirement must pass through several key clarification checkpoints. Only after successfully doing so is it validated and included in the official Requirements Definition.
Attribute Use Context Success Benchmark = Valid Requirement
Passing each clarification checkpoint is required before continuing to the next one. Before a requirement can become official, we must ask several pertinent questions about it:
- How specifically will the employee Use the attribute? The answer must directly satisfy progress toward one or more of the business Results needed. This answer is critical for calibrating a candidate’s Competency.
- In what Context will the attribute be used? The answer must clearly describe the environmental conditions in which the attribute will be used. This answer is critical for calibrating Adaptability of a skill set to a new environment.
- What is the Success Benchmark? The answer must represent an outcome that is beneficial to both the organization but also would be meaningful for the employee. This answer is critical to calibrating a candidate’s Motivation to perform at a high level.
The following table illustrates requirement validation flow with examples.
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Attribute Calibration
An Attribute is any hard skill, soft skill, or experience needed to achieve a Success Benchmark.
Once we have validated our requirements we have the standard against which candidate attributes will be calibrated. The key deliverable at this stage is a Calibration Scorecard™ for every candidate who progresses past the initial screening. The scorecard is divided into the three fundamental categories of Competency, Adaptability, and Motivation.
Attribute + Competency + Adaptability + Motivation = Calibrated
Competency
Calibrating Competency means more than just validating that a candidate has the skills required to do the work; it means verifying that those skills have been “successfully” used in the past. Unlike traditional requirements that overemphasize the number of years of experience a candidate must have, Talent Calibration instead verifies that candidates have achieved comparable success using their skills. If so, candidates are considered qualified regardless of how many years of experience they have.
Learn more about how we determine Competency.
Adaptability
It is often falsely assumed that candidates are qualified if they have the skills required to do the work. This assumption is misguided and results in frequent hiring mistakes. Just because a candidate is highly competent does not mean his or her skill set can be successfully adapted to a particular new environment. That’s why calibrating for Adaptability is so critical. It is important to understand the conditions under which past successes were accomplished. We refer to these conditions as Context and Culture.
Learn more about how we determine Adaptability.
Motivation
Calibrating for Motivation is always performed last. There is little sense in assessing the motivation level of a candidate who is incompetent or whose skills and personal attributes are not compatible with a particular new environment. However, the caveat here is that while motivation may be the last attribute calibrated – it is by far the most significant.
Regardless of how talented an individual is, he or she will fail to hit Performance Targets if they’re not sufficiently inspired by the Challenges, Goals, and Activities that characterize the role. Ultimately, the Success Benchmarks must serve as the impetus that drives high performance. For that to happen, success achieving they must represent career growth.
Learn more about how we determine Motivation.
